A Linear Narrative of a Situation
There’s an on-going exhibition inside the fridge,
"The well-preserved
against the decaying process."
I close the door.
At dawn, you undress me.
Carefully, slowly,
perhaps even with a tint of affect(at)ion.
You shed my skin, layer after layer.
The bra is always the trickiest part,
rebelling against your dumb fingers.
I asked you to recite the alphabets,
from a to z.
Halt -
I miss the obtrusive silence.
I think, you’re too logocentric for my liking.
A malicious quality encircles your letters.
-- Excuse me; what?
The truth comes out -
the notion of having sex with you
is equivalent to ingesting that
uncooked, rotten potato,
covered with a patch of mould, greeny-ugly.
I close my eyes, for telekinesis.
Thursday, 5 November 2009
Tuesday, 3 November 2009
Recent News...
- Tonight is unofficially London poetry night: Carcanet are hosting a triple launch with poets Jeremy Over, Richard Price and Matthew Welton, 18.30-20.30 at The Horse Hospital, Collonade, Bloomsbury.
- Also, the Shearsman Reading Series continues with two fantastic poets, Giles Goodland and Frances Presley, 19.30, Swedenborg Hall, Swedenborg House, 20/21 Bloomsbury Way, WC1A 2TH. Other stuff happening tonight, but didn't look quite as exciting. If anyone gets down there and wants to do us a write up, would be most kind.
(These notices have gone up late partly because of incompetence, partly out of bitterness that neither of the Editors can attend. London, bring a piece of yourself to the Midlands, we have poetry fans here too.)
- Salt have gone mad, in the nicest way possible. They've started offering their Facebook Fanclub and blog readers massive discounts on a range of titles, rotating on a weekly basis from now up to Christmas. Details of the first two are on their blog. First one has expired already, but I've picked up Montejo and Gelman. Fortunately nothing I want on the second list that I don't already have, else I'll be bankrupt in six weeks.
- A reminder of discounts on the Popescu Prize 2009 Shortlisted titles (it's not linked too obviously from the main competition page). We like muchly.
- Oystercatcher have just published a new pamphlet by Carrie Etter, The Son. I was lucky enough to catch her launch, with Janet Sutherland (wonderful also, reading from her new collection from Shearsman, Hangman's Acre and some samples over at peony moon), which was incredibly moving. The sequence, even without the context (you'll have to ask Carrie about that, when she's back from Prague) is extremely powerful, beautifully crafted. Genuinely brought me close to tears listening to her read. She'll be following that up next year with a full length Shearsman collection, Imagined Sons [NB: See Carrie's comment below for correct info]. Well worth keeping an eye out.
- Seeing how this is turning into a Shearsman press release, I should mention the fantastic latest issue of Shearsman Magazine #81 & 82, including new poetry by Christopher Middleton, Anamaría Crowe Serrano, Lee Harwood, Linda Black, Kenny Knight, translations of Gunter Eich by Siroul Troup, etc. etc. Oh yeah, and one of the Editors. (Sorry, 8th Sin, I know, but I'm a glutton for your wrath, Si.)
N.B.: I can't avoid pointing out how much I love the fact that the image thumbnail for Ken Edwards' Red & Green is a picture of a Cartman doll. Legendary.
- And speaking of legendary, the November issue of The Believer has a fantastic interview with the Legend that is Peter Blegvad. Here's a link to 'Daughter' on youtube, with a random abstract painting.
- Also, the Shearsman Reading Series continues with two fantastic poets, Giles Goodland and Frances Presley, 19.30, Swedenborg Hall, Swedenborg House, 20/21 Bloomsbury Way, WC1A 2TH. Other stuff happening tonight, but didn't look quite as exciting. If anyone gets down there and wants to do us a write up, would be most kind.
(These notices have gone up late partly because of incompetence, partly out of bitterness that neither of the Editors can attend. London, bring a piece of yourself to the Midlands, we have poetry fans here too.)
- Salt have gone mad, in the nicest way possible. They've started offering their Facebook Fanclub and blog readers massive discounts on a range of titles, rotating on a weekly basis from now up to Christmas. Details of the first two are on their blog. First one has expired already, but I've picked up Montejo and Gelman. Fortunately nothing I want on the second list that I don't already have, else I'll be bankrupt in six weeks.
- A reminder of discounts on the Popescu Prize 2009 Shortlisted titles (it's not linked too obviously from the main competition page). We like muchly.
- Oystercatcher have just published a new pamphlet by Carrie Etter, The Son. I was lucky enough to catch her launch, with Janet Sutherland (wonderful also, reading from her new collection from Shearsman, Hangman's Acre and some samples over at peony moon), which was incredibly moving. The sequence, even without the context (you'll have to ask Carrie about that, when she's back from Prague) is extremely powerful, beautifully crafted. Genuinely brought me close to tears listening to her read. She'll be following that up next year with a full length Shearsman collection, Imagined Sons [NB: See Carrie's comment below for correct info]. Well worth keeping an eye out.
- Seeing how this is turning into a Shearsman press release, I should mention the fantastic latest issue of Shearsman Magazine #81 & 82, including new poetry by Christopher Middleton, Anamaría Crowe Serrano, Lee Harwood, Linda Black, Kenny Knight, translations of Gunter Eich by Siroul Troup, etc. etc. Oh yeah, and one of the Editors. (Sorry, 8th Sin, I know, but I'm a glutton for your wrath, Si.)
N.B.: I can't avoid pointing out how much I love the fact that the image thumbnail for Ken Edwards' Red & Green is a picture of a Cartman doll. Legendary.
- And speaking of legendary, the November issue of The Believer has a fantastic interview with the Legend that is Peter Blegvad. Here's a link to 'Daughter' on youtube, with a random abstract painting.
Monday, 2 November 2009
Sharlene Teo - One Poem
“That summer, at home I had become the invisible boy"
That year I could stay
in my room for hours.
I would lie in bed
staring at the ceiling,
shell-shocked by a kind of
elegant blankness.
I’d seen this brand of
blankness in movies
before, curled around
the barrel of a long
shot. Leading man takes
lady’s hands.
Clinically tender, he turns them
over like old coins,
as if searching for the rareness,
the responding warmth which
should rise like a clear note,
a sigh, soft steam from a
broth. Outside the diner,
bombs go off.
…
My father forgot to go home
in the late light. Search party
of one; maybe he left
a message. I comb the coast
shaking starfish, throttling
seagulls. For lack of envoys,
I scour the sand for slow cursive,
beer-bottle, sea-mail.
No sign.
This is what I tell myself.
I tell myself I’m giving up
on people. Moving up to
the mountains, away from every
mouth. I am tired of how people chew
and cluck and crinkle. I want things
to be inchoate, simple.
Always wondered what it would
be, my totem animal. A stag,
perhaps, slow canter, bright
eyes — nothing so noble. It would
probably be a hedgehog; stray
dollop, far from doubting whole.
As a child I watched this cartoon
on television, the Hedgehog in the
Fog. Wild and scratchy, it flickered
through four o’clock and
left me speechless — I had never felt
so cleanly alone. And it keeps on
recurring — bright like blindness,
blip-sized world.
That year I could stay
in my room for hours.
I would lie in bed
staring at the ceiling,
shell-shocked by a kind of
elegant blankness.
I’d seen this brand of
blankness in movies
before, curled around
the barrel of a long
shot. Leading man takes
lady’s hands.
Clinically tender, he turns them
over like old coins,
as if searching for the rareness,
the responding warmth which
should rise like a clear note,
a sigh, soft steam from a
broth. Outside the diner,
bombs go off.
…
My father forgot to go home
in the late light. Search party
of one; maybe he left
a message. I comb the coast
shaking starfish, throttling
seagulls. For lack of envoys,
I scour the sand for slow cursive,
beer-bottle, sea-mail.
No sign.
This is what I tell myself.
I tell myself I’m giving up
on people. Moving up to
the mountains, away from every
mouth. I am tired of how people chew
and cluck and crinkle. I want things
to be inchoate, simple.
Always wondered what it would
be, my totem animal. A stag,
perhaps, slow canter, bright
eyes — nothing so noble. It would
probably be a hedgehog; stray
dollop, far from doubting whole.
As a child I watched this cartoon
on television, the Hedgehog in the
Fog. Wild and scratchy, it flickered
through four o’clock and
left me speechless — I had never felt
so cleanly alone. And it keeps on
recurring — bright like blindness,
blip-sized world.
Friday, 30 October 2009
David Devanny - kazimir malevich - white on white
[breathe in]
[breathe out]
[breathe in]
[breathe out]
[allow your breath to come to a natural pace]
[as you next breathe in - focus on the air moving past the tip of your nose]
[do not follow the air - just feel it pass by this point – and later feel the air pass back out]
[find yourself in a quiet meadow]
[it is almost silent - just a few distant twittering birds and the
occasional sound of feet walking lightly through the grasses]
-shhh -th -th -th -shhh
-the -hare -is -shhh -is
-shhh -is -slipping -a -way
-the -guns -shhh -th -the
-guns -shhh -th -shhh -th
-shhh -her -shot -shall -shhh
-ricochet -off -shhh -th -shot
-shall -shhh -ricochet -off -shhh
-stones -shhh -over -there -th
-th -th -th -th -shhh
-th -th -th -th -shhh
[be still]
[and breathe in]
[and breathe out]
[and breathe out]
[and breathe out]
[and breathe out]
[and breathe out]
Wednesday, 28 October 2009
The Corneliu M Popescu Prize for European Poetry Translation Shortlist
I've always felt the biennial Popescu Prize to be one of the most exciting poetry prizes in the UK. The shortlist is invariably a selection of some very strange and important books being published in English (bilingually, or monolingually) across the world and always points to the importance of independent publishers in bringing international literatures to English readers.
The 2009 Shortlist is no less exciting than previous years (2007's winner, Kristiina Ehin's The Drums of Silence, trans. Ilmar Lehtpere, is one of my favourite poetry books of the past few years), and the Poetry Society, who manage the prize for The Ratiu Family Foundation, have managed to negotiate a bumper 20% off all eight titles.
Here's the shortlist:
Selected Poems by C.P Cavafy
Translated by Avi Sharon (Penguin Classics)
Courts of Air and Earth – a collection of middle and early Irish Poetry,
Translated by Trevor Joyce (Shearsman Books)
Rime by Dante Alighieri
Translated by JG Nichols and Anthony Mortimer (Oneworld Classics)
Against Heaven by Dulce Maria Loynaz
Translated by James O'Connor (Carcanet Press)
Madwomen by Gabriela Mistral
Translated by Randal Couch (Chicago University Press)
Unfinished Ode to Mud by Francis Ponge
Translated by Beverley Bie Brahic (CB Editions)
Poems of Oktay Rifat
Translated by Ruth Christie and Richard McKane (Anvil Press)
Birdsong on the Seabed
Translated by Sasha Dugdale (Bloodaxe Books)
The winner will be announced on Thursday 19th November. Bets are on.
The 2009 Shortlist is no less exciting than previous years (2007's winner, Kristiina Ehin's The Drums of Silence, trans. Ilmar Lehtpere, is one of my favourite poetry books of the past few years), and the Poetry Society, who manage the prize for The Ratiu Family Foundation, have managed to negotiate a bumper 20% off all eight titles.
Here's the shortlist:
Selected Poems by C.P Cavafy
Translated by Avi Sharon (Penguin Classics)
Courts of Air and Earth – a collection of middle and early Irish Poetry,
Translated by Trevor Joyce (Shearsman Books)
Rime by Dante Alighieri
Translated by JG Nichols and Anthony Mortimer (Oneworld Classics)
Against Heaven by Dulce Maria Loynaz
Translated by James O'Connor (Carcanet Press)
Madwomen by Gabriela Mistral
Translated by Randal Couch (Chicago University Press)
Unfinished Ode to Mud by Francis Ponge
Translated by Beverley Bie Brahic (CB Editions)
Poems of Oktay Rifat
Translated by Ruth Christie and Richard McKane (Anvil Press)
Birdsong on the Seabed
Translated by Sasha Dugdale (Bloodaxe Books)
The winner will be announced on Thursday 19th November. Bets are on.
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
David Devanny - willem de kooning – composition
i came across a tap–dancer who danced his way to work – he tapped the names to the cars he passed as he danced his way to work
he tapped
honda civic – renault megan – honda renault ford – fiat punto – vauxhall corsa – renault honda ford and ford and vauxhall renault mini cooper – toyota beetle ford
jaguar ford – jaguar ford – jaguar ford and a vauxhall – toyota ford – a mini a renault – honda vauxhall ford
and i came across a tap dancer who danced his way through the meadow – he tapped the names of the flowers he passed as he danced right through the meadow
he tapped
hawthorne currant maltese cross – hawthorne primrose broom – a patch of sorrel cowslips primrose brooklime currant broom – charlock harebell mint and teasel charlock maltese cross and mint – charlock currant brooklime harebell hawthorne primrose broom
primrose sorrel – cowslips currant – harebell cowslips broom and broom and charlock brooklime brooklime harebell mint and teasel sorrel and broom
and i came across a tap dancer who danced right through the cemetery – he tapped the names on the graves he passed as he danced his way through the cemetery
he tapped
eunice andrews – abigail randall – stephen beecher – lydia clark– lucinda cooke – temperance pitkin – captin porter – lucy clark – sarah strong – martin andrews – eunice pitkin – jemima may – miles crampton – abigail porter – lucy woodruff – joseph clark
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