Tuesday 29 September 2009
Two Poems by Jane Commane
Night as rag-soaked petroleum,
the whisper of moon creaks
through the cloud’s machinery.
Something has taken a hold
that leaves you wondering
where it all began –
with milk turning thick-sour
clotted in the bottle, or the soft
gyrations of motorway noise
trapped in lobes of the landscape’s
shell-coils, or with the funeral march
tapping blind on the pipes in the wall.
Childhood rusts, counted on coat hooks
in cupboards-under-stairs, a spark caught
silently as a kiss threatens a dithering island.
Blackbird
Nightfall recast, an angler’s line
falling still into a dark plot
formed invisible –
the soft tremor of breath
sending footprints tumbling
across the lover’s sheets.
Yet the blackbird breaks a chorus
as soft as the egg-blue
spoiled on pavement
Yet the blackbird sings
in the cloud-dense lateness
and tears a hole right through
and the shivering alarm
hacks through the dead wood,
razor resonance.
The half cut moon, deepest neutral
hangs down and the strings are cut.
Illusions falter - we deserve nothing,
with our dreams full of doppelgangers,
unborn declarations, we deserve
nothing less, nothing more than this,
and at the wrong hour, pitch perfect
siren of the heartless unease -
we reset our clocks.
as the sonnet breaks itself, falls to ash,
dawn becomes a vagrant,
missing amongst the refuse of night
==
Jane Commane runs Nine Arches Press with Matt Nunn, and they also co-edit Under the Radar magazine. She is currently working on a first collection, due out in Summer 2010. She has also recently worked with visitors at the Bronte Parsonage in Haworth, and some of the resulting poems can be viewed here.
Saturday 26 September 2009
Statements of Intent (5) - Chris McCabe: "The slip gets mistook for the punt"
==
Chris McCabe has two collections with Salt, The Hutton Inquiry (2005) and Zeppelins (2008). He also has a pamphlet of ludic elegies called The Borrowed Notebook (Landfill).
Thursday 24 September 2009
One Poem by Chris McCabe
Your face: a foetus’ sense of Christmas trapped in a Chinese lantern.
White, drained, wan, drawn –
open & expectant to receive,
innocent as can be expected after living with us.
I just wanted to say, the only reason we did it –
the basement traps in Dallas St., Havelock St.,
the BA Honours done waiting to jump from the bin,
the weight of the water tipped from the window,
an unfair game with lasers after we’d drained your batteries,
the Valentines’ card written out to you
not from one, but two lesbian girls –
your heart turned over like the city’s first pink cab –
all your forced gusto for Kronenbourg, a pint of numbers,
Sambuca, Tennants’ Extra – long days at Bar Variety –
the bands, the fans, what’s in, what’s out
(for Delboy, Rodders & Uncle Albert)
Squires on Monday, Tokyo Joe’s Tuesday, Polygon Saturday,
your shoes hidden as you slept – left in the cab mate –
the boot polish on your face as you woke like a bleached minstrel,
the trousers we tried to free you from on your 21st
an intervention from a stranger on Hardman St.,
all the wind-ups – I’ve just been jumped by a gang,
look at my ribs – the rat pellets dissolved in your brew
and photographed as you read MAY CAUSE DEATH
IF CONSUMED, a collapse of a smile still around your lips
as your hair grew for the moon that year
– Moth-head, Bulkhead, a bowling ball of fuzz –
which meant you missed the frisson of my forehead against the bridge
of a cokehead’s nose, a cue flailed,
the ivory option of a pool ball unexpected in the hand
and we ran through Preston
like that was the way to write a dissertation
so how could we joke, the following week
that that was them at the front door to get us back
– grab a bat, a bar, make a stand –
but you were already in the kitchen, the latch stuck,
tugging for your life like a Yale Electrotherapy Case
and when you broke into the yard and onto the escape route we’d made
– adobe wall crumbled under your cons until you hugged the terrace wall –
you turned to expect blood, brawn, brains, a brawl
and saw us pointing, laughing, deranged
in the endorphin rush of how sick we could be to think this up
And the graduate in me said: we only did it because we like you mate
Reprinted with the permission of the author.
==
Chris McCabe's latest collection of poetry is Zeppelins (published by Salt), which this poem is taken from. There's more by and about Chris McCabe on Gists and Piths.
Sunday 20 September 2009
Mark Goodwin - Blackbird Stir
in their attic between
two big brown bookshelves
randomly packed with poetry
I pass
sleep’s pages through
my head and my head’s
pillow is
a waking word
and the ajar skylight conveys air
as a bird’s opening
of song
*
at one morning now
in a corner of beak
my entire life liquid
on a blackbird’s tongue
long song-notes hold
a gloss house of sound
in the top of this voice-house
& light rhyming I sleep
I sleep between clear eaves
of soft death graceful
as one immortality’s moment
*
outside in part-light’s dim glee
outside over Sheffield’s hills
houses’ roofs flutter & flow
roofs like wings & beaks
with sleeping beneath
*
between two bookshelves
between two halves of beak
between attic roofs
I am in
a blackbird’s dream
Friday 18 September 2009
Mark Goodwin - On Blhà Bienn, Skye, January 1st 2002
now snow has no foot prints but our own
after noon light a gold for ever plating
silver instant jagged Black Cuillin miles
off amongst cloud in flated by sun breath
all dangers of a lifetime collected laid out
as black back bone terrible & beauty full
Bl ack Cuill in crinkled silver seen through
wind-thrust spark ling snow specks ang er
patient as glaciation sheet steel-stone bitten and
bent by some heav en's sky blue edge sun
lays light years of distance across a rusted
sword an ero ded vibrance spindrift l ays
glitter across our
faces glinting ice -clogged lo chans cling
amongst a p ile of planet-sp linters people call
Black Cuillin Black Cuillin Skye's smashed
plough -blade now turns thickening air's pur
ple & gr ey ground over world sleaks
through sky-rip into vast black behind every
thing a moon- drop of frost’s blood touches
and just balances on a motion less tremble
of ragged at om-narrow horizon now snow
has no footprints but our own an untrodden-
on day ours to write our pass age acro ss
sssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss ...
Wednesday 16 September 2009
Mark Goodwin - A Worth
is private keep(s) out we sneak
through a weak ness cross an e
state wall go through a bro ken
down gap where badg ers pass
and some people tresp ass
we enter slants of late light man
gling in red bracken sun’s win
ter membranes pla(y) ting mass
ive fat oaks golden & ground glist
ening pale pink where f rost uttered
water to delicate solid we climb
an oak-peopled hillside through nar
ratives escaped from dark German
ic woods but lit by late beyond-noon
light in an En gland dreamt a little
stream’s sounds do not sing but
stretch space to a sm ear of sil
ence we as our boots are g ripped-sc
ratched by bracken can’t hear here or
there but at least we just feel an
edge of silence sli cing fairy tales as
hun ched oaks reach to wards our
shapes by being totally still we re
lish our in tru sion through our minds
and a painting our brains do to ground
to make land scape’s e scapes
*
we leave a wide Der
went to flow a way
from us qui etly
through dark we
gently climb park
land towards Eden
sor’s spire Lin dup
Low is allowed to a
public crossed by
an un fenced B6012
and in a dark this r
oad rivers headlight
-noise we know we
will find diffi cult to
cross Chats worth
Ho use is lit
cool blue like a
digital copy of its day
time self on an
horizon a stag silhou
ette turns his
head moment arily
entang ling his antlers
with bran ches printed
clear & black against
sky sun has just left
Monday 14 September 2009
Mark Goodwin - Star Frost, A Corie Làir, A Strath Carron
less bl ue pinks at its
rim as day’s ghost be
comes becomes towards
real becomes and fills
world our fingers scor ch
on boot la ces & gaiter zips
we are cr isp between Chri
stmas & New Year’s Eve our
old selves suddenly spec
tres of some others in
nocent of everything other
than this this year-end mist
has wrapped birch twigs hea
ther & rocks with lit grey splin
ters the burn rum mages un
der skins of ice pat iently sear
ching for gravity pines wear
frilly jackets of white sky-breath
and one pine stop -framed by
hun dreds of its still likes walks
with us star-prongs have gr
own over every High land detail
of here here recreated as cry
stalline copies of fo rest &
corie & mountains beyond this
breath ing & passing of our
selves through this per fectly new
world is a yoga of ground ground
takes us in to its star shapes a
robin stops bobs stops bobs be
fore us leading us up a
slippery footpath each bootfall
crinks against master piece ice
-broaches tra gically but for bil
lions up on billions of tiny
delicate sym metrical shapes wa
ter’s spoken has frozen to we go
to beyond beyond the tree
-line high & out in the open ice
-wires nest in our noses as we
breathe ourselves towards Corie Làir
& Sgor Rhaudh ri zing above
the corie’s grey frost -base to frisp
golden rid ges of crystal line
desire where sunlight cracks & cra
shes si lently speckly -white ptar
migan are invisible but they are
there and they see with frost’s
eyes night’s veins waiting just
below a world’s rim darkness just
lea king in and free sing
into this bright we are warm as
our bones burn like frost I want
to stay
still in this high light stay
here as a solid vow
el a crystal man an
an
Saturday 12 September 2009
Mark Goodwin - Lit Lichen, Tŷ Uchaf
our Petzls solve
the dark around us so
we are surrounded by
a close cool bubble
of blue light
we are clothed
in a technological veil
we move
our bubble along so
keyhole sized portions
of a landscape repeatedly
develop and then
fade
away behind us and just
before Tŷ Uchaf
black & haw
-thorn forms spook
from inkiness into solidity
their plant-silence greets us
diode-lit lichen clings
tangled like fibrous silvery-green snow
to the convolutions
of their spikes & branches
it is a faint Christmas-ness
grown thick & Pagan
and balanced in the lichen’s
green rinds glistening droplets watch
like numerous mouse eyes
we turn
the key in Tŷ Uchaf’s lock
and we feel
in our minds behind
us (in the dark) the points
of thorns clogged
(or clothed?)
by frothy strands & splodges
of lichenous thoughts
=====
Mark Goodwin's first full collection, Else, was published by Shearsman in 2008. 'Lit Lichen, Tŷ Uchaf' is the first of five poems that Gists and Piths will be publishing over the next week or so.
Wednesday 9 September 2009
Two Poems by Matt Merritt
World broken by countless horizons. No light or sound
flows over them. Swifts scythe rents in the present
momentarily, air crackles and closes in their wake. Wait
while wind harps on wires. Symphony of electricity
and shadow plays behind suburban curtains.
Mirror-fronted new-builds placed face-to-face
make infinity, the hollow earth wracked by rumour
of alternate existences. Walls between lives thin
to near nothing. Suspect the survival of stations
never stopped at, dayglo line-workers in on the secret,
while trying to map points of divergence, signposts
to each new reality. Back up on the street,
late arrivals resonate the heart’s cage. Still
they keep coming, wiping the dreams from their eyes.
Variations On A Theme By JA Baker
I.
walk from east to west
by hidden ways
sun at your back
looking for the places
they might be
pause at the corner
of time and space
and expect
no/any thing
II.
two possibles mid-morning
then fuck all
all day
III.
fire-eyed owls
cling to contours
afraid to let go of the earth
but test yourself
against the wind
first select
the correct
density of air
perfect angle
of attack and hang
then notice how every
incline smoothes away
and all foreshortening
is undone
IV.
so many times
he has described this indistinct
perimeter
knowing all the gaps
the rough margins
and secret places
the points at which
it is as well to go on
as turn back
he has mapped the shape
and compass of lives
traced
the heavy progress of days
beaten the bounds
of possibility
wearing his divinity
lightly
V.
prey to your imaginings
in the owl-song hours
a long low murmur
slow beneath the skin
thrills the thicket of sleep
sends you out
beyond sound and sight
bare tops of trees
knotted with life
untied
by first fingers of light
a tether pulled tight
tight
then sprung
as some wild hope
puts up another
heart in hiding
and clear-eyed
races it home
==========
Matt Merritt's collection Troy Town was published by Arrowhead Press in 2008. He also has a personal blog, entitled Polyolbion, which you can read here.
Tuesday 8 September 2009
Statements of Intent (4) - Tom Chivers: "Hone your ego on my fist"
Firstly, let me apologise for the video; for its specific darkness. Of course, this poem could be intoned and interpreted in a number of different ways. I hope there is something comic – darkly comic, I suppose – about it. Sometimes when I perform it, the final couplet gets a laugh. Occasionally someone is offended. The poem hovers around a violent core, with pseudo-allusions to the Whitechapel Murders of 1888.
Multiplicity is very important to me. In the title piece of my collection, How To Build A City, I say: ‘I do not believe in irony, just multiple levels of recognition. A democratic onion, if you will.’ (Note to self: must stop quoting from own book.) Alongside and dependent on the multiple is the notion of the SHIFT. Language in constant flux, relentlessly rewriting itself. Tonal juxtapositions, fault-lines, fissures. All terrible postmodern, I’m afraid. Sorry. My foundation influences are all masters of the shift in different ways, like Barry MacSweeney, who writes: ‘I am 16. / I am a Tory. My // vision of the future represents / no people. // Celeriac priesthood offers up my rifle to the sky.’ My use of ‘celeriac’ in ‘This is yogic’ is no homage. I just like celeriac.
Monday 7 September 2009
Simon Turner - Tears in the Fence 50 @ The Bell
1. The Journey
A clean unbroken ride on the Met to Moorgate - though not smooth: the train rattling and jumping along the tracks, matching the wonderfully variegated and fussy scenery, the weed-tangled wreckage hiding behind tenements and semis, the unspoken wilds of London - though there we halted. A fire at Aldgate, all options closed. So the last pellet of the journey was on foot, though not far, the stations crammed close together here, like Starbucks in Seattle. Great to see a corner of London I don't know: a lot of character here, the older buildings in strange uneasy conversation with wideboy shimmer of the steel and glass financial megaliths screwing the gauzy skyline.
2. The Venue
The Bell, an East End pub of genuine distinction. There's a stuffed bear's head - I couldn't tell if it was real or not - smoking a roll-up behind the bar, and the whole place is decked out with more dark wooden beams than the pages of Moby-Dick. Plus they have Leffe on tap, which is the nectar of the gods. Or at least, the Belgians, who invented Tintin and chips, so they're pretty close to divinity in my book. As I get older I'm coming to believe strongly in a kind of selective modernity: up to the minute technology has its place in, say, medical research - leeches and hot cupping are so last season - but when it comes to pubs, the best advice is to leave well alone. Character wins out over stainless steel polish and Habitat furniture every time.
Great to see lots of people I've mostly known in the abstract (human personality reduced to email exchanges SAEs) in these surroundings, too: people George and I have published (Nathan Thompson, Andrew Bailey, Tom Chivers, James Wilkes), and people who've been kind enough to publish me (including David Caddy, Tears in the Fence's head honcho). Plus lots of writers - Jeremy Hilton, Kim Taplin, Nathan Thompson (again) whose work I have read and admired. What was notable was a genuine sense of community. This could be romanticism, exuberance brought on through a mild haze of Belgian beer, but it is one of the things that drew me to Tears in the Fence to begin with: that sense of a community of writers, working in disparate fields and modes, but all with a positive energy directed towards pushing at the boundaries, working to expand what poetry can do.
3. The Readings
David Caddy, speaking about the history of Tears in the Fence (surprised to learn that it generated some negative feedback from the conservative end of the poetry world in its early days, and even made the pages of 'Pseud's Corner' on a number of occasions: that's one of my ambitions in life), and his own editorial remit. Essentially, the magazine's about eclecticism, not dogmatism, and I suspect that's one of the reasons it's survived.
Brian Hinton, reading a lovely evocation of a cricket match, which was also a celebration of David Caddy (apparently, DC is a tough and tenacious cricket player).
Ian Brinton, giving lovely oracular readings of Charles Tomlinson, Ed Dorn and JH Prynne, embedded in a potted history of the transatlantic conversations that formed much of the context of the production of some really exciting work on both sides of the pond in 60s and 70s, of which the three poems he read were only the tip of the iceberg.
Hannah Silva, reading-performing a piece which I can only describe as a head-on collision between Bob Cobbing and Alice Oswald. Okay, I'm sure there are other ways to describe her work, but I'm lazy, and I'm writing at top speed, and any effort to slow down and give some more careful consideration to my words or thoughts will probably bring on a short-term block that'll completely kill off this post. The main body of the piece was a kind of sound-sculpture, mixing Silva's live voice with field recordings, and pre-recorded overdubs (I think) of her voice, the whole brew collapsing into a ticking, heaving swamp of sound. Silva's work is extremely exciting, representing as it does a marriage of performance poetics, and more 'academic' tendencies in modern poetry. The results were/are invigorating.
4. Life Without Buildings
5. The Verdict
Sunday 6 September 2009
Simon Turner on Tom Chivers on Barry MacSweeney
Saturday 5 September 2009
Three Poems by Matt Nunn
Wot I wrote when I wuz asked in accusing
By the parrot on the teachers’ hunch
About wot I reckoned to the mong music
Lilting like from a weaving of the echo of the stars
From out the rackety old gob of the record player –
“Beethoven is a bender”,
Made His Majesty Sir ye olde right venerable tosspot,
The headmaster of our school
“Our Lady with her head down the toilet”
Creak tweedily with so much well furious
That his guide dog plopped a pup straight
Out of his hole in fright,
As he telled me in a voice stained by Sapphoism and chamber music
That I was the perennial puke beneath the sawdust on the hall floor.
But it ent my fault
The angelic choir that breathes the theology of beauty
Inside my bonce has been punched out
By the brutality of surviving,
Cuz it just dunt pay to let on,
Though I know the perfect craft of the flight
Of the word lepidopterist
And that music is the joy of the kiss of the eternal sunrise,
Cuz at this school on the cusp of combustion
Of farting itself silly with the death stench of our horizons
It is more well cleverer to be stooped.
With Myrtle walking through a headfuck as she twangs.
Last eve as you crept between
the contours of my dreams
humming expectantly with
the first sugar-rush la-la’s
of a love song
and laid me out delirious
with a slobbering lovesome bomb,
you cut me with the blunt of your sharp knife
and made what remains of the sun
blush with the blood of your beginning
and my obliviously hidden point painful and obvious.
mogwai music
heaven is bound and heavy with bruised gospel light
enlivening dereliction by symphonic waves
of crashing youth generating genius electricity
flowing through x-rays back catalogues
inspiring jesus off searching for the right ripple
to turn on by sipping jagged metallic soul from a
soup bowl of a million snuffed out industrial suns
==========
Matt Nunn's third collection of poetry, Sounds in the Grass, is forthcoming from Nine Arches Press, and a short story collection is also in the pipeline. He lives and breathes Birmingham.
Wednesday 2 September 2009
Three Poems by Edward Cottrell
Stop thinking about your death and begin
forgetting you have
slept dreaming a delicate expanse to wake
whacking against.
Until something or other is revealed, scratch
At these    , failing that –
get back on the bottle: This time tomorrow, this time
tomorrow, this time – .
I think we should just give up now, don’t you?
I am a visitor   here,
what advice would you give to such a visitor   here?
There there? There there?
Pocket Calculator
The numbers are wrong on this old calculator,
inside it thinks less and less
and the answers never, held upside down, forbid me to age.
It has worn yellow pinstripes underneath
the blind fading displays, out
of character, as a museum curator pocketing wet stones
from a fountain. The sky is falling, always
it will land on its feet.
One day the dogs will fall and we shall drown, which is just how we like it.
Steel Dog
Checker-veined leaves, green and red
great with sharp cuts,
the bloody
fingers biting down a sheared can.
Steel dog, I can hear the sea
dawning on my reluctance
from a tin-ear maraca,
home made & just now, married.
Let us huddle in the mess.