Philip Rösel Baker

Philip Rösel Baker

I was born to a German mother and English father shortly after the end of the war, and grew up speaking both English and German at home. I spent my early childhood in fifties Nottingham and the remainder in Kendal in the Lake District, where I had the good fortune to have an English teacher who introduced me to the excitement of poetry and metre – a fascination with words that moved like music, which has never left me. In the late sixties I studied German and Russian language and literature at Cambridge but found I learnt as much from being part of the 1968 student protest actions, inspired by what was happening in Paris and LSE, as I did from academia. After university, I worked with children on an adventure playground in South London, where the experience of being illegally evicted from a furnished room by an unscrupulous landlord led me subsequently to work with homeless people in London for a number of years. In all, I lived in London for about forty years, where I raised two lovely daughters who have given me four lively grandchildren. I moved, with my second wife, Maria, to a tiny hamlet in the heart of the Suffolk countryside when I retired. After ten years there, the call of the sea was becoming ever more urgent and since 2024, we’ve been living on the outskirts of Felixstowe, five minutes walk from the beach.

My writing for public consumption began with writing lyrics and music for my blues / jazz band in London, and this morphed into writing poetry after moving to the countryside. Much of my writing is drawn from the natural world, from relationships and from social issues. I’m not a scientist, but I’m intrigued by the interplay between science and philosophy, and several of my poems have been published in Consilience Journal, an on-line poetry magazine dedicated to the poetry of science. Writing, and reading and hearing the work of others, helps me to understand and make sense of the world.

I perform my poetry regularly at the Soapbox sessions in Ipswich and participate in several small poetry groups. In 2024 I was part of SPS’ Showcase at the Aldeburgh Festival.

My poetry is widely published in newspapers and magazines, as well as winning a number of awards.

Highlights include:

  • My poem This Morning was longlisted for the International Erbacce Prize and later published in Tears in the Fence on-line poetry magazine.
  • Two of my poems were commended in successive George Crabbe Poetry Competitions, and I won the competition in 2022 with my poem Shelling Broad Beans.
  • Three of my poems are published in the US in the Michigan State University Libraries Short Edition anthology Water.
  • My poem This Fragile Moment won 3rd Prize in the Frosted Fire Ticking Clock competition in 2023.
  • My poem She Caught His Arm won a Finalist Award in the US Fischer Prize in 2023.

In 2024, my poem Small White Sphere won a Finalist Award in the Fish Poetry Prize in Ireland, judged by American poet Billy Collins, and is published in the competition anthology.

Records
An American woman
has swum the Channel four times, non-stop,
wearing only a swimsuit, hat and goggles.
Her support crew threw her a protein drink
with electrolytes mixed in a plastic bottle,
every thirty minutes.
A cancer survivor, she was fêted, admired
by those who came to the beach to greet her.
Tired but elated - a freak of nature -
one journalist quipped (but said with a smile).
She had previously completed an endurance swim
at home of over 100 miles
in preparation - but then - the cancer.
On wading out onto damp sand
she dedicated her happy arrival
to other lucky survivors.

Her swim is a record.

An Iraqi man
has tried to swim the Channel just one time,
from Dunkirk to the nearest beach
in England, wearing flippers and a life-vest
made from plastic bottles.
He managed to reach a wind turbine
in Belgian waters, where he drowned.
Or at least that’s where his body was found.
His request for asylum in Germany
had, unfortunately, been turned down.
He had previously completed an endurance
of over 2000 miles, from Baghdad
in preparation. It’s not known whether anyone
was waiting on the English sand,
wreathed in smiles, or grateful tears
to greet him as a hero.

His swim is a matter of record.



This poem was shortlisted in the Wells Literature Festival Poetry competition, 2022.


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