J. P. McConalogue was born in Essex in 1979. For the past five years, he has been working in the editorial departments of various publishing companies in London and Essex, in addition to studying political thought at Birkbeck College (University of London) and the University of York. He is currently a postgraduate student at the University of York. His poetry publications include: the chapbook 'Terra Incognita' (2003); 'Rhodian Moon Night' (www.hauntingspectre.co.uk, 2004); 'Restless' and 'Romford, Born and Bred: The Politics of the Human Species' (Open Wide Magazine, 2005); 'The March of Night' (Aesthetica, 2005) and 'Of stars that do not give a damn' (in the anthology: The Shape of Tomorrow, Forward Press, 2005).

Augustus at the Ouse

The berry-lipped fainéant pours

her shooting gazes over the river

that runs through my Yorkshire town

whilst all my nerves pause to shiver

and boats, then canoes, then fishermen,

huddled by the water's skin,

fade into a muffled haze

as the bedevilled gazes draw me in

to her moonlight complexion, chained

to restless day-wandrin' eyes

dancing in the Mayday sunshine

shot green as mint and chives.

Then, at last, the white tinges

of the daylight's river, immerse

into the dim morass shadows

of dusk's beginning and the poet's verse

and the gazes were flatly quelled

as time tugged upon the river's bones

towards the nights redemption: a dream

of the Aegean blaze

held in the gaze,

glazed like summer's spangling emerald stones.