Nicola Easthope's 2018 twittering catch poem

Nicola Easthope is a Wellington poet who has published three books of her poetry and published her poetry in anthologies and journals. She was a contributor to A Tingling Catch, and also appears in Manifesto: 101 Political Poems.

Her poem ‘How does your sun?’ was selected for the new anthology Catching the Light in England this year.

Some years ago at a reading in Kapiti she told me she had written an experimental poem that took its lead from a review in the Waikato Times of A Tingling Catch. It's cricket related so I thought I would include it in the Tinging Catch archive as a response to the anthology. The poem appears in her second book published by The Cuba Press in 2018. 

Easthope writes: “A found poem, thanks to Google alerts and the anthology of New Zealand cricket poems, A Tingling Catch. I have lifted the tweets verbatim. The title also riffs off a Carl Sagan quote: ‘Our feeblest contemplations of the Cosmos stir us — there is a tingling in the spine, a catch in the voice, a faint sensation of a distant memory, as if we were falling from a great height. We know we are approaching the greatest of mysteries.’

NICOLA EASTHOPE

A twittering catch

timjonesbooks‎ A cool review for #cricket #poetry anthology “A Tingling Catch” in the Waikato Times Vin_diPietro‎ @marie_terese *trying to catch my breath, body tingling as I press my forehead against you I love you shaking my head in amazement* so much pawsitivlycorky‎ Having to use razor blades at work gives me a tingling sensation in my arms and a hurting in my heart that makes my throat catch. wildfeather‎ I really need to catch up on @Wendell_Howe. Seems he’s been involved in a 19^th Century antiquarian excavation! My archaeology sense is tingling. NJrugger45‎ Finished wringing socks dry. Have cold. At 5^th & Spring Garden, my mother’s “you’ll catch your death of pneumonia” senses are tingling. lisasalas‎ can smell the weekend… tingling with anticipation... hoping to catch the next sleep wave soon or else I’ll be writing more junk online... NarcissaBlack‎ @MissAuroraSin: Our eyes catch and suddenly my cheeks stain with a blush, body tingling and I feel like when we first started dating. Idle_Threat‎: Making my escape. You’ll never catch… um.. Wait.. Chipotlé senses tingling… this could be a trap, but I’ll just have to take that chance. MrLiqhtSkinnedd‎ RT @HaZeLeYeSMaMa: Ok this burning/tingling sensation; its ANNOYING ! It makes me catch an attitude - Yeast Infection. SullivanShadow‎ @To_Be_Empathic: He’s got me tingling all over. I pull back to catch my breath. We should stop. Before I start pulling off your clothes. seasidedolly‎ @d_h_morgan: WOOP WOOP Fantastic how’s them lovely bones holding up. Bet you’re feet are tingling, Water at last. Slowly slowly catch the Monkey X. onefiftysevenpm‎ @angelamachado @ktcronier: my ‘parents are going to say no’ senses are tingling. If it is definitely a no, catch you on the next tour. roastrestaurant‎: Catch of the day - Rainbow trout fillets with cauliflower, brown shrimps and mace butter... taste buds are tingling! copybychris‎ Dreamed I was chasing a mouse. Slapped my hand down to catch it. Woke myself up. I’d slapped my thigh so hard, my hand was tingling. Ouch. sighinstereo‎ Dear Pretentious Ponytail Guy, your conversation on interpreting Catch-22 is tickling my gag reflex. Does this actually get her tingling? Kyrisa_xoxo: Oww, almost just dropped my bass guitar, hit my elbow trying to catch it and now its tingling all down my arm :/ carpalcure: Tingling Hands, Palms, Fingers Are Early Signs of Carpal Tunnel ...: For these reasons, it’s important to catch…ThaWordsmith: I love salt n vinegar chips but I hate that first chip u eat that has u ready to catch a seizure from that tingling spot under yo jaw lol OnlyoneofmeJill: @strokinguy I think it looks cool. It feels kinda weird though it’s stopped tingling now. It’s actually comfier with a bra you don’t catch it. helloImShenaaz: Dr. Miracles styling foam is theeeeeee best. But there is a catch..it HURTS! Lol the tingling sensation isn’t where it’s at...AT ALL tho. weesels: if i could make perfection for you

i would.
if i could wrap my tingling stomach in words
and catch the warmth of your body in a net
or muse over the mathematics of your fingers
applying pressure to mine
                                          i would                         i would                        i would

Poem © Nicola Easthope

Nicola’s second book Working the tang is at The Cuba Press website, and her third book published in Australia by Walleah Press (Tasmania) is A Stoic Recovery of Disordered Seasons.

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Brian Turner’s 2011 NZ cricket poem

Brian Turner (1944-2025) ONZM was one of our leading poets and a former national Poet Laureate. He was also a sports writer working on rugby books for Josh Kronfeld, Anton Oliver and Colin Meads along with two books for Glenn Turner and wrote the cricket play "Finger's Up?".

His interests included cricket, cycling, hockey, mountaneering and golf. His brothers are Greg Turner golfer and Glenn Turner, the New Zealand cricketer and Master Batsman. Brian was a New Zealand hockey rep and played cricket at U23 level.

Brian contributed a number of poems to A Tingling Catch, including poems on Ken Wadsworth the New Zealand wicketkeeper who died early and Glenn Turner.

I had correspondence with Brian for a number of years and last published him in my journal broadsheet in May 2022. He died suddenly in February 2025. I found he had written a new cricket poem in 2011 in his collection Inside Outside (VUP). I will include his poem ‘At the Crease’ in the Tingling Catch archive.

BRIAN TURNER

At the Crease

Once past 60,
or thereabouts,
every day
seems like your debut
in a sport in which
your career
will be short.

Poem © Brian Turner

I wrote a rugby poem for Brian after reading the Inside Outside collection, it’s included in my book Sidelights (HeadworX, 2017):

MARK PIRIE

At the Try Line

For Brian Turner, after reading his collection, “Inside Outside”

I was thinking
how, in life, you’re
either ‘in’ or ‘out’,
or, as you put it,
Inside Outside.

And it’s best to be ‘in’.

Music, art, literature, sport,
love, work, fashion, politics;
it’s about success or failure,
riding them out, and as
Sean Fitzpatrick says,
“Winning Matters”.

At the try line, if you’re
not in, you’re out.

But you’re really
Inside Outside
all along.

Poem © Mark Pirie

Jenny Powell’s 2026 NZ cricket poem

Jenny Powell’s poem ‘Under Cover’ was noted in the Journal of the Cricket Society review of A Tingling Catch.

When Fairfield Books in England issued a new cricket poetry anthology Catching the Light in 2026, Powell was invited to contribute a new poem.

Powell’s poem ’Distance’ is a beautifully written piece on the social side of the game exploring 'teenage flutters of heart'. I will include it here in the Tingling Catch archive.

JENNY POWELL

Distance

Love was lit
during my gathering
of autographs

teenage flutters of heart
would fly to slips when he fielded.

At the crease
his art of defensive play
nudged me

into daydreams, his sure hands
holding mine under cover

of waterfall willows,
our lips inching across
the boundary.

After the rituals of lunch, my father would gather
our belongings, march to the open stand

where first kisses
were interrupted by distance
and sunburn.

Poem © Jenny Powell

Check out the new anthology Catching the Light available from Amazon and Fishpond in New Zealand.

Humbert Wolfe’s 1924 English cricket poem

Years ago, John Quilter, the late Wellington bookseller showed me a book he had by Humbert Wolfe. Quilter, a knowledgeable person in the book trade, had noted a cricket poem in Wolfe’s Kensington Gardens (1924). The edition he had was a reprint from 1927 by Ernest Benn Limited, UK. I bought the copy from him.

Subsequent checks of cricket poetry anthologies have shown the poem by Wolfe has never been included in anthologies.

Wolfe was a popular writer during the 1920s and is not read much nowadays. He was born in Milan in 1885 and was a British civil servant receiving a CBE and CB for his services. He died in 1940 at age 55. While working a job he found spare time to write and publish over 40 publications. Wolfe was made a commander of the Order of the British Empire.

The cricket poem in Kensington Gardens is amongst poems celebrating facets of daily life in the gardens. Flowers, trees, birds, fishes, animals, games, monuments, its palace, its navigation, and its people.

HUMBERT WOLFE

Cricket

My child, when we were children,
we played in the Garden at cricket
with a racket, a ball of rubber,
and a chestnut-tree for a wicket.

I carted the ball for sixes,
while you, from the very beginnings
of our knowledge of one another,
were bowled at the start of your innings.

It’s a queer thing, isn’t it surely,
that the good ones are always out,
and the bad ones are always batting,
and knocking the others about?

Poem © Humbert Wolfe

Humbert Wolfe, National Portrait Gallery

Spring Reads: Cricket Poetry by Arthur Salway

Review by Mark Pirie of Cricket Poetry by Arthur Salway (self-published, 2013).

Arthur Salway is an English cricket poet I came across on the world wide web when I googled ‘cricket poetry’ back in 2010. His website ‘Cricket Poetry’ came up. I contacted him through his website the year A Tingling Catch came out and he sent me a reply which I left as a comment to my blog article about him.

Salway eventually collected his poetry into a published volume available on book sites internationally like Amazon, AbeBooks, eBay and lulu in 2013. I thought it was worth purchasing and have added it to my list of favourite cricket books.

Salway’s book Cricket Poetry, Volume 1, includes about 47 poems written over a 20-year period, so not a prolific cricket poet but enough poems to make an impact on the cricket poetry scene internationally. The book is accompanied by photographs of schoolboy cricket (West Hill Park School, Titchfield, Hampshire). Salway wasn’t a good promoter of his work so hasn’t sent copies to the Journal of the Cricket Society or Wisden Cricket Monthly and is mostly not known to the cricket book community. He relied on people visiting his website now defunct.

He was in his 70s when the book was published and had recently retired from cricket at age 68. Salway’s biography on the back cover states: ‘He remembers watching Gloucestershire at Bristol as a boy and admiring the stroke play of Walter Hammond, Charlie Barnett, George Emmett, and the emerging Tom Graveney.’ An impressive list of English batsmen to have seen growing up.

Salway worked as a mathematics teacher living in Hampshire, England till his retirement. He was a club cricketer since his 40s, and had earlier been a schoolboy cricketer ‘successful enough’ and nursed into cricket by his father. In club cricket he was a spin bowler who batted where he was permitted in the order. Salway says: ‘Many of the poems were written for team evenings and are presented for your reading due to the insistence of his erstwhile team-mates.’ Salway hopes we will enjoy them and the poems are meant to be read by cricketers about the game we love.

So, what is the poetry like in Cricket Poetry? Salway is a rhyming poet, so the poetry is all in rhyme and rhythm, and it will interest readers of all ages. He’s not a wordsmith in the word-magic category but a competent enough writer and at times his knowledge of cricket history is impressive. ‘A turn of the wrist’ is a favourite of mine. I’ve mentioned it before on this site:

Soccer is won with cultured feet
And rugger with grit and grist;
But when cricket is played the difference is made
By a delicate turn of the wrist.

His subjects are wide ranging and offer poetical comments on English club cricket, T20 cricket, Brookfield School cricket, Hampshire CCC, cricket teas, the IPL ‘Indian Takeaway’, the Pavilion in winter, prep school cricket, the Ashes, the scorebook, the team kit bag, the Amateurs in county cricket, the cricket field, the Nightwatchman, and the English game. Salway is a proud Englishman: ‘Gone are the days, and what a shame, / When an England player had an English name / Like Larwood, Washbrook, Smith or Compton, / Born in Bradford, Bath or Brompton…’

‘A Winter’s Tale’ has a fine quatrain:

Blower’s voice drones on and on.
‘Oops! Another wicket gone!”
Luminaries then explain
Why Pietersen has failed again.

‘Fast Spin’ all cricketers can relate to:

When we were boys and striding to the wicket,
Learning life while we were playing cricket,
“The bowling good?” we’d ask as we went in;
Departing batsmen scowled & said, “Fast spin.”

One poem stood out to me ‘Tragedy at St Helen’s’:

It’s best, perhaps, it’s not for us to know
The time, the place, the manner we shall go.
We have no opportunity to choose
Nor ours an option that we may refuse.
But could we gentle Providence persuade
That darkest hours be somehow brighter made;
No fears, no pain, no suffering or remorse,
That life’s last stumblings happen in the course
Of pleasant pathways walked with many a friend.
So may we come at last to journey’s end.

And so it was. His umpire’s task was done,
His eyes still shielded from the passing sun,
The counting stones divided in his hand.
We miss, we mourn, we try to understand.
We would not strive to keep what we must lose
Nor take from him what we ourselves would choose.
Now other men must do as once he would,
Standing white-coated where he lately stood;
And cricket, Alcwyn’s lifelong, wise tutorial
Shall be, in its continuance, his memorial.

In July 2009, at St Helen’s Swansea, umpire Alcwyn Jenkins was struck by a ball thrown in from the outfield and died at the scene. The South Wales Cricket Association requested a poem to be read at the funeral. It is included in the collection in his memory. I’m reminded of the tragic death of Australian batsman Phil Hughes struck by a freak delivery.

I found much enjoyment in Salway’s poetry written with a sound knowledge of the game and recommend it to readers of cricket literature of all ages.

Previous posts on Arthur Salway:

Cricket Poetry – Arthur Salway’s cricket poems

Mark Pirie’s new poem on Imran Khan

The latest issue of the Journal of the Cricket Society, Spring 2026, arrived over a month or so ago. It carries articles on the imprisoned Imran Khan as well as a piece on Garry Sobers, who has since passed away in July. There is a large section of cricket book reviews.

The articles on Imran are by his biographer Christopher Sandford and Johnny Barclay. Sandford’s letter discusses his plight in Adiala Jail. Imran is currently serving a 14-year sentence for what the state describes as ‘land corruption’. Sandford says he is not in good health.

Barclay’s article offers some thoughts and reminisces of Khan as a player and cricketer in England. He compares Imran to Holding, John Snow the cricket rebel and poet, and Jofra Archer. Barclay is the President of the Cricket Society and a former Sussex player. Khan was lured to Sussex by Tony Greig. Barclay writes: “I once compared him to Nijinsky, so fluent was his bowling action from beginning to end.” (Nijinsky was a Russian-born ballet dancer and choreographer.) After cricket Khan entered politics working for a better world: ”Let us salute him for that.” Barclay ends with a message of hope for Imran continuing to pray.

Imran played 88 Tests and 175 ODIs for Pakistan, and is well remembered as a legend on and off the field and was adored by women.

I wrote a new poem (a triolet) thinking of Imran.

MARK PIRIE

Imran Khan

Imran’s run up & delivery was of beauty.
I grew up watching him steal the light.
A World Cup win, 1992, over Sir Ian.

Imran’s run up & delivery was of beauty
compared to Nijinsky. His bat plundered.
Now a political prisoner, lost from sight.

Imran’s run up & delivery was of beauty.
I grew up watching him steal the light.

Poem © Mark Pirie

Anonymous 1925 English cricket poem

A poem I found while researching the Christchurch Star newspaper was an anonymous poem on raising the seam of the ball in England. It was published during the 1925 season. A county team was skittled.

I sent it to The Cricket Society News Bulletin in 2018. It was particularly topical that year with three Australians serving out their sentences for ball tampering. Cameron Bancroft had been caught by TV cameras trying to rough up a side of the ball with sandpaper. Captain Steve Smith and David Warner were also involved. The match was the Third Test, Australia v South Africa, in Cape Town, March 2018.

I’ve found no details on the match in England the 1925 poem refers to.

ANON

Cricket Magic

English bowlers are alleged to have “skittled” out a county team by raising the seam of the ball.

Now, did the bowlers raise the seam,
  Or make it seem to rise,
And foozle with a magic gleam
  The luckless batsman’s eyes,
As, sharply spinning from the pitches
  The leather shot or skied,
How have the batsman wished those stitches
  Were in the bowler’s side.

But since the art of tit for tat
  Is every batsman’s cue,
Perchance to herringbone the bat
  Might pull the striker through;
If cricket hangs upon a thread,
  Perhaps ’twere not in vain
To knit and purl the splice instead
  Of promptly raising Cain.

(From the Christchurch Star, c1925)