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The Sugar Mile: A British Verse Drama of London's Blitz and New York's September 11―Exploring Memory and Disaster
This stirring verse narrative begins when the poet steps into an uptown Manhattan bar a few days before September 11, 2001. Encountering Joe Stone, a fellow Brit and a barstool regular, the narrator becomes the fated scribe of Joe's memories of London's "Black Saturday," the start of the worst of the Blitz during World War II. As the old man's haunting recollections of the prelude to the Blitz collide with a New York bartender's blithe optimism about the glories of America, we begin to discern the shadows and reflections of the past in New York's impending catastrophe. Deftly moving from past to present, using various poetic forms to delineate each character's unique voice, this verse drama explores everyday beauty and innocence on the brink of disaster.
- GenresPoetry
140 pages, Paperback
Published November 14, 2006
58 people want to read
About the author
Glyn Maxwell
52 books46 followersGlyn Maxwell is a poet and playwright. He has also written novels, opera libretti, screenplay and criticism.
His nine volumes of poetry include The Breakage, Hide Now, and Pluto, all of which were shortlisted for either the Forward or T. S. Eliot Prizes, and The Nerve, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He was one of the original ‘New Generation Poets’ in 1993, along with Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy and Don Paterson. His poetry has been published in the USA since 2000. His Selected Poems, One Thousand Nights and Counting, was published on both sides of the Atlantic in 2011. He has a long association with Derek Walcott, who taught him in Boston in the late 1980s, and whose Selected Poems he edited in 2014.
On Poetry, a guidebook for the general reader, was published by Oberon in their Masters Series in 2012. It was described by Hugo Williams in The Spectator as ‘a modern classic’ and by Adam Newey in The Guardian as ‘the best book about poetry I’ve ever read.’
Fifteen of Maxwell’s plays have been staged in London and New York, including Liberty at Shakespeare’s Globe, The Lifeblood at Riverside Studios, and The Only Girl in the World at the Arcola, as well as work at the Almeida, Theatre 503, Oxford Playhouse, the Hen and Chickens, and RADA. He has written extensively for the Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre in Chester.
His opera libretti include The Firework Maker’s Daughter (composer David Bruce) which was shortlisted for ‘Best New Opera’ at the Oliviers in 2014, Seven Angels (Luke Bedford) inspired by Paradise Lost, and The Lion’s Face (Elena Langer), a study of dementia. All of these were staged at the Royal Opera House and toured the UK.
He is currently working on a screen adaptation of Henry James’s The Beast in the Jungle for the Dutch director Clara Van Gool.
His nine volumes of poetry include The Breakage, Hide Now, and Pluto, all of which were shortlisted for either the Forward or T. S. Eliot Prizes, and The Nerve, which won the Geoffrey Faber Memorial Prize. He was one of the original ‘New Generation Poets’ in 1993, along with Simon Armitage, Carol Ann Duffy and Don Paterson. His poetry has been published in the USA since 2000. His Selected Poems, One Thousand Nights and Counting, was published on both sides of the Atlantic in 2011. He has a long association with Derek Walcott, who taught him in Boston in the late 1980s, and whose Selected Poems he edited in 2014.
On Poetry, a guidebook for the general reader, was published by Oberon in their Masters Series in 2012. It was described by Hugo Williams in The Spectator as ‘a modern classic’ and by Adam Newey in The Guardian as ‘the best book about poetry I’ve ever read.’
Fifteen of Maxwell’s plays have been staged in London and New York, including Liberty at Shakespeare’s Globe, The Lifeblood at Riverside Studios, and The Only Girl in the World at the Arcola, as well as work at the Almeida, Theatre 503, Oxford Playhouse, the Hen and Chickens, and RADA. He has written extensively for the Grosvenor Park Open Air Theatre in Chester.
His opera libretti include The Firework Maker’s Daughter (composer David Bruce) which was shortlisted for ‘Best New Opera’ at the Oliviers in 2014, Seven Angels (Luke Bedford) inspired by Paradise Lost, and The Lion’s Face (Elena Langer), a study of dementia. All of these were staged at the Royal Opera House and toured the UK.
He is currently working on a screen adaptation of Henry James’s The Beast in the Jungle for the Dutch director Clara Van Gool.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 3, 2012
Glyn Maxwell is a British poet who lives in the States. The Sugar Mile is his eight collection. It takes place over the weekend of 8th and 9th September 2011 and Saturday 7th September 1940. The sugar mile refers to the Tate and Lyle factory in London which was bombed during the blitz. This is poetry in voices, Maxwell is also a playwright and it shows… there’s Raul the bar tender in who is looking forward to his new job
That there ain’t nobody else in New York City
paid so high? Windows on the World.
Tuesday I start. Tomorrow’s my last day.
Then there’s Joey, an old man at the bar who by chance survived in 1940 when bombs fell on the school in which they were sheltering, waiting for the buses which never arrived.
I was the paper boy
I’m still the paper boy
running from memory,
moving between fires that suddenly.
There are other voices from 1940; the Pray family, a man called Dennis Medland who probably is someone else and even the lost bus driver who doesn’t know if he’s supposed to be in Camden Town or Canning Town.
It’s utterly compelling and I read it straight through like a play unfolding. In the days before having children I’d probably have read it in one sitting, caught up in the drama.
Of course I was also reading it with a writer’s eye, noticing things like Raul the bar tender speaking in sestinas. I’m still deciding upon the structure for the later part of the Malta sequence. At the moment it’s all separate poems and points of view. Maxwell mostly sticks to one voice per poem but I’m minded to start mixing the voices, particularly for Operation Pedestal but it does need to be clear who is speaking. Maxwell also, wisely, limits his cast of characters and they are all fictitious as far as I’m aware.
That there ain’t nobody else in New York City
paid so high? Windows on the World.
Tuesday I start. Tomorrow’s my last day.
Then there’s Joey, an old man at the bar who by chance survived in 1940 when bombs fell on the school in which they were sheltering, waiting for the buses which never arrived.
I was the paper boy
I’m still the paper boy
running from memory,
moving between fires that suddenly.
There are other voices from 1940; the Pray family, a man called Dennis Medland who probably is someone else and even the lost bus driver who doesn’t know if he’s supposed to be in Camden Town or Canning Town.
It’s utterly compelling and I read it straight through like a play unfolding. In the days before having children I’d probably have read it in one sitting, caught up in the drama.
Of course I was also reading it with a writer’s eye, noticing things like Raul the bar tender speaking in sestinas. I’m still deciding upon the structure for the later part of the Malta sequence. At the moment it’s all separate poems and points of view. Maxwell mostly sticks to one voice per poem but I’m minded to start mixing the voices, particularly for Operation Pedestal but it does need to be clear who is speaking. Maxwell also, wisely, limits his cast of characters and they are all fictitious as far as I’m aware.
March 24, 2014
Very good, and at the same time hard to read. I don't usually seek out poetry "about" a specific topic, but I really liked this book, which is (sort of) about New York after 9/11. The language is terrific; Derek Walcott was right when he said that Glyn Maxwell can do more with conversational asides than anyone else--they made the whole thing even more real for me. This is poetry as therapy, in all the most beautiful and evocative ways.
December 27, 2015
This collection of linked poems does an amazing job of setting you down into the London Blitz, with all of the confusion and terror that the residents must have felt, as people wander through the rubble that was their homes and worry about missing family members. The reader experiences the poems mostly as the musings of an old man, a survivor of the Blitz, in a New York tavern a few days before the September 11 attacks, which makes them especially haunting. Beautiful and sad.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews