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

"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

My first full-length poetry collection A Stone Dog was published in May 2011 by Shearsman Books. There is a wonderful review of it by Alan Baker on his Leafe Press website here.

My poetry also appears online in a number of magazines and journals.
Selections from my sonnet series The Book of Isaac can be found at

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

and in print in the latest issue (#87 & 88) of Shearsman magazine.

A profile, interview and background to the book, which was shortlisted for the Crashaw Prize, is on the Salt Publishing blog here.

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

My other poems currently available 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. You can see them here now in PDF form:
Reluctantly, Wringing The Changes (selected poems only)
Confidential Report
The News Pages (poems 1979-85, most previously unpublished)