Martin Walls

Martin Walls Poems

Martin Walls Biography

Martin Walls (born Brighton, England) is a British-American poet and the first British-born winner of the US Library of Congress Witter Bynner Fellowship. Martin Walls was born in Brighton, England in 1970 and now lives in Baldwinsville, New York with his wife, Christine, and son Alexander. A US Library of Congress Witter Bynner Fellow, he is the author of three books of poems: Small Human Detail in Care of National Trust (2000), Commonwealth (2005), and The Solvay Process (2009). In addition, Walls edits the "online anthology" The Book of Snails, a collection of poetry and science writing. Walls' collaboration with photographer Philip MacCabe and graphic designer Shadric Toop can be found at smallhumandetail.com. His blog on sustainability and going green can be read at amosoneplanet.blogspot.com. Walls' poetry has been published in The Nation, The Ohio Review, Salt Hill, Epoch, The Gettysburg Review, Boulevard, Five Points, Kestrel, Blackbird, Commonweal, Beloit Poetry Journal, and elsewhere. He holds a BA (Hons) from the University of East Anglia, England. He also attended Purdue University, from which he holds an M.F.A. degree. He has taught poetry writing at Ball State University and the Downtown Writers Center, part of the Syracuse YMCA Y Arts curriculum. He has also taught at Syracuse University, Onondaga Community College, Cazenovia College, and SUNY Cortland. In Syracuse he was a journalist and editor at Eagle Newspapers, where he founded the Solvay-Geddes Express newspaper. As a senior editor at Bentley-Hall, Inc.,, he helped found Making Music, a magazine for amateur musicians. Walls also edited International Musician for the American Federation of Musicians. Walls plays drums, percussion, and resonator guitar. Walls has been Communications Manager at the Syracuse Center of Excellence in Environmental and Energy Systems and the Syracuse University Office of Community Engagement and Economic Development. Currently, he is a freelance writer and communications manager. His clients include Syracuse University Project Advance, AMP Urology, CNY Jazz Central, and the Bluebell Railway.)

The Best Poem Of Martin Walls

Cicadas At The End Of Summer

Whine as though a pine tree is bowing a broken violin,
As though a bandsaw cleaves a thousand thin sheets of
titanium;
They chime like freight wheels on a Norfolk Southern
slowing into town.

But all you ever see is the silence.
Husks, glued to the underside of maple leaves.
With their nineteen fifties Bakelite lines they'd do
just as well hanging from the ceiling of a space
museum —

What cicadas leave behind is a kind of crystallized memory;
The stubborn detail of, the shape around a life turned

The color of forgotten things: a cold broth of tea & milk
in the bottom of a mug.
Or skin on an old tin of varnish you have to lift with
lineman's pliers.
A fly paper that hung thirty years in Bird Cooper's pantry
in Brighton.

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