Jake O'Leary - Apocalyptic Weathermen

It’s late or early. Channel 4 explores
Trajectories and consequences of
Potential nuclear winter underneath
A fallout residue of dirty plates.
The makeshift fort erected with a sheet
Beneath a table in the basement hides
Apocalyptic weathermen from sight
As I attempt to write my memoirs, The
Medicinal Jacuzzi Years. With each
Completed line I smoke a cigarette
Composed of previous lines and coffee beans.
If exile for a night is self-imposed,
Why pine away an evening in a daze?
They’re different kinds of days. ‘You’d better scrub
Yourself before returning’ Bill had said
As I’d begun to leave. ‘Malaria
Is bad for business’. Vaccinations hurt.
‘Are you a communist?’ enquired the wrist
Of my companion on my sleeve. ‘Why, no’
Came my reply of tugging free. ‘Why not?’
Besieged the loosened grip of grief. I am
Enlightened by my frantic scribbling and
Emancipated by the medium.
Across the room a painful humming light
Incinerates a cockroach drawn by warmth
And clearly taken by Channel 4's
Sensational prognostications. Down
A stone or two today. Could pass it off
As hunger striking or religious fasting,
Whatever fits the bill. It’s Ouija night
At the Patisserie but I can’t face
Another ancestral lament about
The wireless having had its day. Tonight
Is insubordinate, unruly hair
That sprouts from sweaty crevasses at will.
In no fit state for human interaction,
I lay my head upon a telephone
Directory and dream in technicolour.

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The author writes: "I'm Jake O'Leary, and I live in Falmouth, Cornwall, where I'm currently studying English and creative writing. I've been writing poetry for around a year, and have a blog where I occasionally put up stuff I've been working on: glueywaterbloodywine.blogspot.com. I've had a poem, 'The Sigh-Cried Loaf of an Engels', published as part of John Bloomberg Rissman's '1000 Views of Girl Singing' project (different translations and interpretations of a Jose Garcia Villa poem), which can be found at http://www.girlsinging.com/. Three poems have also recently been published over at http://www.stridemagazine.co.uk/. These were selected from the same body of work as 'Apocalyptic Weathermen', a collection called 'The Cactus Cake Patisserie', in which I've attempted to explore themes like mysticism, psychedelic drug use, Cold War memorabilia and industrial/economic decay."

Recent News...

A brief hiatus, in which many things stack up in our inboxes. We've been a bit lazy with the hereness of here, and I've a right mind to increase our reading time for submissions. Mostly I blame the other Editor for this, but then again, I'm the other Editor too, from a certain perspective.

- The Shearsman 2010 Reading Series continues on Tuesday, 2 February at 7:30 pm, featuring Sarah Law & Steve Spence. The venue is Swedenborg Hall, Swedenborg House, 20/21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1A 2TH. Admission is free.

Books launched:
Sarah Law (biog)
Steve Spence (biog)

Subsequent readings -- at the same venue -- will take place as follows:
- 10 March: launch of the anthology Infinite Difference: Other Poetries from UK Women Poets, edited by Carrie Etter, with short readings from fifteen of the poets featured in the book; this event will be hosted by the editor
- 20 April: Jaime Robles and Lars Amund Vaage;
- 4 May: Camille Martin & Alasdair Paterson;
- 1 June: readers tbc
- An additional reading is scheduled for 2 March, 7:30pm, at Westminster Kingsway College, Victoria, at which the Mexican poet Elsa Cross will read from her recent Shearsman Selected Poems with at least two of her translators; further venue and access details in due course.
- We expect to add a further date in late May to feature Michael Heller and Robert Vas Dias; date to be confirmed.

- Shearsman have also just republished Elisabeth Bletsoe's early work. w00t! Link there is to Shearsman's rejuvenated blog, which has been quite lively of late. (No link there to the actual publisher page for Pharmacopoeia, which is here. Tony's sales must be absolutely soaring for him to have missed that trick.)

- Carrie Etter announces the Bath Spa Reading Series 2010: "The next cycle of this highly successful series will begin on Thursday February 11 2010 at the Duncan Room, Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute, 16-18 Queen Square, Bath, 7.30 for 8.pm. Tickets at the door: £7.00, £5.00 concessions."
- Thursday February 11: Alan Brownjohn
- Wednesday March 3: Alan Jenkins and Paul Batchelor
- Thursday April 22: Carol Watts
- Thursday May 13: Jane Draycott
- Thursday June 10: David Morley

- A reminder of the Poetry Bites event tomorrow evening. Hosted by Jacqui Rowe, tomorrow features Michael McKimm: Michael McKimm was born in Belfast in 1983 and grew up near the Giant’s Causeway. He graduated from the Warwick Writing Programme in 2004 and won an Eric Gregory Award in 2007. [Lots of magazine publications and commissions, clipped - go read his website.] Still This Need, his first full-length collection, was published by Heaventree in 2009. Venue: The Kitchen Garden Café, 17 York Road, Kings Heath, Birmingham B14 7SA. 7.30pm, Tuesday 26th January. (Food available from 6.30pm). Poetry Bites includes floor spots where you can share your own poetry with an appreciative audience. Please arrive early to book a spot.£5 (£4) To reserve a place email Jacqui Rowe or pay at the door.

- Mario Petrucci announces his forthcoming new collection from Enitharmon, i-tulips. I've read and heard him read a few of these and they're rather lovely, a kind of 21st Century haiku sequencing, with an accessible ecopoetic threading. (Which is not to imply they're totally pop. I ought to hold my tongue until I've seen the book, really, but when did that ever stop me?)

- Pomegranate magazine has had a snazzy makeover, courtesy of arts funding. Now it's MORE than just a magazine! It's a NETWORK! Rather trendy too, with blog feeds, tweet feeds, multimedia... Jeez, they're making me feel old...

- Sue Hubbard's Campaign to Restore the Poem to Waterloo Underpass continues on Facebook. She's looking for ideas, support, etc. While I loved it when I was in London (though lingering in any underpass for the length of time it takes to digest a poem like that has never made me feel comfortable) now I'm out of London I'm feeling a little bit heartless about it. That said, it was a wonderful poem and certainly brightened up an otherwise drab part of London. And the bastardly response of London's failing capitalist bureaucracies are just shameless. You can read the poem here, but it's definitely more effective in situ.

- Skysill Press announce a new publication on their blog: Jess Mynes' Sky Brightly Picked, a title I like the sound of. It's a lovely cover. Glad to see yet more recession-resisting new poetry flying out into the world.

- And finally, the Editors recently managed to catch the pagan euphoria of Baroness at the Hare and Hound. I still can't decide if I like the Red Album more than the Blue Album. The songs they played off the former certainly kicked me to pieces far more than the latter, but that might just have been over-familiarity.

Nathan Thompson - One Poem

Possible Pieces for the New World Orchestra


Recently I have been making sketches – calculations in balance with the things we can choose to believe, red and plain as a crisp packet. I know that you appreciate company and trust, so please share this with me. Something must change. Transfers and postal orders can help us create it. I love you, more nakedly exposed than ever before.

everything in our power is
to choose to create it
this little room
filled with the scent of forgotten roses
ash tottering in a horizontal pile
and gone
                      can you tell the television is broken

30 August: I’m still waiting for your letter to tell me that what I’m doing is as freakishly beautiful as Frankenstein. Play your horn with a flute stuffed down it – a performance direction the equivalent of aural torture sex.

do you think they know you left me
as one ship crosses another in broad daylight
the furniture of our indifference

to hurt is to be a plant growing
                                                           evenings with Mahmood
for company      a sitar      that’s what I missed out

31 August: This should be cosmopolitan if it is to be truly all-encompassing and primeval. But the tax man has taken away the solitude of high piccolos and I shall have to rethink your cowbells in punk-style skiffle: washboards with an Irish accent, the hiss of missing teeth.

to continue      leaves are falling
whisky pains      suck this and
see if it blows      ideas birthing
later      spot the difference

how to incorporate everything
expression      criticism by all known
contemporary dead composers
into something coherent

I’ll need words      sonic
graphs in imaginary idioms
your language and mime
whatever’s in between
cheques and money orders payable

32 August: We’re in the future now. I imagine you dressed in a pink robot suit covering the essentials Zulu-style and I’m Michael Caine barking orders. It’s reasonable to feel you’re right when you’re dressed in red and your opponents have ‘incorrect weapons’. That’s how the hammer and sickle went wrong: ‘if you know where to shoot to find a heart and don’t mind...’

But something more visual is required to give this meaning. Here’s a picture I drew yesterday:

[small pig on a high-wire eating an Iraqi communist]

it isn’t easy      these lines
become the unstable nature of autopsy
Slinger: the horse is bolted
Hemingway: the hell it is

this is America for beginners
wild and cold as Alaska (is that really... I’m just not sure)
burning borealis separated
by an entire country or ocean

‘more tea?      the global economy may collapse but...’
what ‘s left      China aspires
and we’re living the dream      ISBN tenderness
to ease the joints      patterns we construct

In our musical instruments the world is richer, subtler, more complex than we imagine. White noise can’t be found. We hear portions, weights, textures and colours but ultimately we construct beyond our control. After all this, I hope you enjoy the string duet. We can surrender but what choice do we have.




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Nathan Thompson is published by Shearsman, with pamphlets forthcoming from Oystercatcher and Skald.

AND HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

Peter Gillies & Rupert Loydell - Bill Viola

Bill Viola is not your Friend


I never thought I'd get the point
of performance art and film.
White walls made for paintings
are not cinema or tv screens
but this projected light brings tears.

Bill Viola is not your friend.
He's too busy filming life and death,
pouring water over the camera
and working out how silence sounds,
how still moving images can be.

I never thought I'd get the point
of watching videos in the dark
or tolerate reality recycled.
How long should we sit here waiting
for the creep of flesh onscreen?

Bill Viola is not your friend.
He's too intelligent and thoughtful,
explains his work too well.
Watch the man rise, catch breath
and fall; rise, catch breath, and fall.

"Being in a body we didn't own or know."

        © Rupert M Loydell



Bill Viola could be your Cousin


Pitch black at first. Not so low budget
as you might expect, better hold your breath
as his doomed giant lovers hold theirs.
One on each screen afloat,
they'll drown in all this slowed-down sincerity.

Bill Viola could be your cousin
and if you're convinced by his faith in video art
you will stand there like a pillar of salt,
seduced by his Old Testament gusto
and his play of underwater light.

Camera-shy or just a poor swimmer
he leaves his actors to fend for themselves.
They get to rise up from the waters of baptism
although some days, for sure, anything
could be preferable to water-logged transcendence.

Bill Viola could be your long lost cousin
with a film of your classmates in a High School stunt.
Now he says the ocean is a self without a shore
but when his weighty figures plunge down
does your neurotic fear of death truly disappear?

"By the time he felt comfortable enough to ask why,

he was in too deep."

        © Peter Gillies



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3 of 3. There are more in the meatworld and in cyberspace; Stride has one, more expected at Shadowtrain, and there have been reports of the limited edition series showing up on people's doormats. Including one of the Editors' doormats.

Peter Gillies & Rupert Loydell - Jackson Pollock

Jackson Pollock is not your Friend


I know I shouldn't be thinking like this.
I mean it's all in the past and we've been
and moved on, but I find myself below glass
watching over and over the blur of a man
as black paint is flicked, poured and thrown.

Jackson Pollock is not your friend,
he works far too large for comfort,
makes too much mess in the lounge
and leaves drips everywhere in the toilet.
(Light olive with spots of dull umber.)

I know I shouldn't be thinking like this.
New ideas are great but up on the wall
they can suddenly seem old. And I can't
help but think of the drunk, brutish painter,
his one-sided fights with poets and friends.

Jackson Pollock is not your friend.
He wouldn't want to be one anyway,
would rather turn the jukebox up and down
pints at the bar before bragging about
his ongoing battle with colour and form.

"The stars are brilliant tonight."

        © Rupert M Loydell




Jackson Pollock could be your Cousin


That's no accident when a can of enamel
is neatly perforated to drip evenly across
miles of canvas tacked to a studio floor.
Quick drying paint goes on easily: no room
left for hesitation, no need for one to hang about.

Jackson Pollock could be your cousin
who stares at you tormentedly so you
stare back at him quizzically.
Perhaps he'll sell you a cheap one
small enough to take home in your hands.

Despite his threats of doing this or that
he tries to stay with his signature style:
pouring red, lavender, pale blue and yellow
interlaced with loops and contours of black Duco,
highlighted with trickles and spatters of silver.

Jackson Pollock could be your difficult cousin
who likes to be gently affectionate one day
and outrageously cruel the next. He knows
how to sulk, how to throw himself in the Hudson
then swim off in yet another drunken rage.

"But you should be getting something for your trouble."

"Help yourself. I should've probably thrown 'em
                                                                  all away a long time ago."

        © Peter Gillies





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2 of 3. We like these. If anyone would like to contribute their own collaborations along these lines, we'd love to take a look.

Peter Gillies & Rupert Loydell - Francis Bacon

Francis Bacon is not your Friend


I never think to read
the safety information provided.
If we crash, we crash;
we'll try to get out fast
with all our limbs intact.

Francis Bacon is not your friend.
He'd smudge your face and pin you
to the floor or bed, pull open
wounds to admire their beauty,
paint them purple, red.

I never think to read
what the critics said,
prefer to trust the horse's mouth.
If he said that's how he saw it
then that's just how it is.

Francis Bacon is not your friend
He knows how time smears flesh
and memory, how chance predicts
the future and that paint can tell you
everything you'll ever need to know.

"Words frozen in my broken mouth."

        © Rupert M Loydell



Francis Bacon could be your Cousin


How self-confident and charming
with his sado-masochistic hair
and gambling smile. So much flannel
with his jutting jaw, fudging
any slack signs of remorse.

Francis Bacon could be your cousin
down at the Gargoyle Club, introducing
you to his obnoxious friends who insist
on discussing your indiscreet walk,
your feeble fear of painful carousing.

Embarrassingly worked up, camped out even,
how can you remain impartial to such threats?
How riveted we all are
by a wildlife sportsman in pads
ripped and splattered into decay.

Francis Bacon could be your Soho cousin
on condition you admire his medical plates,
agree to wear the X-rated goggles,
sit on his couch and snarl for him,
pose as a primate-pope for a day.

"Try not to flinch at what comes popping up out of the gloom."

        © Peter Gillies






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This is part of a series of (very) limited edition pamphlets produced by Rupert and Peter along the theme of art and artistic vision. 1 of 3.