My debut collection, A Stone Dog, is now out from Shearsman Books and available from Amazon here

"Out of the wreckage of The News of World has emerged something of true aesthetic and moral value – the poetry of Aidan Semmens... this is a book of poems that demonstrates why poetry is urgent news, an art form that finds its strength and power through revealing ambiguities and opening out the language in 'the difficulty of seeing anything' " — Simon Smith, Tears in the Fence

"The clarity of the literal vision predominates. Semmens doesn't blink in the face of the big scam, but in the sharply realised terms of these poems out-stares the merging deceptions surrounding us." — Kelvin Corcoran

"Aidan Semmens's poetry, sadly so little published heretofore, shows deft use of a range of more-or-less modernistic procedures encompassing a whole cultural agenda... The intelligence of this writing shows in the very word edges, brightly accurate and carefully attentive." — Peter Riley

"Hopefully, after his long sabbatical, Semmens has a lot of other work up his sleeve. If it's all up to the standard of A Stone Dog, it'll have been worth waiting for." — Alan Baker, Litterbug

My first full-length poetry collection A Stone Dog was published in May 2011 by Shearsman Books. It has been very favourably reviewed by Simon Smith in Tears In The Fence and by Alan Baker on his Leafe Press website here.

My sonnet series The Book of Isaac was shortlisted for the 2010 Crashaw Prize and will be published in 2012 by Parlor Press / Free Verse Editions. Sample sonnets can be found at

• Blackbox Manifold
• Shadowtrain
• Stride
• Otoliths
• Pirene's Fountain

and in print in issue #87 & 88 of Shearsman magazine.

A profile, interview and background to the book is on the Salt Publishing blog here.

A six-poem 'conversation' with American poet Valerie Witte on the excellent Likestarlings website starts here, with an appreciation by Caleb Klaces here.

My other poems currently online are:

• Four Distressed Sonnets

(Free Verse )

• Damaged Mirror
• Relics

(Blackbox Manifold)

• The Uncertainty Principle
• In The Process
• Phenomenology

(Shadowtrain)

• The Penitents
• In Passing
• What Then Must We Do
• How Doth The City Sit Solitary

(Shearsman)

• In Tombland
• Where Is He That Counted The Towers
• And Brake Them Beneath The Mount
• Depicting The Artist As
• From Afar
• Torch Song

(Great Works)

• As Far As I Can See
• On The Pleasure Beach
• Formalities

(Stride)

• Wave
• By The River
• A Rolling Motion
• A Letter to America

(Jack)

• Lamentation
• Upon The Death of John Barleycorn
• The Strange Geometry
  (Cambridge University Chancellor's medalwinner, 1978)

(Jacket)

My short collections reluctantly, Wringing The Changes (Lobby 1978) and Confidential Report (Pig Press, 1985) are both long out of print.