tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-31262867963119389432024-03-05T05:36:16.392+00:00SUNK ISLAND REVIEWNew Writing In Various Forms, edited by Michael BlackburnUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger29125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-89199971506591037382011-12-26T10:44:00.002+00:002011-12-26T10:58:26.566+00:00Dostoyevsky Never Had To Put Up With This, a poem by Wayne Dean-Richards.<div>as I was about to put</div><div>finger to keyboard</div><div>my dearly beloved broke open</div><div>a conversation about strong</div><div>bleach, pancakes and the price of tea.</div><div><br /></div><div> </div><div>when we were done</div><div>I was ready to start</div><div>but my next door neighbor</div><div>started work.</div><div>he’s a dj, tall and strong</div><div>and mixing tracks is what hE calls</div><div>this part of his job.</div><div>tonight he was mixing drum tracks and worked till</div><div>they formed a single, rapid drumbeat</div><div>inside my skull.</div><div><br /></div><div>when he was finished</div><div>I entertained the possibility</div><div>that I might now write something, at last.</div><div><br /></div><div>but this time</div><div>the cats were at me</div><div>clawing my legs</div><div>demanding fish in no uncertain terms.</div><div><br /></div><div>more distraction followed:</div><div><br /></div><div>an ambulance turned up</div><div>at the house across the street.</div><div>they wheeled out</div><div>the old guy who lives there</div><div>his poor face pale and sweaty</div><div>a thick blanket rolled</div><div>right up to his chin.</div><div><br /></div><div>I couldn’t not watch.</div><div><br /></div><div>then a van</div><div>shed its load of scrap metal</div><div>all over the road outside my house.</div><div>my dj neighbour would’ve been proud</div><div>of the noise it made.</div><div><br /></div><div>by now it was fully dark</div><div>but crazies were still wandering</div><div>up and down outside</div><div>noise invading from all angles.</div><div>Jesus fucking Christ!</div><div>I said.</div><div><br /></div><div>I’d been going to start work on a novel</div><div>but with so much distraction</div><div>and so little time left</div><div>I thought I’d settle on a poem.</div><div><br /></div><div>only when I wrote down the title</div><div>my dearly beloved</div><div>leaned over</div><div>and said</div><div>that’s not how you spell Dostoyevsky.</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div><div>---------------------------------------</div><div><br /></div><div>Read more about Wayne at his <a href="http://www.waynedeanrichards.blogspot.com/">blog</a>.</div>Unknownnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-84960261003692912432011-02-15T10:50:00.002+00:002011-02-15T10:58:10.180+00:00At Promise Strand - a short story by Geoffrey Heptonstall<p lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span class="Apple-style-span" ></span></p><p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">These were the days of Amy and Buffalo. They dwelt in contentment, pioneers in their promised land. Amy wove, and made quilts. Buffalo fished (but could never hunt), kept livestock (the land being too poor for cultivation, and wrote. While Amy fixed supper (she loved to eat fish) Buffalo sat at his table by the window, writing in the light of the oil lamp. The notebooks were handsome, leather-bound, bought on a Saturday stall in Prince Street. He arranged with the stall-holder to be sent a quarterly supply. Buffalo loved his notebooks. They began those perfect evenings when Amy sang songs of her own, mainly improvised, composition. She had a sweet voice. Amy would have painted had the spirit moved her in that direction. Also there was a matter of time. Her weaving drank deeply into her days. Buffalo admired her dedication. It matched his own.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></p><p></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">There had been a time – it was what Buffalo called their crocodile years – when Amelia and William had lived in the city. You might have guessed, correctly, that Amelia was an unattached woman who taught school. She taught William’s daughter from his first, sunken marriage. The girl was a banker’s daughter. Her father was a respected, respectable man who could meet uncommon demands with ease.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">William had been able, if he so chose, to look out from his office window to the river, the sun reflected in its expanse of water. On the other side of the room was an aspiring cityscape growing toward the heavens in Babel-like desire. When younger, William’s ambition had been immense. But latterly he had not looked out at anything – until he caught sight of Miss Amelia Milsom at an evening for parents.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">One spring weekend he had chanced upon her in the street. Miss Milsom had not seen him. She suspected nothing as he followed her. In the McDougall Street coffee house she did not recognize the stranger even when he spoke the name of his daughter. The truth was that she had no recollection of any previous conversation, but it did seem possible. All fathers were the same. And if he were the person he claimed to be then it was safe, if not welcome, to speak with him. It passed the time.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">He wanted to tell her that there was an attractive woman in her. But how can anyone, stranger or not, say that? She thought a beard might complete his face. She was not usually a beard person, but in his case she thought some hair might distinguish him. But they said nothing. William stirred his coffee with needless repetition until he spoke of his recent intimation of paradise.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">He had discovered a secret place on the coast of Maine, ‘a place of cold, beautiful winters’. He had taken a wrong turning, trying to reach his friends before dark. He did not know the area well. ‘I found this lovely town, a little town called Promise Strand. Beyond it was a shore, a vast beach of white dunes. Not a soul except seabirds.’ He spoke gently, his features relaxing as he spoke, Yes, Amelia decided, a beard would suit this man. ‘Well, there I watched the sun go down on the horizon, somewhere about mid-ocean it seemed. That kind of feeling.’</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Overnight he had stayed at the old world hotel, the only one in town. It was the Ocean’s Promise Hotel. He spoke the name with reverence. The hotel had, he said, an atmospheric silence. There was an air of history, ‘but something more than history. I mean history is just the past.’ And so William sat comfortably in the hotel, considering many things. It was a day from Thanksgiving. ‘You know, I felt a sense of real gratitude. It was a reality that I had not touched in years. Now by chance, by what I think of truly as providence…’ Amelia then told him she would like to see Promise Strand</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">William had felt awkward and ashamed at this point. He became apologetic, despite Amelia’s assurances. He supposed she was being polite. He supposed he had been not very interesting, a little foolish even. Trying to admit a stranger into his private world had not been the sensible thing to do. Normally he would not have done such a thing. Now he had. And that was the end of his dream. Amelia smiled a little, and said, ‘You must tell me more.’ That only increased the ache inside William until she added, ‘Soon.’</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">It was that one word that took Amy and Buffalo to their cabin at Promise Strand. Soon became very soon when in the summer everything in both their lives changed. Amelia and William changed. A door had opened unexpectedly. They closed it behind them. It was natural. It had to happen. It had to happen at once. There was nothing soon about their deciding. It had to be there as they stood on the shore. William said, ‘I used to be Buffalo.’ ‘I used to be Amy.’ They had found home at last.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Back in the city the few who cared were noting the differences, little by little, day by day. Something secret was happening, although nobody suspected that it might lead to a timber hermitage that was all but a ruin.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span >‘<span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">What’s gotten into him/her?’ became ‘Well, I knew it was going crazy when I first saw them together. I guess previous things have driven them wild.’ Sober neckties and pleated skirts were by turns shocked, then amused, then inclined to forget what had happened and to whom it had happened. Life in the city – real life – went on its way without Amy and Buffalo. People come and go. They may stay a while, but eventually they go. Someone moves into the vacant space. You shake hands and think the two of you will get along fine. The previous occupant becomes a postcard followed by silence. It was the way of things.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span >‘<span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Things here are fine,’ Buffalo told everyone. The Thanksgiving friends who lived up the coast thought the cabin was a good idea, if a surprising one. ‘We always thought you had a pioneer in you, Buffalo.’ They always had known him by his childhood nickname. They had never felt entirely comfortable with William in the city. Those friends also thought Amy was very good for him. When you saw them together in their cabin you knew they had found home. Not everyone finds home.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"> <span ><span ><span >Promise Strand was almost an island. There was a single narrow track subject to regular flooding. The country was desolate once you left the highway. Everywhere was wild grass and sand that turned to mud in winter. At the end of this wilderness was a huddle of houses that had the look of ships in harbour about them, so closely were they connected to the ocean.</span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">There was no sign to indicate there might be something here. It was easy to think you were lost. Quite how Buffalo found it was intriguing, for there seemed no reason for him to have taken the turning down an unsigned road to nowhere. The truth was that he had been looking for somewhere to discover. He did not lose his way. He searched until he reached his destination.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span >‘<span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Let us not forget,’ Buffalo said, more than once and always with solemnity, '</span></span></span></span></span><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><i><span style="font-weight: normal">this</span></i></span></span></span><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal"> is our country.’ He would muse on the world as seen by the first settlers as they stepped ashore. Something would shimmer as he looked out at the line where ocean and heaven became one. Buffalo had witnessed this shimmering of which he had written a detailed description. It was an account yet to be published. The nation needed such thoughts, he was sure. They offer faith. ‘Doubt destroys’, Buffalo insisted.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">He was glad that Amy had asked him that time to tell her more. That was an act of faith in him of a kind he dared not hope for, although within himself he felt it was due. He had a sense of life being lived according to a belief that was not of his making. He had the choice to refuse. That was freedom of one kind. Opening oneself to what was natural and right was a deeper freedom, for it brought contentment. Buffalo had much to say on that thought in his notebooks.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">He tried to speak of these things when his daughter visited with her mother. But neither of them listened. Neither said anything much. In the pauses you could hear the Atlantic coming in all the way from Iberia. ‘Well,’ Amy remarked when mother and daughter had gone, ‘I suppose we have changed.’</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Amy watched Buffalo walk by the shoreline. Amy had her chores, her survival skills and her good sense. All of these complemented Buffalo’s strength of mind. He dreamed of impossible things while she walked to Aunt Jane’s Pancake Parlor to take coffee. She knew people, if not by name then by sight. Everyone knew her, and they were unfailingly polite at the grocery store and most other places. Amy hoped that Buffalo would not forget to chop the wood as he had promised. It threatened to be another cold night. But, yes, these were beautiful winters.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">There came a day – it was late spring - when Buffalo surprised Amy with an idea he had been considering for a while in his silences. He spoke of a visit the two of them might make to the city. Two summers and three winters had passed without either of them saying a word, or giving the least hint, of a visit to what they had left behind. Amy was taken aback, for she had no notion that such a thought was moving through Buffalo’s mind. He was a man of ideas and impulses that were his alone. That was what attracted her to him. He was Buffalo.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span >‘<span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">I’ve brought muffins for us from the Pancake Parlor,’ Amy said by way of response. An hour later Buffalo asked, ‘But what do you think of a few days back in the city?’ As he had anticipated, Amy made no comment. She did not approve. She did not approve because she did not understand. Buffalo could not be annoyed at her lack of response until he explained his reasoning to her. ‘I don’t know why,’ he told her after some time in careful thought. ‘It just feels that it could be – possibly – a good idea to step back from here. We’re going to miss it. We’ll want to be home again. I know we will.’</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span >‘<span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Then we’ll go,’ Amy said. That was all she said. All arrangements were left to Buffalo who was no good at arranging, as Amy knew.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">There were times when it seemed that if she looked inland she might see the cityscape in the distance. From a high vantage it seemed almost possible, although the good sense in her said that no such view ever was possible.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Her fear was that the city would reclaim them. The days of Amy and Buffalo would become a dream. Once they walked familiar haunts, and then they would see half-forgotten things, their old lives were going to return. Amy could picture a chance encounter with someone she knew. The conversation becomes an offer of a job: ‘</span></span></span></span></span><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><i><span style="font-weight: normal">I</span></i></span></span></span><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal"> </span></span></span></span></span><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><i><span style="font-weight: normal">don’t know how to tell you this, Buffalo...’</span></i></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Her city life had often included strange interludes. Amy thought of the clothes she had bought but never dared wear. Then there were the shows she had seen with stars she could not abide. Faiths and allegiances for which she had no time had almost persuaded her in moments of weakness. There were all those things she had not quite done. The sum of them was the city beneath her steady, sensible exterior.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Buffalo</span></span></span></span></span><span ><span ><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal"> </span></span></span></span><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">had said, ‘Well, that’s why we should live in a place where we are not persuaded to be anything except ourselves.’ He confessed, ‘I’ve lived a lie, too. But I thought it was the truth. And I thought I was the smart one, you know, taking hold of the truth so that I could use it to my advantage. Then I saw myself falling from the fortieth floor. As I passed my office window I grinned and waived. That’s how smart I believed myself to be.’</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Yet now he wanted to go back. He said it was to remind them of why they had made the move to Promise Strand. Amy had said nothing to that. She had nothing much for some days. She looked out of the window at Buffalo who had taken to staring out at the horizon as if he might be a shipwrecked sailor waiting for deliverance. She understood his mood. He was hoping that something would happen, that </span></span></span></span></span><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><i><span style="font-weight: normal">The Book of Buffalo</span></i></span></span></span><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal"> might be taken, that it might be read by many people who would come to share his vision. But if that were so they would come to Promise Strand.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span >‘<span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">This has been our life,’ Amy said. ‘I want it to go on being that.’ ‘I want it, too,’ Buffalo replied exactly as she knew he would. ‘My life has seen changes. My life has been patterned by turnings back and forth. I can’t do what you ask, Buffalo. I cannot go back now.’</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Buffalo</span></span></span></span></span><span ><span ><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal"> </span></span></span></span><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">reacted as she knew he would. He went out for many hours, disappearing down the bay in the way that he was accustomed to do when anger overwhelmed him. He would howl at the waves, matching their roar with his own. He would challenge the ocean. He would challenge the world. That was the attraction he had for Amy. There was a man who knew his mind, a man who had a mind worth knowing.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">It was Amy’s decision to go about her chores in the expectation that he was going to return when it was time to return. Buffalo had choices to make. Everything had to be unravelled like an old woollen jersey, and then was to be remade in a new fashion.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"> <span ><span ><span >That, Amy reflected, was a mental emblem of their life at Promise Strand. They had dismantled the city, and built a cabin in its place. ‘That old fisherman’s shack,’ people said when they moved in, ‘has its charm.’ Nobody ever said that about a brownstone, did they? Somehow it did not seem the right word. It was <i>convenient</i>.</span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Moving, they had exchanged convenience for charm. That seemed a good bargain. Amy always had tried to live her own life. In his way so had Buffalo, although he now disowned office life, the money life, the hoping for promotion life. But that, she thought, had never been true Buffalo. He was the one who did the crazy thing, jumping from the high tower, and floating gently down onto the sand.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Having done such a thing, such an audacious, insane and exhilarating thing, there was no point at all in wondering how life would have been had it not been done. Anyway, the answer was clear enough for anybody to see. There would have been no Amy and Buffalo. Two lonely people would have walked away from each other, only to be eaten by the crocodiles.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">On the other hand, there was the city still. They had lived there for many years. Each had known a certain contentment at times. The noise and heat and crowding of the city: had those irritations not also brought a measure of security, for they testified that here were people like themselves making their individual ways through many other individuals. And some of them were people one might get to know. They were there even now, hurrying down the subway steps as the light of day faded.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">When Buffalo returned he said, ‘Amy, we’re not going back.’ Amy’s sigh measured relief with regret. It was not regret that they were not going, but regret for the doubts they both had allowed. But Amy was inclined to blame herself, for perhaps it was she who inadvertently had put the idea into Buffalo’s head. Surely he would never have thought of it himself? ‘I guess I’m not as strong as you,’ she said. ‘Angel, I’m with you,’ Buffalo said. ‘You don’t need ever to be afraid.’</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Amy marvelled at her partner’s certainty. It was indeed true that he was stronger than her. She could see that. And, no, she need never be afraid. Not even when the storm threatened to overwhelm their cabin. Not even when it was dark, and she was alone. Buffalo was always close by. This love was her greater security. With that the lights of the city could not begin to compare. Amy felt ashamed that she might ever think that the days of Amy and Buffalo were limited by doubts. Some things were not subject to revision. Promise Strand was where they were. In the city they had lived for the city. Now they lived for each other, for love and nature and all manner of benevolence the city long since had abandoned and forgotten.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span >‘<span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">I’m sorry, Buffalo,’ Amy said. ‘I am so truly sorry.’ Whether or not he knew what she meant, he said nothing, but held her firmly, letting her cry away whatever the source of her sorrow was. All the doubt and fear was washed away. ‘Maybe we could eat at Aunt Jane’s tonight,’ Buffalo suggested. ‘Would you like that? I’m sure you would.’ Then he added, ‘You and I, we can watch the sun go down somewhere about mid-ocean.’</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">And the sun rose again the following day. Time was always passing. The signs were visible here and there. Buffalo had written in his journal that at Promise Strand they did not experience time but seasons. There was a difference. It was to do with the rhythm of living. But it was something that if the reader did not understand it could not be explained. That, perhaps, was true generally of </span></span></span></span></span><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><i><span style="font-weight: normal">The Book of Buffalo</span></i></span></span></span><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Soon, of course, it would be ready for the world. Publication was going to mean a visit to the city, possibly to many cities. He was going to bring Promise Strand to the world. It was right that Amy and he were to share their good fortune.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Considering these things in a midwinter’s mild interval (a season of its own), Buffalo was walking by the Atlantic shore. Its fascination for him was so vital that familiarity never could diminish its power. Sometimes, many times, his mind was overwhelmed so that he could think of nothing at all as he looked out at the great world in constant motion.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">That was why it took a while for him to detect a difference. He did not expect differences out here. He did not search for them. At first the scene seemed quite usual. Buffalo was not looking at the thin finger of land, the strand which gave the town its name. The Promise was so low-lying it was barely visible from a distance. The untrained eye might mistake it for water. The Promise often flooded. Sometimes it was an island. Sometimes it was indistinguishable from the ice.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">The seabirds that rested there appeared to be resting on water. Buffalo paid them no attention until he came closer, and saw other sea creatures unexpectedly. There had been something of a mist, by no means unusual, which seemed to explain the obscuring of vision. What was markedly visible now arrested Buffalo in his vagaries. He could not ignore what he saw.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">What he saw as he approached was both fearful and compelling. Buffalo was drawing closer to the end. Seabirds swooped down so that their wings almost touched him. One came so boldly toward Buffalo that he cried out. He ran into the water, his hands covering his face in terror. Against the incoming waves he fell to his knees, then face down into the cold water.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">It seemed to him that he was in the water for a long time. It seemed that he had fallen asleep, and in that sleep he dreamed that he was drowning. When he raised his head and opened his eyes the scene was different. The strand was occupied now by seals. It was rare to find them so close to shore. Occasionally a stray one might be seen, but never a colony as he saw now. Then there were other creatures of a kind Buffalo had never set eyes on before. They were the marine creatures of story books, creatures he had supposed did not exist. He </span></span></span></span></span><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><i><span style="font-weight: normal">knew</span></i></span></span></span><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal"> they did not exist. Now he saw them.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Buffalo</span></span></span></span></span><span ><span ><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal"> </span></span></span></span><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">was certain he was not dreaming. This was too real. He was awake, but awake in a world that was not the same. He looked round him, seeing nobody. The land had vanished. There was nothing but mist and sky and ocean. The strand was not itself. As he approached he heard singing and laughter. At first he thought it might be the wish of water against the rocks, or perhaps it was Amy’s voice calling him. But there was no mistaking that the creatures were calling to him, and whispering about him. The crocodiles, coming from the creek, were looking hungry.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">His instinct was to run. Running, however, was not only cowardly, it would never answer the question he had of what he saw. Were Buffalo to run he knew he was going to keep running until he was back in the safety of the past. That was something he could have never forgiven. He would have remained for ever a lesser man, one who did not dare to ask the question that now he roared, ‘WHO ARE YOU?’</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">There was only silence in reply. The creatures stared back him with expressionless faces. They had the soulless eyes of the damned. When Buffalo spoke again they faded, defeated in whatever enterprise had brought them to appear on the strand. ‘Who are you to come here?’ he insisted. Of course there was no reply. There was nobody to reply. The strand was its customary self, washed by constant waves, a limb of the continent reaching out into the void. Perhaps a seabird would land for a moment, only to be airborne on some well-intentioned mission of survival. Buffalo saw nothing more.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Buffalo</span></span></span></span></span><span ><span ><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal"> </span></span></span></span><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">saw nothing more until he heard a voice that cleared the mist and saltwater from his tired, unbelieving and bewildered eyes. Of course he saw Amy. Of course she was there. Amy was coming toward him, smiling her fondest smile, although her eyes betrayed her concern. She had felt something was wrong. Seeing Buffalo confirmed her fear. It was not, thankfully, her worst fear, which was unbearable.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">Amy called out, not too loudly, ‘Buffalo, I’m here.’ Because he looked startled she added, ‘I wondered what you were doing. I thought I might join you.’ She hoped she would sound nonchalant. She hoped that her voice did not seem the least concerned. ‘It’s so peaceful out here,’ Amy said when she was closer. But her closeness meant that Buffalo could not mask the shame that was causing his body to tremble, his eyes to redden, and his mouth to hang open voicelessly.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">When he spoke he said, ‘Did you see them? They were there. You saw them, Amy. They were there.’</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span >‘<span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">I saw you, Buffalo. All I saw was you,’ Amy told him as gently as she was able. Her eyes glistened, like eyes in the wind. ‘All I see is you now. That’s all I want to see.’ Her hands ran down from his face to his powerful shoulders, hunched now by the emotions that burdened him. ‘I saw an angel,’ he said, ‘and I see her now.’</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span >‘<span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">I don’t believe I’m an angel, Buffalo. But I’m here for you. I’m always here. You don’t have to see what you don’t want to see. You don’t have to believe anything you don’t feel is right. And you have to do anything to please me except to be yourself.’</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">They were walking steadily back, away from the strand. Buffalo several times asked the same question; ‘We’re going home?’ Amy replied each time in a tome of measured assurance that was nothing less than the truth, and the truth was plain enough to see. This was home. There was nowhere else. ‘Yes, we’re going home.’</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">A seabird flew into view. Buffalo looked up, and said, ‘Amy, is that real?’ Yes, it was real. He looked at the surf scattering on the shoreline, and he asked if that was real, too? Yes, it was real. He looked the line of trees on the ridge, each one misshapen by the winds. He asked if they were real? Yes, they were real. Buffalo then looked at Amy, but he asked no further questions. There were to be no more crocodiles.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p style="line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span ><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><i><span style="font-weight: normal">The Book of Buffalo</span></i></span></span></span><span ><span ><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal"> </span></span></span></span><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal">was going to answer so many questions. Buffalo did not have the answer to everything, but his wisdom, gained in the freedom of his new life, was a special gift for which he needed to show his thanks. </span></span></span></span></span><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><i><span style="font-weight: normal">The Book of Buffalo</span></i></span></span></span><span ><span ><span lang="en-GB"><span style="font-style: normal"><span style="font-weight: normal"> was to be that thanks.</span></span></span></span></span></span></p> <p lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"> <span ><span ><span >These days of Amy and Buffalo were to be given to future generations that they might understand and so value the freedom and the peace of Promise Strand. A whole way of life, a whole nation even, was to be found in those two words. If a free people believed then they were sure to confound the crocodiles. Freedom and peace – words that were as real as the driftwood on the shore. In sight of their cabin Buffalo paused for quite a while before saying, ‘You know, Amy, what you do with what you find, well, that makes a life.’ Amy closed her eyes we she replied, ‘Yes, Buffalo, I know. I know.’</span></span></span></p><p lang="en-GB" style="font-style: normal; font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2"><span class="Apple-style-span" ><br /></span></p><p lang="en-GB" style="font-weight: normal; line-height: 0.53cm; widows: 2; orphans: 2; "><span class="Apple-style-span" >Geoffrey Heptonstall's poems and short stories, etc, have been published in <i>Adirondack Review</i>, Cerise Press, <i>Contemporary Review</i>, <i>London Magazine</i>, <i>PN Review</i>, the <i>TLS</i> and many others,</span></p> <p style="margin-bottom: 0cm"><br /></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-49048468674999166862010-09-28T09:25:00.002+01:002010-09-28T09:30:56.106+01:00Two Poems by William Bedford<span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; line-height: 17px; font-size: 13px; color: rgb(42, 42, 42); "><p class="ecxMsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: left;line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">JOHN ADAMS IN AMERICA</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: left;line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">November 22 1963</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: left;line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; "><br /></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; "> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; "> </span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">John Adams’s <i style="line-height: 20px; font-style: italic; ">Shaking and Trembling</i></span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">seems about right,</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">though he hadn’t written it when we met,</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><i style="line-height: 20px; font-style: italic; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">John’s Book of Alleged Dances </span></i><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">and <i style="line-height: 20px; font-style: italic; ">Harmonium</i></span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">all waiting in the still unshaken future.</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">Where were you? Where was I?</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">I think I was on the train from Kings Cross to Lincoln,</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">a slow stopping train trundling a bleak landscape.</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">I know the journey took a long time,</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">but that might have had nothing to do with the news.</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">I don’t know about you. Making love in some seedy hotel.</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">Drinking coffee in a bar in Kensington.</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">It was a dark day for dying.</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">I can’t think about it without thinking about you,</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">the way you liked me to touch your breasts,</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">the white scar at the side of your ear,</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">the wet kiss of your thighs when the boy from room service</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">blushed, backing out of the room.</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">John Adams is sixty this year. I have a photograph of you</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">in this room in Wiltshire where I am writing,</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">but I do not know where you are,</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">you do not know where I am,</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">and John Kennedy has become an Andy Warhol poster.</span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; "><br /></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; "><br /></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; "><br /></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; "><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, sans-serif; font-size: 13px; line-height: 17px; "></span></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: left;line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">TO FOLLOW THE PLOUGH</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" align="center" style="text-align: left;line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; "><br /></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; "> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; "> </span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">All I had to do was open my window</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">and the glass tower melted</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">to leave me in fields I recognised</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">but could not remember ever visiting.</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">Were you with me then,</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">wearing your blue dress and first wedding ring?</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; "> </span><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-family: Arial, sans-serif; "> </span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">I write these poems as though I do remember,</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">but the girl could be anybody</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">and the dream . . .</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">the dream could be a field anywhere,</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">with Boris Pasternak following the plough</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">to make his political statement.</span><span style="line-height: 17px; font-size: 10pt; font-family: Tahoma, sans-serif; "></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; "><br /></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; "><br /></span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; ">William Bedford's poems, short stories and articles have appeared in numerous magazines and anthologies over the years and his books have received great reviews. You can read more about him at his <a href="http://www.williambedford.co.uk/">website</a>.</span></p><p class="ecxMsoNormal" style="line-height: 20px; margin-top: 0px; margin-right: 0cm; margin-bottom: 0.0001pt; margin-left: 14.15pt; font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman', serif; "><span style="line-height: 20px; font-family: Arial, sans-serif; "> </span></p></span><p></p>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-55951593514051373702010-01-06T17:27:00.005+00:002010-01-06T18:36:15.535+00:00None Of The Cadillacs Was Pink, William Bedford; Review by Wayne Dean-Richards.I’d never heard of William Bedford before picking up <span style="font-style:italic;">None of the Cadillacs was Pink</span>. So when I opened this Solidus Press collection of stories and essays I came to it clean. I mean it wasn’t like reviewing a collection of new Salinger stories: I mention Salinger because I recently read nine of his old stories and it struck me that to review anything new by him would be difficult because of the weight of expectation.<br /> <br />'Amusements' opens up <span style="font-style:italic;">None of the Cadillacs was Pink</span> and it is apparent when Bedford writes of ‘A pig...discovered, floating in the middle of a field on a settee’ that he has a poet’s eye for telling detail, but also a story writer’s knack for inference: so that when Danny plays Doris Day’s 'Secret Love' it’s not necessary to say more, and an essayist’s ability to write of the particular whilst with references to Frankie Lane, Alma Cogan, Norman Mailer and Elvis effortlessly embroiling the reader in a world that is universal. That it seems effortless is, of course, a testimony to Bedford’s skill as a writer.<br /><br />'The Painter’s Daughter', the opening story, employs an unadorned style to tell of working-class bravery and pride with a character who: ‘yellowed the steps with a scouring stone as often as possible.’ In 'Afternoons' the sexual tension between Catherine and her husband is symbolic of the tension between the old England - of people who when their tea was too hot readily ‘cooled some in their saucer’ - and the restlessness of the England at the dawn of the rock’n’roll age, this perhaps epitomised by the uncertainty evident in Catherine’s whispered: ‘I don’t know.’ <br /><br />Many of the stories are about transition and often there’s a rock ‘ n’ roll undercurrent to the change, as in 'Orchards' when after ‘she lounged round the garden wearing tight jeans and an old blouse’ she ‘went off with another man, taking all Lowther’s money from the post office and leaving the back door wide open in her hurry.’ These days I find mention of money in the post office nostalgic. There’s a lot in this book that I find nostalgic, yet it never seeks refuge in a comforting but ultimately pointless nostalgia, rather it’s the case that time and again everyday lives are tellingly scrutinised and as part of that process a still recognisable past is sometimes beautifully sometimes brutally evoked. <br /><br />Interestingly, despite both the presence of rock ‘n’ roll and a funfair none of the stories is loud or flashy. Instead these we’re given stories of people living quiet lives. 'Touch', for example, details the unremarkable end of a working man, the ordinariness what makes it so remarkable: that and the realisation that it’s not only the death of a working man we’re party to, but the death of a whole way of life, the two rendered without pretension.<br /><br />Of the fifteen stories my favourite is 'Wildlife', in which artist Frances rejects both her husband and the city in order to return to the sea and paint, the sea an integral feature of many of the pieces. What I especially like about the story, with Frances’ insistence that she doesn’t ‘know what the images mean’ is the feeling that here Bedford was working as Cheever said he did: ‘with intuition, apprehension dreams, concepts’ under which circumstances: ‘Characters and events come simultaneously’. The story has depth and resonance but there’s nothing forced or strained about it. That autobiographical essays frame this collection I took as a clear invitation to read autobiographical aspects into many of the stories and that was no bad thing. 'Wildlife' has the ring of truth to it; in fact all of the stories felt so authentic choosing a favourite wasn’t easy. <br /><br />The final essay, which gives the collection its title, is packed with emotions and images. In many of the celebrity autobiographies cluttering bookshops the incidents rendered in the twenty-five pages of this essay would have been gratingly padded to ten times that length, but Bedford opts for incisiveness and the result is impressive: <span style="font-style:italic;">None of the Cadillacs was Pink</span> is a tight and beautifully constrained piece of writing.<br /><br />Bedford’s new collection is a rewarding read. The writing has a clarity resulting from the omission of the superfluous and the feeling that these stories and essays belong together. Before reading <span style="font-style:italic;">Cadillacs</span> I hadn’t heard of William Bedford. Since reading it I’m certain that when I come across anything else by him I’ll check it out.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-style:italic;">None of the Cadillacs Was Pink</span> by William Bedford is published by Solidus.<br /><br /><iframe src="http://rcm-uk.amazon.co.uk/e/cm?t=michaelblackbusa&o=2&p=8&l=as1&asins=1904529445&fc1=000000&IS2=1<1=_blank&m=amazon&lc1=0000FF&bc1=000000&bg1=FFFFFF&f=ifr" style="width:120px;height:240px;" scrolling="no" marginwidth="0" marginheight="0" frameborder="0"></iframe>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-8398167286819164552009-11-01T20:12:00.002+00:002009-11-01T20:15:28.196+00:00Jerry Sadowitz and The Ghost of a Thousand by Rodney WoodJERRY SADOWITZ<br /><br />There's must be some mistake. He's the 15th greatest standup<br />but he's aggressive, tasteless, racist, sexist and smells,<br />has a face like a soggy football, hair that's been fucked up<br />and wears a top hat stolen from Isambard Kingdom Brunel.<br /><br />I wish this man to be struck deaf, blind and dumb,<br />suffer anal fissures, asthma, constipation, impotence,<br />varicose veins, bedwetting, gonorrhoea, bleeding gums,<br />piles, hives, insomnia, apoplexy, nose bleeds and cramps.<br /><br />I wish this man more. I want at least pulled muscles, gout,<br />amputations and fungal infections. I want to chain him to<br />the goalposts in Wembley Stadium, see him eaten by scouts,<br />his remains shitted out and recycled as a dildo.<br /><br />Even that's not enough. I want all those who howl or laugh<br />at his shows to be fucked in the ass by Timmy Mallett.<br />If none of my wishes are granted at least give him Whooping cough,<br />the occasional boil, court orders or gigs with Jabba the Hutt.<br /><br />As you may have gathered I don't like this so-called humourist<br />who smells, is aggressive, tasteless, racist and sexist<br />and who in 2008 was number 15 on Channel 4's greatest<br />standups. But to be fair he can do some pretty neat card tricks.<br /><br /><br />THE GHOST OF A THOUSAND<br /><br />Ruby Revenge counts the days before<br />her fav band appear in Aldershot.<br />She's just 15 and can't fucking wait.<br />When the hour finally comes and after<br />Rolo Tomassi and Casino Brawl<br />have displayed their hairless armpits,<br />The Ghost of a Thousand take over<br />the scaffold and Tom screams into<br />the mic, Mem has a drumkit for a throne,<br />Gaz is a lumberjack chainsawing his bass<br />through Left For Dead and Blackday Number<br />and Andy and Jag thrash their guitars<br />bringing them to life through the flickering<br />silver, gold and black of Matchless amps.<br />During As They Breed They Swarm<br />headbanging fans become a shoal<br />of fish around Ruby Revenge who keeps<br />a curtain of hair over her face showing<br />her refusal to conform, her sense<br />of isolation, her feeling she's only cool<br />wearing the merch and that now<br />she's just 15 and can't fucking wait. <br /><br /><br />Rodney Wood says: I've been published recently in Nth Position, Interpreter's House, Krax, Stride and elsewhere previously. I help out at our local arts centre and one day the Director said as you like the gigs so much why don't you write about them. So I have. Everything from thrash metal, country, comedians, guitarists etc to Tibetan monks. I'm the guest reader at Writeangle in Petersfield in November. I'm on Facebook and www.myspace.com/rodneytwoodUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-63882137542560180432009-07-07T15:56:00.006+01:002009-07-08T16:22:07.489+01:00Spatchcock AggregatorBlack Lace erotic book publisher <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/jul/07/erotica-publisher-black-lace" TARGET="_blank">employs withdrawal method</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.ballardian.com/a-dirty-and-diseased-mind-the-unicorn-bookshop-trial" TARGET="_blank">‘A dirty and diseased mind’: The Unicorn bookshop trial</a>. A bit of counter-culture history, my little friends.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.reason.com/news/show/133870.html" TARGET="_blank">Death of a Dystopian</a>: more Ballardiana.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.pretty-scary.net/" TARGET="_blank">Pretty Scary</a>, an ezine For Women in Horror by Women in Horror.<br /><br />Why do we <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/2/e7f0732c-5160-11de-84c3-00144feabdc0.html" TARGET="_blank">hate poetry</a>?<br /><br />Poetry as a <a href="http://htmlgiant.com/?p=10726" TARGET="_blank">site of resistance</a>?<br /><br /><A HREF="http://www.scribd.com/sunk island publishing" TARGET="_blank">The Sunk Island Poetry Course</A> - a free downloadable ebook, handy intro for beginners.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-34759383319612639382009-06-19T13:55:00.006+01:002009-06-19T15:32:51.274+01:00Spatchcock AggregatorDavid Belbin on <a href="http://www.davidbelbin.com/2009_06_01_archive.html#3014116953111055796" TARGET="_blank">B S Johnson and Barry Cole</a>.<br /><br />Can Flarf ever be <a href="http://www.pw.org/content/can_flarf_ever_be_taken_seriously" TARGET="_blank">taken seriously</a>?<br /><br />Ken Edwards of Reality Street on <a href="http://www.realitystreet.co.uk/kens-blog/duffy-s-politics" TARGET="_blank">Carol Ann Duffy's Politics</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.bookride.com/2009/06/bookseller-types-uneducated-dealer.html" TARGET="_blank">Bookdealer Types</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://stevenfama.blogspot.com/" TARGET="_blank">Extreme Reading</a>.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.cprw.com/Coyle/transtromer.htm" TARGET="_blank">Anchor in the Shadows</a>: Transtromer.<br /><br />The <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/5570003/The-untold-tragic-story-of-Martin-Amiss-terrible-twin.html" TARGET="_blank">'Terrible Twin'</a> of Martin Amis.<br /><br />Gessen on <a href="http://www.newstatesman.com/books/2009/06/orwell-essays-64257-spain" TARGET="_blank">Orwell</a>: always tell the truth.<br /><br /><a href="http://chronicle.com/temp/reprint.php?id=q3nn8qtbvfjpcjpf8j2zvzmjphvbssmj" TARGET="_blank">Private Barthes</a>: he really <span style="font-style:italic;">is</span> a dead author. <br /><br /><a href="http://www.tnr.com/story_print.html?id=cd5b73e0-bb67-4c8c-b986-14998b4382b9" TARGET="_blank">Disturbances of Peace</a> - Chinese poetry.<br /><br /><a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/apr/11/rereading-thatcher-eighties-writers" TARGET="_blank">Darkness Visible</a> - how novelists were writing of Britain before Thatcher.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-81337789320523848922009-06-16T21:03:00.006+01:002009-06-17T21:15:14.214+01:00Remake: a Short Story by Mark RobinsonThe man allowed the author to breathe it in, leaving the blank cheque where it was on the desk between them; “Whatever figure you want.”<br /><br /> It was a tempting offer; Lee could visualise the numbers and his name on the pay to lines, it was already signed by the publishing house.<br /><br /> “Can I think about it?” Palms sweaty like an armoured car security guard with a spiralling mortgage and empty bank account, looking at the cash bag and thinking about running.<br /><br /> The man opposite pulled a grimace; it reminded Lee of a car salesman or mechanic being asked how much it was all going to cost him. “Afraid, all the thinking time you got has almost gone.”<br /><br /> He could do this, but could he live with himself afterwards? Looking down at the cheque, that tiny slip of pulp in the centre of the glossy mahogany desk; he had sold out before, he could do it again. With things the way they were, Lee didn’t really have a choice but to take the offer to re-write a classic: The Classic.<br /><br /> “Movie studios do it all the time.” He had said, even before the cheque was placed out in the open on the desk between them. “They look at their back catalogue and think, what can we remake this year?”<br /><br /> What little experience Lee had of working in Hollywood, he knew that remakes had become a staple of studios stuck for something new. And, if it wasn’t remakes, it was sequels or prequels, the post-modern equivalent. Here, though, a sequel already been done and a prequel, well, that was out of the question.<br /><br /> “But, you’re talking about a book.” It was difficult to get his head around; nobody re-wrote a classic book, not in the same way movie studios remade a classic film. Plenty of people had been inspired by a classic, and the resulting text had been categorised as a homage to the original but, to Lee’s recollection, no one had flagrantly re-written a best-seller before. At least, not this best seller.<br /><br /> “Think of what we’re commissioning you to do as a modern retelling, like a cover version, eh?” Fluffy eyebrows riding the ridges above his eyes like two deft puppets on invisible string. Lee felt like he should have strings attached to himself to be sitting here listening to this request.<br /><br /> “With all due respect, Lawrence, you can’t really compare this to a boy band cover; even a Beatles cover.” In his mind he was frustrated, only because he didn’t have a valid reason to say no; though, had plenty with which to accept. “Do you even own the rights?”<br /><br /> Leaning forward, the man’s bulbous nose almost shadowing the blank cheque; “That’s the beauty of it: the original texts pre-date copyright law, only the translations are protected.” A smile that exhibited his stained dentures. “What you’ll be doing for us is a further translation.” Rolling back his eyes with that slight twitch he had before reeling himself back across the desk into his usual reclining position.<br /><br /> Lee had to smile at that; “A translation of a translation.”<br /><br /> “Exactly!” Index finger in the air like the magicians and wizards and warlocks he wrote about exclaimed, index fingers replaced by a wand or sword or whatever, depending on the time in which the story was set.<br /><br /> “We’ve thought long and hard about this, Lee; long and hard, and we think that what you’re doing is just the direction we want to take this project in.” There was nothing like massaging a writer’s ego to make him sign on the dotted line. Great swollen hands out in the air, Lee could feel his ‘I have a dream’ speech garner strength. “With your talents, Lee, the best selling book of all time retold through your distinctive voice will take sales through the stratosphere. The original story of good versus evil; of original sin, our fall from grace and subsequent redemption through His deity on earth, Lee, this book will be just the beginning.”<br /><br /> The author felt suddenly ill; and, it wasn’t just the enormity of the task at hand. What about the public’s reaction to it and to him? He would, in all likelihood, become rich beyond his most wildest dreams but, he could, quite possibly, lose his soul and his life. What they wanted him to do was worse that what Mel Gibson and Salmon Rushtie had done combined; what Lawrence wanted him to do was re-write the word of God for the Playstation Generation.<br /><br /> “Could I have a glass of water, please, Lawrence?” Hand up to his mouth, swallowing back the surge of flood waters wading up from his gall bladder.<br /><br /> Lawrence reached forward in an instant to buzz his assistant, even though a half-filled jug sat not five feet away from them.<br /><br /> Stephanie strolled inside the office like an out-of-work catwalk model, sweeping up the jug, a glass and a placemat in her stride without pausing or spilling a drop. Lee necked the tumbler before she could put the jug down next to him and kindly refilled it before leaving the room.<br /><br /> Blank cheque still in place, next to the empty glass tumbler, collecting the slight spray of condensation that bubbled up from the base of the jug. In a far-off voice, Lawrence asked him if he was feeling okay.<br /><br /> “It’s just a little overwhelming, that’s all.” In truth he had gone as far as he could go with wizards and warlocks, the sudden spell of writers block had left him in a state of literary impotence; he could no longer perform. Meanwhile the money and advances he had made over the last five years were starting to recede, his life of excess and extravagance had seen to that, so had his wife and their three young children.<br /><br /> “This is my gift to you, Lee.” Quiet words, like those of a doctor who had a cure to the terminal disease he had just diagnosed. “Over two-thousand years worth of words from which to source something fresh and original; paraphrase if you must, cut things out; alter the narrative, switch the perspective, stagger the time-line: all we ask is that you retain the moral, the soul of the story.”<br /><br /> Lawrence was right; he could do this, this was just what he needed to get himself back on track, pull himself out of the lull he had fallen into. There was a rich wealth of players, of stories, of words from which he could fashion a story; as he thought about it, a steady calming feeling enveloped his body, he felt those long-lost juices flowing already. For the first time in months, Lee actually felt excited about writing something; gone was the anxiety and self-doubt blockers that had implanted themselves inside his own mind. He could overcome this, it was nowhere else but inside his own head.<br /><br /> Lee reached forward for the cheque.<br /><br /> “That’s my boy, Lee; that’s my boy!” Tapping his huge hands atop the giant desk like a kid perched on a high chair. <br /><br /> “Any figure?” Aiming his gaze upwards toward the big man.<br /><br /> “Your thirteen pieces of silver.” A steady stare that broke up after a moment or two. “Just kidding!” Those aged laughter lines breaking out across his weathered face like a stop-motion cadaver decaying into the earth.<br /><br /> Taking the pen that was swept across the desk toward him, the author reached up and etched in what he thought his life was worth, before slamming down the ball point.<br /><br /> Lawrence snatched both objects up, replacing the pen in his top pocket and revealing the cheque through a pair of glasses he had found from within his jacket pocket. With a turndown of his lips; “Quite modest, Lee; the board will be very happy with that. More than happy.”<br /><br /> In a dirge, he thought he might have left out a zero, then remembered that he had also written out the figure to make absolutely certain what he expected in his account.<br /><br /> “Half now, half on completion?” Pocketing the cheque once he had scored and folded it in two.<br /><br /> “I’m happy with that.” And he was.<br /><br /> “I’ll have accounts draft the paperwork and process the transfer before the end of the month.” Getting ready to stand. “If you want to swing by next Thursday, I’ll have the contract ready for you to sign.”<br /><br /> Lee was up out of his seat, tearing to get back to his office and start the outline of his bible. Coming around the desk to shake his hand, Lawrence had his Friday-afternoon-at-the-bar smile on show. “Glad to finally have you on board, Lee; it’s been a devil of a project to get going, let me tell you.”<br /><br /> “I bet it has.” Withdrawing his clammy palm from Lawrence and following his extended arm toward to the door.<br /><br /> “Any ideas you have in the meantime, if you could bring them along with you to the next meeting; I’d like to keep informed of developments.”<br /><br /> “Of course, Lawrence; I’ve got a couple of ideas already.”<br /><br /> Clapping the back of his shoulders; “That’s great, Lee; very reassuring indeed.” As he saw him into the outer office, right up to the lift doors as they opened, as if right on cue. “Have a safe journey home.” Then the author was shuttered behind the sliding doors that had divided to let him through.<br /><br /> Briskly treading back toward his throne, he stopped by Stephanie’s desk to ask when the next author was due in.<br /><br /> “About twenty minutes.” She replied, not breaking eye contact with her monitor.<br /><br /> “Fantastic; send him right in when he arrives, and add another one to the list.”<br /><br /><br />Mark Robinson, erstwhile poet and editor, has appeared in Birmingham’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Raw Edge Magazi</span>ne, Manchester’s <span style="font-style:italic;">Transmission</span> and online at <span style="font-style:italic;">Hackwriters.com</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">txtlit.co.uk</span> and <span style="font-style:italic;">shortstory.us.com</span> (short story Library).<br /><br />Forthcoming attractions are inclusions in: <span style="font-style:italic;">Never Hit by Lightning</span>, an anthology edited by Tucker Lieberman & Andrew Tivey; and an upcoming issue of <span style="font-style:italic;">Delivered Magazine</span> (late 2009).Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-55947039244183939802009-06-03T17:03:00.004+01:002009-06-03T17:23:41.399+01:00The Brush - Flash Fiction by Wayne Dean-RichardsIt was late November and the sky was full of snow and the shops were already full of Christmas stuff but she stood out so I followed her into a steamy cafe.<br /><br />She sat alone at a table near the window and drank a cappuccino. I ordered the same so I'd be in step with her, sitting two tables away, close enough so I could see she wasn't wearing a wedding ring but not so close, I hoped, that it'd be obvious I was watching her.<br /><br />Ten minutes passed. I wished I had on my good shirt instead of an old sweater, frayed at the cuffs. When she finished her cappuccino I followed her out of the cafe and along the high street to an office block at the top of the town.<br /> <br />The front doors swallowed her up. If I'd looked like I worked there, if I'd looked like I worked anywhere, I'd have gone in after her.<br /><br />I crossed the road to the bus station. When she came out I was going to speak to her. I wouldn't try and smooth talk her because I've never been any good at it, and since the operation I slur. My best bet, I decided, was to come clean: to tell her I'd seen her and had followed her and hoped she believed in love at first sight and felt it for me - because I felt it for her.<br /><br />In the end I got so so worked up I almost missed her. She was crossing the road, going away from me before I made my legs move. When I got close enough to call out to her she stopped and turned. I said: "I know this'll sound mad, but bear with me a minute, please, because it's really important - "<br /> <br /> *<br /> <br />I hear banging. The old man in the next room beats on the wall with the handle of a brush. I must've been shouting again. I didn't mean to. Why do rented rooms have such thin walls? Through the window I see a grizzled fox nuzzling an overturned dustbin, the scars of his life in his watchful eyes, whilst behind me the banging continues.<br /><br />"Alright!" I call, and when the banging stops I close my eyes and wonder how many years it's been since I saw her...<br /><br /><br />Wayne Dean-Richards lives in the West Midlands. His writing output includes poetry, short stories, novels and scripts. His most recent novel is <span style="font-style:italic;">Breakpoints</span>. His website is: www.waynedeanrichards.comUnknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-61070266634088911602009-05-16T10:45:00.006+01:002009-05-16T10:59:58.104+01:00A Lovely Sense of Closure - Poems by Andrew TaylorA LOVELY SENSE OF CLOSURE AND THE FREEDOM TO REIN YOU IN<br /><br />back from the edge, where the waterfall's spray coats<br />your skin. Oh to be in Wales in the Autumn! When the sky<br /> <br />threatens to crack and take you with it, remember the candles<br />lit in your honour, bottom left. I always choose left over right<br /><br />an odd trait from 1980s Liverpool, turning left at the bottom<br />of the stairs at the Everyman Bistro into the melee of familiar<br /><br />Friday faces, The Blue Nile oozing from the Third Room.<br /><br />After rain freshness. Trackside fences littered with amber,<br />reflections cast off polished rails, diesel pools a rainbow.<br /><br />This Autumn age! Comfort of dark nights and neon. The<br />city draws in river mist, halos round street lights<br /><br /> <br /> <br />AMARI <br /><br />How I love the smell of Autumn in the morning.<br />Wind throws spent leaves in a merry dance,<br />power cables whistle in time. As the storm<br />gathers in, a train pulses by on a grey horizon.<br /> <br />A heater clicks in Room 111 of the Days Inn,<br />Bristol West. Workplace shelf cleared, neutrality<br />brushed aside. Make a mark! capture the image,<br />the M5 at its rush-hour best.<br /><br />Light streaks luminous outside lane. Air-condition<br />cold swirls through service station view. Nature<br />and human interaction, hard shoulder borders<br />ripple with nocturnal creatures.<br /><br />October mist descends like a shroud, brings evening<br />on board. Journey through carved country, picturing<br />the view of cows from bridges, that cross to shelter<br />and dream of daybreak.<br /><br /><br />Andrew Taylor is a Liverpool based poet and co-editor of erbacce and erbacce-press. His latest collection comes from Sunnyoutside Press, Buffalo. Check out Andrew's <a href="www.andrewtaylorpoetry.blogspot.com" TARGET="_blank">website</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-33646711455701397992009-04-03T10:58:00.003+01:002009-04-21T14:24:11.752+01:00Gower Road and Fall: Poems by Cliff YatesGOWER ROAD<br /><br />He dreams all day of a crowded party,<br />strangers dancing round his room <br />with the sink in the corner <br /><br />and American <br />novels on the mantelpiece.<br />All he has to do is lie there<br /><br />every possible future<br />at that moment before him.<br /><br />Rain streams down an inside wall<br />loosening the plaster.<br />We gather downstairs in the sitting room<br /><br />with the landlord’s piano<br />then it’s Saturday Night, the gateway<br />to Sunday Morning<br /><br />by Velvet Underground and Nico<br />the one with the banana on the cover.<br /><br /> <br /><br />FALL<br /><br />The tablets work but send him to sleep<br />though when he can make it, the eight inch reflector<br />is manoeuvrable, so that’s a blessing,<br />what with the dodgy hip and that hill of a garden<br /><br />and bearing in mind that time observing Mars <br />when he stepped back off the low stone wall <br />at three in the morning and lay sprawled <br />on the rockery and January frost<br />calling softly for help while the guinea-pigs<br />trembled in the corner of their hutch<br /><br />or after the Beer Festival, when he opened <br />the door pulling into Southampton, stepped off <br />the train before it stopped, fell and rolled on his back <br />after insisting that all the commemorative <br />glasses go in his rucksack because<br />he’s the mature student, he’s the sensible one.<br /><br /><br />Cliff Yates is the author of <em>Henry's Clock </em>(winner of the Aldeburgh first collection prize and the Poetry Business book & pamphlet competition). A new collection, <em>Frank Freeman's Dancing School</em>, is forthcoming from Salt. Cliff's website - <a href="http://www.cliffyates.co.uk" TARGET="_blank">www.cliffyates.co.uk</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-4171637015309623542008-12-06T14:15:00.002+00:002008-12-06T14:18:21.056+00:00Vamp Of The Shire - Two Poems by Colin JamesIN CAVENDISH THERE ARE HERMANS AND BEULAHS<br /><br />Some bastard stole my car.<br />See the shoreline groan.<br />Hear the blue sky get involved.<br />Solitude is never planned,<br />not like remorse or regret.<br />Age steals from youth<br />pockets full of the stuff<br />effectively overflowing<br />into less is more.<br />Muscles have a hankering too.<br />As thief, I abandon this vehicle<br />before it's too late.<br />He who hesitates is human.<br /><br /> <br /> <br />VAMP OF THE SHIRE<br /><br />It's a mistake<br />to make demands<br />of the person in power.<br />Wait in the pile<br />while she demurs.<br />Policies of politeness<br />stick to the walls<br />like wallpaper.<br />I'm puckering.<br />Kudos to the cartwheels<br />of conjecture.<br /><br /><br /><br />Colin James works in Energy Conservation and is a member of The Brothers Of The Endemic.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-87361298773209653942008-12-05T17:08:00.005+00:002008-12-05T17:14:54.810+00:00The Mirror - Short Story by Roz GoddardLet me tell you, I have never in five years witnessed a noble act - unless you count reading.<br /><br />Today, the forecast was for snow, that can mean any number of things – a stranded salesmen en route to Dundee booking in, perhaps lovers desperate to meet for their stolen afternoon despite the weather - I hoped for the latter. Salesmen are invariably dull - tossing cheap cufflinks onto the bedside table, using the remote control to search for Porn. These men have no taste. Hotel Porn is abysmal; I don’t know how they rise to it.<br /><br />Anyway, no T.V. this afternoon for our pair. In they came light-footed - she’d had a gin or two - maybe a beer for him. No setting down of suitcases, no checking the hospitality tray (only married couples and conference delegates do this); they were almost dancing.<br /><br />They didn’t know each other well, there was no finesse in their touching, certainly no familiarity, their movements were actorly as if they had seen this sort of thing on T.V. - yes, as if off-stage they were being directed to look passionate. I’ve seen it all - the haste, the muttered endearments, the application of effort, as if there was a glass trophy at the end of the month for toil. The wall lights glowed honey over them, they could be forgiven for thinking they were safe.<br /><br />He had history, looked as if he had, defensive around the small eyes but handsome with it, looking as though he was, at the core of himself, rather ignoble. She was beautifully turned out, an indigo velvet dress with sheer stockings, high on the excitement of it – conker-glossy hair and radiant skin, as if she had seen the future and it was full of light.<br /><br />They were right at the beginning of things, he had alcohol (that groaning cliché), it speaks of the Vauxhall Vectra, two wheels up on the pavement, while he grabbed a bottle of corner shop champagne. It’s regarded as a drink without negative connotations, unless it is used to disparage someone in an argument about class, though in this situation it suggests celebration, side-stepping the mundane. It is impossible to think about the colourlessness of aged parents, the smell of hospitals, the weekly shop - when you are drinking champagne. They had the whole afternoon stretching in front of them, glasses in hand, buttons undone. Though I am puzzled as to why they chose January to begin their affair, did any affair begun in January ever flourish? The month of midnight mornings and garden rot. Whether they like it or not they are carrying these faces of winter into the muted hotel warmth and the malaise is difficult to shake.<br /><br />But it’s not the beginnings that interest me, they are often warm, full of hope, (despite the climate) it’s in the endings where the real story lies.<br /><br />The problem this afternoon for our pair was one of geography. It would have been impossible in that over-heated office of theirs, with all the talk of work and deadlines and projections for them to get to know each other. They would have supposed things and the truth is, physical attraction makes you stupid, I’m not immune myself. One can overlook things.<br /><br />The sex, and you must be wondering or you wouldn’t be human, was to an unbiased on-looker, rather unsatisfactory. I had detected in him a desire for sensuous pleasures, without any hint of sensitivity, he was like a great grass roller powering over the turf with not a thought for the daisies. She was gamely giving it her all, but I think, slightly bemused by his rather selfish focus. He was away unselfconsciously exploring the far-reaches of pleasure. She couldn’t catch him.<br /><br />What do I mean by geography? They were to each other, somewhere unreachable, this was clear in the post-sex chat when they were bathing - he had taken the trouble to bring a sliver of Imperial Leather for his sensitive skin, a small intimacy she was moved by, this pulling back of the curtain on his hidden life, she was delighted it as if it were a precursor to deeper revelations, as if it signalled a shift onto the hinterland of a proper relationship. I could have told her it didn’t. He just had sensitive skin.<br /><br />Champagne, despite all its bubbles and reputation, was no help to them. The post-sex chasm soon opened up, I detected as they lay in the cooling water a re-assessment, a cursory romp through books, film, music, all the normal distractions they enjoyed, revealed some interesting differences - instead of knowing each other more, they were to each other a bigger puzzle. There was a realisation in her greater silences that she was listening, appalled, to someone she didn’t have much in common with.<br /><br />Although I didn’t have her down as the bragging type, she rattled off half a dozen literary titles she’d read in recent months. There was some anger in her revelation, I thought hold on love, it’s not a competition. He splashed about a bit and lost his soap.<br /><br />It turned out he wasn’t a big reader; he’d read ‘Fever Pitch’ by Nick Hornby. Jesus, I thought, if only she’d given him a questionnaire to fill out before sleeping with him. His favourite book apparently, and I could tell by his tone, he’d gone misty eyed, was a children’s book called, The Velveteen Rabbit, he said his mother used to read it to him. I wondered though if this wasn’t a rather clever ploy on his part, what was it revealing? That he had a sensitive side, that he loved his mother and that he was deeply sentimental – some women like that.<br /><br />There were silences, slightly awkward. He said, ‘You’re beautiful’, I imagine she smiled, but didn’t respond. Then the bombshell from her, ‘Do you love your wife?’<br /><br />I realised immediately that despite her greater sensitivity and knowingness, she was with the champagne drunk, in the now cold water, hopelessly out of her depth. It was hard for her to accept that here, in this out-of-town hotel; on a dual carriageway she had been involved in nothing more than a bout of unsatisfactory sex. He refused to answer her question and rose from the water. He came out into the main room with a towel wrapped around his waist and conjured a wall with a barrage of sound from the T.V. <br /><br />She stayed in the bathroom for a while; I heard the dull sweep of the towel over the mirror, water draining away. She feigned indifference when she emerged and started to get dressed too. I was reminded of two people in a family changing area at the local swimming pool, self-consciously pulling on underwear, careful not to catch anyone’s eye, backs hunched, curling in on themselves. I found it poignant that they both had a couple of inches of wet hair, where they had lain together in the bath, that intimacy now utterly evaporated.<br /><br />He moved to the window, over three hours of snow had fallen and obliterated the parked cars. The dual carriageway was at a standstill, I saw in that micro expression both disappointment and regret - and a rising panic.<br /><br />He began to dress quickly and after the briefest kiss to her cheek, and a mumbled something about seeing her at work, was gone, into the hushed corridor. I imagined him emerging onto the car park, mobile at his ear, looking up at the sky, his face catching the large, slippery flakes, pleading with the gods for the snow to stop falling, so he could get home.<br /><br />She remained in the room sitting dumbly on the edge of the bed, the weather report forecast more snow coming from the West. For the first time she looked directly at me, and I, without sentiment, reflected the grey swimming of her eyes, her silent mirthless mouth, the rise and fall of her chest, hands cradling air. Here was a different woman, the woman who entered the room all those hours ago was not disappeared exactly, rather she had arrived in the future, and it was snowing. <br /><br /><br /><br />Roz Goddard has published three collections of poetry; her most recent, <span style="font-style:italic;">How to Dismantle a Hotel Room</span>, was published in 2006 in association with the Birmingham Book Festival. She is a former poet laureate of Birmingham and is currently working on a collection of short stories. <a href="www.rozgoddard.com" TARGET="_blank">Roz's website</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-15522961628183212222008-09-23T21:15:00.004+01:002008-09-23T21:29:56.205+01:00Intermittent Faults - Pamphlet by David Lightfoot<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibXXcfDpzVzBkOE3tdXco6QTslt_bYLw13_LyM24mytwBMds5-XdF3KI75NVZN9hlPUTP5ol0B_-Cnv5BY_3-iEvurPo_rGVnpQ6vO2C1H-SAowyCR9yOzo6JlTMDpJYte-Qzf_j_Zf60/s1600-h/intermittent_faults1.jpg"><img style="float:left; margin:0 10px 10px 0;cursor:pointer; cursor:hand;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEibXXcfDpzVzBkOE3tdXco6QTslt_bYLw13_LyM24mytwBMds5-XdF3KI75NVZN9hlPUTP5ol0B_-Cnv5BY_3-iEvurPo_rGVnpQ6vO2C1H-SAowyCR9yOzo6JlTMDpJYte-Qzf_j_Zf60/s320/intermittent_faults1.jpg" border="0" alt=""id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5249315188800425026" /></a><br />15/01/08<br /><br />This could be it.<br />At last to enter a house<br />and feel, at once, at home.<br />What clinched it was<br />the distant view<br />towards a hill<br />- an echo of my boyhood -<br />from the study window,<br />flat land suddenly rising,<br />a ridge enclosing,<br />excluding, hinting<br />at what lies over and beyond.<br /><br /><br />Fourteen poems from a journal by David Lightfoot, author of <span style="font-style:italic;">Wounds Heal</span>, <span style="font-style:italic;">Down Private Lanes</span> and the novel <span style="font-style:italic;">Winterman's Company</span>.<br /><br />Price £3.50, available from Sunk Island Publishing. Please contact us for details and review copies. ISBN 978-1-874778-41-7<br /><br />Forthcoming: <span style="font-style:italic;">Hologram</span>, a pamphlet of poems by Pam Thompson.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-36400886516205074462008-09-14T10:25:00.002+01:002008-09-14T10:35:32.804+01:00Motion's Laureate BlockAndrew Motion complains about the strains of being Poet Laureate, ie the Queen don't like my poems and it's given me writer's block: according to <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1053910/The-Laureates-lament-Being-poet-Queen-thankless-given-writers-block-says-Andrew-Motion.html" TARGET="_blank">The Daily Mail</A>, <a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/arts-entertainment/books/features/lost-for-words-the-curse-of-writers-block-927100.html" TARGET="_blank">The Independent</A> and <a href="http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/theroyalfamily/2712513/Poet-Laureate-Andrew-Motion-says-writing-for-the-Royal-Family-is-a-hiding-to-nothing.html" TARGET="_blank">The Telegraph</a>. <br /><br />Carol Ann Duffy gets <a href="http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2008/sep/04/gcses.english" TARGET="_blank">banned</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-31525461842550003692008-03-27T19:43:00.002+00:002008-03-27T20:15:52.816+00:00Trees On Bear Road: New Collection by Brendan Cleary'Hank Williams on acid' is how Brendan Cleary was once described. Since 1985 he has been assailing the polite world of poetry with his bittersweet poems of hope and disappointment.<br /><br />His may be a talent ‘going to waste’ but it’s fruitfully done and we are the richer for it. Bar-stools, beers, horses, girls and football (‘some things hurt more, much more than cars and girls...’ well, more than cars, but not girls): this is the territory of the not-so-lucky, the passion-wracked, the love-wrecked, the feckless, the unrecognised artists of the bedroom and the gutter, and the enemies of regular work.<br /><br />This new 16-page pamphlet is published by Sunk Island Publishing and is available for £3.50 inclusive of UK postage. Please make cheques payable to Michael Blackburn and send to Sunk Island Publishing, 7 Lee Avenue, Heighington, Lincoln, LN4 1RD. Or via PayPal: moggseye[at]yahoo.com<br /><br />Also available as a FREE pdf: <a href="http://www.artzero.org.uk/Trees_On_Bear_Road.pdf" TARGET="_blank">Trees On Bear Road</a>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-10731005048084793452008-03-22T07:51:00.003+00:002008-03-22T07:56:44.532+00:00Jonathan Williams, Poet & Publisher, 1929 - 2008<a href="http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/jonathan-williams-poet-essayist-and-publisher-799335.html">Obituary</a> for Jonathan Williams, poet, essayist, publisher.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-23202566188462082372008-03-10T10:30:00.004+00:002008-03-12T13:36:48.124+00:00Mustard - A Short Story By Alan BeardIf I listen very hard I can hear the trains half a mile away beyond walls, roads and muffling trees. Julie might be on one, her gang of sixth formers taking over the carriage. Nearer there's the road at the end, maybe that's Annie en route to work in her new Fiat. The fat glued-in homework books of her charges will slip about on the back seat. Or maybe, as deputy head, she doesn’t do much marking now.<br /><br />If ever I had anyone in mind, the ideal imprinted somehow years back, she was it. Knew from our first holiday in Wales, before that. But those days sealed it: lying in secret coves with her, brushing the sand and shell chips from her soles and under toes. Her ankle in my palm. At night we entwined in our tent until we were driven off the hillside by rain, to a caravan where we listened to the radio, the rain drum, and smoked. We spent the evenings in pubs, gingery pints with dirty foam, Annie drawing men’s looks. (I got used to that over the years.) Over a rickety table with Wem beer mats, under a window framing the rain lashed bay, we said maybe we’ll have a go at it. How she put it.<br /><br />There was a funfair there, Seaside Terrace, and we’d go on the Cage between downpours. Annie next to me was pinned by centrifugal force against the wet metal, her hair whipped back and up, her streaming eyes crinkled as we span round. Fair, sky, fair, sky, held above the world before we plunged, to lie amongst the lights and crowds, almost dreaming the moment as I am now, lying similarly, trying to arrange my innards by willpower. My messy organs slip. Pain melts my back, or maybe the pain’s not there, maybe it’s my brain leaking, my lungs packing up, my heart. Something is taking me bit by bit. <br /><br />*<br /><br />Any day now I will be a grandfather. I wasn’t told directly. Sue, who I don’t see much of, thought Annie had rung me, so I didn’t know for a few months. I thought she’d just got fat when I saw her, until she said. ‘well what do you think, then, from the bump, a boy or a girl?’ I hardly know the thin bloke she married. He has long hair, looks frail. He looked incapable of impregnating anyone me and Annie suggested to each other at Sue’s wedding. We did chat a bit. First we had that awkward moment as we met at the buffet table, she still counted calories, her not-so-new husband in the background as she said, ‘hi Phil, how’s things?’ A little purse of the lips at the end, almost flirty I thought. ‘OK,’ I was wary but I wanted to speak, I wanted to stand once more in her good looks.<br /><br />We were talking and laughing over the same things, and it was like being back in the early 80s, that easiness. For a moment I thought I would ask her back but I stopped myself in time and stuffed cake instead. I watched my daughter with her friends, pink fat arms around her shoulders, posing for cameras and strobed in flashlights. We talked then of possible grandchildren - Annie didn’t like the idea of being a grandmother, felt old. I wondered how much I’d see of any hypothetical child. And now, if I survive, if I’m ambulanced out of here? I’ll probably be known of, but little visited. That’s how it used to be with our two. She took them with her, everything sticks to Annie.<br /><br />Met her at a final year party. Another Girl, Another Planet, followed by the Buzzcocks as I made my way across, drink in hand, stopped, unable to get through the crush of bodies. A group joined hands and sang the Doctor Who theme. Then some different music came on, some soul I’d never heard poured through the crowd, pulsed, and colours opened up to me, patterns repeating as I went over to her. She seemed bright, contained amongst the tipped up bottles, half rolled spliffs and piled high ashtrays. There was a slew of black vinyl by her feet, somebody beside her examined the gatefold sleeve of the latest Floyd album, The Wall was it? She remembers Roxy Music and Blondie being on. I stood in front of her swaying. I said/sung, ‘Long journeys wear me out.’ <br /><br />‘So you’ve sampled the spiked punch then,’ Her first words to me, a sardonic look as I stood thinking of my move across to her, through the music, my body catching up with itself, over and over. Think of it now as I bleed (or have I stopped), coagulate on the floor, my move towards her, what line to try, what would get to her, smiling back at the people who drunkenly intervened to wish me luck in the real world. The music that started when I reached her was Talking Heads, The Great Curve; I swayed over her looking down into her upturned eyes, the sober little smile. <br /><br />She was in her first year, doing teacher training at the campus across town. Two years to go. I used to go across to the students’ common room there, watch her talk with her mates, files on their laps, when they came back from TP, exhausted. Secretly I turned down a job in London to stay around. On our first date, my exams and her TP nearly over, after listening in her room to some Bowie, hissy due to her poor cassette player, we walked down from her terraced house in Selly Oak and came across the hospital fete, and we stayed amongst its stalls. Belly dancers and flamenco out on the sports field. Some local bigwig cracking jokes over the PA system, the punch line lost to crackle. The sun seeming to take and give energy, blurring her body into the day. ‘I’d like to say we enjoyed that,’ piped into the air as the belly dancers finished, and the one nearest me lost her smile and looked down at the bell around her ankle. Their silky trousers billowed as they got down off their toes and walked away and Annie laughed in my arms for the first time. She glowed with a life half hidden to me. I expected to find out the rest, kissed her deep to say so, into her mouth contaminated with sausage roll.<br /><br /> <br /><br />*<br /><br />I am sure I shout and shift, swear, but when I lie still a moment I sense I haven’t moved at all, my blood sticks me to the carpet.<br /><br />Will anyone come by? They all think I’m on holiday. Torremolinos. I’ve been there before, but not on my own. Birmingham-by-the-Sea my daughter, Julie, says. My case is packed upstairs, he didn’t bother going upstairs: sun lotion, shorts, passport, T shirts, a baseball cap for my balding head. <br /><br />I'm just about to ring for a taxi, finishing toast, Radio 5 on for the football, when the doorbell rings. I think this is what confuses me: I think I’ve already called the taxi and this is it. Which it isn’t. No-one I know though I thought for a minute it was Sue’s ex who stalked her for a few months - she pointed him out when she visited once, stood across the road, disgruntled rather than violent. It might be the one who hangs around outside International Stores. It is: the pale face, sloping back it always seems or maybe he's just sneering at me. Teeth slope too, inwards: identikit picture I’ll make if I pull through. What about his eyes? He doesn't really look at me, seems bored, I glimpse an ordinary grey-brown. Eyebrows that peter out, a nose that ends like a grape. A cut like a red stitch at the corner of his mouth. Funny thing I’m sure he’s Brummie, heard him mouth off a few times, complaints about the treatment he gets from everybody, ex girlfriend, probation officer, God, but he puts on a Cockney accent. Calls me granddad as they do in the Sweeney, UK Gold, as he slides the knife in. <br /><br />He has a car outside, probably not his, looks like a family hatchback, its boot up, I can see my TV sat in the back through the gap he leaves, I can see down to the road outside, no-one comes along the normally busy pavement. He steps over me with hi-fi, video, looks in vain for a computer (it’s at the repair shop). He already has my just received first ever mobile phone, a joint present from my daughters, which they took great delight in loading their numbers on and baffling me with ring tones and txting; and the cash from my wallet. He tries to kick the bank PIN number out of me but I never use it, never look at it, every week £50 cash from the branch in the High Street. Mr Predictable, I tell him so but he doesn’t believe me. He gets down to sneer more directly and I see more of his eyes then and his teeth, bits of white in a face reddened with the effort of kicking me, then he decides to stab me again, in almost the same place, for luck.<br /><br />*<br /><br />When I was at school Hopkins said we should all be extra kind to Liz Black when she came back after the funeral of her dad who died in an accident in his lorry up near Scotch Corner. Liz became desirable, mysterious, her eyelashes down, left alone. It was looking at her long dark hair curling, reds in it, her eyes and mouth little folds I felt first, like a shock from an exposed light switch, what must have been love. More than lust. And then not again until that party, Annie in the corner, soberly tiddly, her toes amongst bottles and glasses. It wasn’t quite love at first sight, I’m sure I’d glimpsed her once before, playing football drunk with all the students from the house, bored one Sunday, Penny in goal; thinking how brilliant I was to cut in from the wing, pass two dishevelled defenders but fluffing the shot, when she passed beneath trees at the edge of the park, someone like her. <br /><br /> <br /><br />Haven’t felt it again with anybody, though being stabbed at one momentary stage of steel-entry felt something like it, oddly, before a rush of pain. Poor Maria didn‘t stand a chance. Not Mariah, Marie or Marian, she told me on that first night in the bar. The end was there when I met her, on the rebound and she knew it too, never to stop bouncing, re-bouncing, through a second marriage and out. She called my ex ‘Rebecca’, after du Maurier, but Annie wasn’t dead killed at my hand, was it a gun, a ligature, or pushing off a cliff?, but living in Kings Heath (Julie: ‘an oxymoron’). Near enough to bump into her in Sainsburys pushing trolleys towards each other down the booze aisle, or outside International Stores, on the narrow pavement, people milling, the lurking stranger with the knife perhaps. Or at the cinema complex a drive away, coming out with him, bollockchops, me with Maria who steered me away, as, automatically, I headed over towards her.<br /><br /> <br /><br />*<br /><br />Let me say what I want to say says this upset caller on the radio. I hear it clearly sometimes. Mostly though it’s just a hum at the back of everything. While I’ve been lying here I’ve heard Adam Faith and Barry Sheene have died. The presenter says is this the most crucial week in history? Another says we will be at war by the end of it. <br /><br />Cars swish by outside, Shahid’s car slowing down, the car that vibrates with hip-hop or is it rap, feeling into the house, along the hall as it goes by, slowly, feel the warmth of bass through the floor. Next door the other side shouting across the road to the collarless dog that runs past every morning. ‘Rover.’ ‘Fido.’ ‘Blackie.’ A new name tried every day. Charlie. Bob. Kids on their way down to the bus stop on the corner. Definitely Monday: the radio says it is. The traffic girl is speaking to me directly: soothing words about the tailback at Junction 10 near Walsall. Rain coming in from Wales. Relentless news from around the world rolling in. <br /><br />Suddenly I remember lying on the carpet in front of the gas fire at 14 years old, watching Sandy Shaw on Eurovision. My dad saying she would win. Her feet in tights as she did that little shuffle-dance, toes pointing in. Annie years later dancing too in her tights before going out, dancing half dressed. When she came home, that once or twice, stunned with drink, mazy, easy to manipulate, ‘I’m sex-on-a-plate, sex-on-a-plate,’ she kept repeating as I moved her arms and legs as I wished. I didn’t ask where she’d been, what she’d done, not wanting to lose sight of her body in moonlight across the bed. <br /><br />My sperm tasted of mustard, she once complained. It was definitely Shrove Tuesday, a drop of maple syrup on a strand of her hair. Doesn’t everybody’s? I asked. No, she said. She liked salt and vinegar crisps. White wine at first, until she ‘grew out of it.’ She watched horror films as if they were real. She believed in rapid transformation. Werewolves, vampires. <br /><br />She used to say ‘God created us to prove to Himself that He existed.’ She used to talk in capitals. I knew her kids when she became a teacher would love her. I’d tried teacher training but failed TP. I started off confidently, in most lessons, got them interested in metaphor and simile: as stupid as a coot, sir, and then some little thing, an OHP bulb going, some large headed boy having a coughing fit, a fart and the laughter caused would embarrass me. I’d turn my back for too long. The ends of lessons were always shouting at them, usually one group in the corner, a rash of them, long hair and grinning, the rest yawning, leaning back, as the noise burst out beyond the closed door along the corridor to the head’s office. I switched courses, started again at 20, you could then.<br /><br />In our first flat we shared a rotary dryer with 8 others, on a walled off shop roof. The landlord put up an incomprehensible rota. Trucks the size of giraffes got stuck in ring road traffic outside our window. We could have stepped out on to their roofs, considered doing so in drunken or druggy moments. We listened awe struck to our quarrelling neighbours, their detailed harangues, the uncontained anger. Her mother, on a visit watching her programme: Corrie, this was before EastEnders, said turn it down, so she could listen. Grunts and shouts. Muffled fuck this and fuck that came through. Us some years later. Not as bad, not as loud, except once or twice. Different but just the same. <br /><br />I dissolve into the floor, I try to lift my head but someone has sewn my cheek to the carpet. Lilliputians while I slept. I used to read books, the night I saw her, moved across to her, I had a copy of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance in my inner coat pocket, always a book in there, weighing me down on one side. <br /><br />*<br /><br />I’d come back from an interview, didn’t get it, red tie flapping uselessly, to see him leave our house. I recognised him as a visitor to our works, where we make educational equipment and latterly software. He always wore black suits and sober ties. I was getting out of the car when he came through our gate, so different in jeans, crumpled around the knees. And her flustered response once inside the house, the house that suddenly looked odd to me, as if it belonged to someone else. My wife and her boyfriend eventually. He looks like a non league goalie, big and stupid with hidden eyes, his head shaped like, and as soft as, a bollock, hair what there is of it like snail slime. You can understand my feelings officer: she preferred him to me.<br /><br />Him to me. I looked in mirrors and saw the set of my jaw, the lines come from what must have been knowledge of her, seeing her leave me before the process had even begun. When she went out once I searched the house and found a diary, with coffee spots and water or wine stains. Ink at a slant, abbreviations, and hints all tried to conceal what was emerging from the sentences: someone else. Liaisons after work, days taken off. I didn’t say anything for a while, walked about, talked as normal, but the road I walked outside the house, with its parked cars either side, rocked from side to side, as if on a boat. I felt always soberly drunk.<br /><br />The end was noisy, at times, cutlery bashing, worse for Julie and Sue, who looked on at what they’d sometimes suspected: Mum and Dad had pretended all was well, this now, arguments, slicing gestures, eyes flashing or else downcast, was what was real, was what waited for them too, just around the corner.<br /><br />*<br /><br />Lying here I can feel how the house works without me, wood settles, microbes grow in the water pipes, the plant tries to extract the last moisture from its mini-plot of soil. Insects and spiders chance more runs across the floor.<br /><br />Work won’t miss me for two weeks. Someone will call. Bound to. See through the door window, if the sun is at the right angle, through the inner door he closed, to a blurred me, on the floor, gurgling. Or am I gagged? When he knelt to check me out did he think I was dead? His face stretched as if through a fish-eye, moved back all the time, out of focus. Surely someone will come, if not today, tomorrow. Postman, gasman, salesman, thief.<br /><br />*<br /><br />The radio says Cheltenham Gold Cup tomorrow. Going is good. She used to be so interested in that, coming from near there, her side of the town so she saw the traffic, the TV crews and the horse boxes, flowing past her door. Talked about the Irish invasion: generous, drunken, big gestures of cordiality like paying for everyone in a queue to get into a night club - discos in those days. The 'craic' inside with the extra money spent on drink and pills. Sticking with the winners. ‘Wicked,’ she said, winked at me and made me think of the night she confessed to, or did she, did I find out some other way, how she got together with a treble-winner, an elderly Irish farmer. I imagine his rough, aged hands on her and his missing teeth, his Guinness-and-whisky-chaser belly, staying in some mid-range hotel, with him passing out on her mid-act, from the booze.<br /><br />*<br /><br />In a paper purple hat I met the enemy. Annie long gone by then, I was at a Christmas works do where clients were invited and there he was, a major buyer of our goods, someone to be wined and dined by my superiors, kept on the right side of lest the non-league goalie stop signing the cheques. A guarantor of my company, my job. Sat and watched him chat easily, move around different groups before we sat down. Then surrounded by smiling faces, hands on his stupid arm.<br /><br />There may have been fisticuffs, I can’t remember. People tell me. There were certainly names called, pushing. Why when I catch a glimpse of him anyway and don’t jump like I did then, waiting to speak and tell him I was a reasonable man, prepared to listen to both sides, but to make my point, to say something, about the way it happened. He was stood again and I jumped, but he moved and I just caught his shoulder. He turned, annoyed, to me and whispered something like 'stupid cunt' under his breath.<br /><br />I was called to the office the following Monday. I was given a second chance. I have to be nice to him, to his idea, his presence there or not at work, ditto at her house, our house, there or not, when I used to pick up my daughters and remind them who I was. The hugs and kisses, the cries plentiful at first, Julie’s head lying on my chest (‘careful,’ Annie said, ‘she’s got nits.’), Sue putting her arm around my shoulders matey-like, when we parted, when I picked them up, soon fell to a peck on the cheek, a squeeze of the arm. About right considering the years gone by, the chunk of childhood I missed so that now when they appear they’re almost adults with boyfriends and studies and part time jobs and driving lessons; appearing to wish me happy birthday in the house I shared with Maria, (she left shortly after their second birthday visit), to sit and ask how I am and raise a glass and say they are on their way out, some gig, hadn’t I noticed they were dressed up? They’d each come as parts of couples, introduce the latest boyfriend who never say much, grunt hello and never give me a proper look at them, before - puff - they’re gone.<br /><br />*<br /><br />The French holiday was supposed to be reconciliation, though we hadn’t parted. We farmed the kids out (her parents) and set out. We were going to get fit too, as well as put our marriage back together, ‘get on an even keel’ as she said. We were going to use the bikes we’d bought when the kids were small. We had imagined the four of us on country roads, a picnic stashed in saddlebags, a rug, fruit. But the city roads were frightening; we forgot we would have to teach the children to ride and that seemed impossible. We ran out of patience down the park running after the soon to crash Sue who did learn, or Julie who never did. ‘To save them from rusting in the shed,’ she said, ‘before we forget the combination numbers.’ We can numb ourselves with alcohol, I said about the prospect of sleeping on grass and stones, cheap stuff from the local vineyards. I knew instantly I shouldn’t have said it, reviving the ‘cheapskate’ tag she’d given me years before when I’d suggested a few economies. Own brand black bags for example. Yes sir, Captain Sensible, sir, she said, saluting me.<br /><br />The first afternoon in Bordeaux was the best, after sleeping on the overnight train down from Paris, and waiting on the station platform for our bikes, packed in cardboard and hung like carcasses, to be unloaded. We set up camp and rested, then wandered into the city and found a funfair set up in a huge car park. It seemed a good omen and we got ourselves swung up together into the air as so long before, this time we looked out into blue sky like parachutists falling backwards, clamped in against danger, padded bars against our cheeks. After we walked giddily among the French crowd, eating crepes or was it pommes frites from a cone.<br /><br />We couldn’t understand the language, although I’d told her we’d get by on my ‘O’ level French. But they talked too fast and I only caught odd words. I always gave large notes to market sellers to make sure I covered it.<br /><br />Sex only happened a couple of times in the slidy double sleeping bags zipped together. We cycled mornings along the Dordogne, following roads off to small villages which were always shut up tight. We’d sit on the village bench in the dusty heat waiting for the Boulangerie to open. We bought by pointing and devoured the pastries outside the shop, before saddling up, re-joining the river, swirling below the road, on to the next campsite. In the evening we sat out by lakes and passed the litre bottle to and fro. At night I had stomach pangs like zips closing.<br /><br />Every English couple we heard on different campsites seemed in the midst of argument. ‘First you want breakfast and then you want to upset me’...’because Charles is a friendly man.’ With so much around us we avoided argument ourselves somehow, pretended we were French when they nodded at us; Annie looks French a bit anyway, and people would talk to her at first as if she was a compatriot. We just visited: discussed the surroundings, the meals anticipated in restaurants, next day’s itinerary, we pored over the unfolded map eating St Emilion macaroons. The prehistoric caves at Lascaux were shut, we laughed at the crudely done statue of Prehistoric man, complete with club, on the hillside opposite. We reached Sarlat: the photo of her pushing the bike up cobbled streets, beneath gold stone towers. But we decided to turn back before we had to tackle the steep inclines of the Massif Central: not fit enough.<br /><br />So it wasn’t going badly when I became ill, feverish, with dreams of the sort when you peel an orange to find a peach. I didn’t tell her how ill I felt on that long ride to the beach at Arcachon. We have to see the sea, she said, I miss the sea on holiday. So we changed our plans and headed straight west, down the long straight road that rolled out through pine forests, me feverish. I had to stop to grasp at my breath, hunched in a little clearing, while red squirrels, almost black, scrambled up fir trees. Annie stood in shorts by her bicycle, leaning now and then to try her brakes, test the gears. I made it prickled with sweat to the disappointing beach, couldn’t go any further to discover the better ones, dropped on to it, a small yellow strip beyond mounds of greasy seaweed. I lay in pain, in fever, in the yellow hazy heat. Boats on their sides were floating when I next looked. The sea when it came slid in, smelt of decomposition and crept to our feet with weed to deposit.<br /><br />She said far from reconciliation it was where she decided to leave me. On that ‘beach’ with no cafe in sight. Me running a temperature and moaning about being thirsty. That’s not fair, I said, I was ill. You’re always ill when it matters most, she said, I don’t know where she gets that from because I hardly miss a day at work, though I’d like to, I’d like to pack it all in now, I’d like to pack everything in now. <br /><br />*<br /><br />If I could see Maria again, now, I’d ask if we could try again; the more I think about her, lost to my moods, and hardening, the more I think how I wasn’t good for her. I could make it up to her now, take her out and woo her again, try my best, be fun and attentive, like Cary Grant, maybe. It could work, it could because I’m over Annie. Now. I see now I was preoccupied, see her point now. After the works do I had a bit of explaining to do. Maria said she couldn’t compete with that. After I’d got used to her about the place, who herself was beginning to look comfortable in the house, making an impact with plants and pictures, brightening up its old furniture, Maria slipped away. <br /><br />Since then the single life. Bananas and toast and espresso for my evening meal. I indulge, binge: beer, crisps, chocolate (wrappers fill the bins), porn. Endless porn on the net if I want it, but I find myself longing for the days when it was stumbled across, rare, through a friend who’d been to Germany. Brown paper covered mags sent off for. Then I’ll do nothing, not bother, not bother cleaning, clothes lasting a little longer than they should do. I’m getting clumsy too - old age? - a plate smashed, a jar of marmite cracked and splashed on the blue tiled kitchen floor. <br /><br />Single, but one night stands now and again. Oh, there was Lydia, almost fifty, but pretty still, in the eyes, still clumped about in platform soles I hadn’t seen in years. Her bracelets shook as she moved around my house, bringing in a meal of fish and chips and transferring them to plates. When she walked she leant forward stiffly from the waist. A couple of months then, I admit, with her. She didn’t move in, she visited. She was a widow, her kids grown up, re-living her youth. She said after a bout on the sofa that she had got glassy, locked up, shopping in supermarkets in a dream. She liked me, the sex offered and then it was off to do her shopping. Less glassily. She stayed one night only, and that wasn’t planned, she just got too drunk. She showed me a picture of her and her husband: she had a striped blue dress on, and he a mustard shirt with braces. They looked a different generation to me and Annie. <br /><br />*<br /><br />Julie stayed with me for a couple of weeks when Annie went into hospital (for minor surgery - Annie didn’t feel the need to tell me what) and loverboy was jetting around the world no doubt saving our company, making deals and consolidating profits. Julie was eleven, less than a year after I’d gone, and acting as if it was normal to go away for a while, then return. It was her clear features, the freckly complexion I revered, exact and uncomplicated. I gave her sweets. She liked soft ones, sugar coated to melt to flaps caught in the teeth. I made her eat her tea, though, is that a palindrome, is it that, is it that, can hear that beat again, slowing, a majestic pace to it, blood slowing down, about to stop.<br /><br />I’d take her to the park, play footie. She would be goalie, and I’d try to score. I gave her easy shots, praised her catches, bowing before her holiness in the end. ‘Don’t be silly,’ she said, but once I’d managed to pucker up that smile I’d try and keep it there. Sang, danced, told bad jokes involving elephants in trees and multi-storey carp arks. I mocked her teachers. Once I reduced her to helplessness, she held me tight, splurted laughter. Then it was my turn and I let in outrageously simple goals, let the ball slip between my fingers. There she was, always within the distance of my weak throws, weaving a geometry of chase and return. <br /><br />The wind smacks the window. I want to go to my beach in Spain, ignore the timesellers, the drunks with Union Jack shorts, the topless brown bleached blondes, even them, walk down the pathways between the strips of flowers, past the shops with revolving racks of postcards and soft toys and plastic souvenirs, and get to the beach. I could be there now, day 3 of the holiday, smoothed out, glowing from the sun. See my tanned arms on the table in front of me in the taverna, glass of cold Amstel releasing slow bubbles beside my hand. If I’d left five minutes earlier. Then maybe he’d just have burgled, he didn’t want to kill me. But he rang the bell. <br /><br />The bell is ringing. Someone looms, their shadow on the glass, broken up by the pattern of the stained glass border, a feature of the property said the estate agent; now I wish it was clear. Circulars and pizza menus float down from the clanged slot. Now he’s rung next door, I can hear them talking on the doorstep. The woman’s laugh comes under my front door to me, I picture her from her laugh, her whole self re-assembled around it, she looks down at me and extends her hand. She takes the parcel and goes in, slams the door so it shudders, I feel it send pain from a wound I didn’t know I had, just in from the hip.<br /><br />*<br /><br />There was a time I saw my kids daily, almost, picked them up from school and drove them to his house, our house, and waited until their mother returned. Her blouse was always crumpled, marks of the day, ink daubs, sprinkles of chalk dust, paint-soiled water spills. We spoke little as the kids told her of their days. Sometimes I felt shy as I opened the door, kids ready, to her. As if she was a possible future lover not an ex-wife. She talked briskly, didn’t look me in the eye much, unless to get crucial times and places of next meetings, kids’ outings. <br /><br />I laugh like a horse at something on the telly. Why is the TV in the hall anyway didn’t the robber take it, and why is twice its size? It blocks the way, someone’s breath comes out of the curved screen as he is murdered. He falls to dumps of slush in the streets. Can’t I hear the kids laugh, the sea lap on the radio behind the reasonable voices, the sound of this drama?<br /><br /> I feel nothing more than rubble. I slump over the pain; I could do with food now, a glass of water. A fag even would somehow help even though I haven’t smoked in years. The smell of rain comes under the door, or the smell of corruption. Am I decomposing? The buzz of a fly is like a little machine as it flies past low enough to feel the wind of it. If I lie here long enough I’ll attract insect and rodent from around the street, through the drains, airbricks, skirting and floorboards, slugs and mice and spiders and rats. <br /><br />The air under the door wants to enter you, to get at your blood and sinew. It smells like a crop of boils, smells like him, like puss, like poison, like the sea lapping, weed choked. Blood is dried in rings around me, and piss/shit too, pisshit, smells like a headache, the rain under the door. I make one last effort to scream, to shout through my caked mouth, and feel the rip in my throat.<br /><br />The air is plastic, stuff fills throat and lungs, nose and mouth. A tearing somewhere, people hit in shadowed corners and falling. Sometimes I spiral up to a whiteness, a blankness, no names being called, nothing. There breathing is easier, but the air is not right, somehow crumbly in my lungs. I recall moving. Across that room again, legs moving, I remember that, moving, across the music-blasted room to her, held in the arms of a dark green armchair, next to that guy sorting through records, waiting for me to come along.<br /><br />The door breaks above me, air rushes in as if it had been sealed out, a big square of air, it bruises my eyes with its touch of glass. I hear wood rip and shouts, crackling radio voices, bleeps. Air carries me off, or men lifting me on a stretcher, the ceiling shifts down, a whooshing sound comes from the hole in the side of the house where the door had been. I’m carried on air, lifted, outdoors, the stars are suddenly there in the strip of sky between house and ambulance. Blue light is flung around the street as it waits, doors open, in the middle of the double parked road. Between the house and the ambulance I let go. I’m on my way, floating, shimmying, over rooftops. The world below upends. <br /><br /><br />Alan Beard's stories have appeared in magazines such as <em>London Magazine</em>, <em>Malahat Review</em>, the old print version of <em>Sunk Island Review</em>, <em>Panurge</em>; ezines such as <em>Vestal Review</em>, <em>Taint magazine</em>; anthologies such as <em>Neonlit</em>, <em>England Calling</em>, <em>Tell Tales 3</em>. His first collection came out in 1999 (Picador) and was called <em>Taking Doreen Out Of The Sky</em>. Visit his <A HREF="http://www.alanbeard.net" TARGET="_blank">website</A>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-859933982873883202008-02-21T14:25:00.001+00:002008-02-21T14:28:30.740+00:00Two Poems by Davide Trame<span style="font-weight:bold;">SIMPLY</span><br />after Dario Fo narrating Sant’Ambrogio<br /> <br />I don’t want to tell you the end of the parable,<br />the name of the man whose twang sounded<br />so clearly distant from yours, so foreign.<br />Who was sick and hungry crying for help<br />at your door.<br />Whose destiny, whose needs didn’t concern you,<br />your worries being enough for now.<br />I only want to tell you that we knew it already,<br />it was so tremendously present around,<br />so simply obvious<br />and it brought tears to my eyes.<br /><br /><br /><span style="font-weight:bold;">PRAYING</span><br /> <br />Storm raging, rain,<br />a roaring wall enveloping us at home, <br />your pacing up and down<br />from kitchen to hall,<br />on the table the two phones side by side,<br />the landline and your mobile,<br />both mute by now.<br />You gaze at them, at the window, at the thick<br />curtain of water. Nothing can be done.<br />Roads and railway flooded, the motorway<br />a stilled snake of a queue stuck in the mud,<br />and the rustling of voices in the cars<br />and silences and stares and lightning,<br />the sky dark grey-green, the pressing<br />of the clouds’ swollen, bruised fingers.<br /> <br />You turn the directory pages<br />while a lightning-bolt booms and rattles the windows,<br />maybe, you say, they will answer at this other number,<br />you deal –another recorded voice- try later, it says,<br />same message as before, as ever,<br />the recorded words hanging in the air<br />more silent than silence.<br /> <br />You don’t sit down, hooked to the two phones<br />as your last assets, you take one in your hand,<br />put it down, then the other.<br />In their silence, in the silence of the house<br />and the crashing, the swarming outside<br />I sense we<br />are now praying, with no words,<br />with effortlessly suspended breaths,<br />questions and hopes sieved<br />through the rain’s roar,<br />in the wait that blurs frames.<br /><br /><br />Davide Trame is an Italian teacher of English. His poetry collection “Re-emerging” is published as an email book by www.gattopublishing.com. He has been writing exclusively in English since 1993.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-55280784735542859862008-02-09T17:09:00.000+00:002008-02-09T17:11:45.395+00:00The Echo Room and The Poetry of the 1980s<center> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://blip.tv/scripts/pokkariPlayer.js?ver=2007111701"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://blip.tv/syndication/write_player?skin=js&posts_id=659770&source=3&autoplay=true&file_type=flv&player_width=&player_height="></script> <div id="blip_movie_content_659770"> <a rel="enclosure" href="http://blip.tv/file/get/Sunkisland-TheEchoRoom349.flv" onclick="play_blip_movie_659770(); return false;"><img title="Click to play" alt="Video thumbnail. Click to play" src="http://blip.tv/file/get/Sunkisland-TheEchoRoom349.flv.jpg" border="0" title="Click To Play" /></a> <br /> <a rel="enclosure" href="http://blip.tv/file/get/Sunkisland-TheEchoRoom349.flv" onclick="play_blip_movie_659770(); return false;">Click To Play</a> </div> </center><P><br />The poet Brendan Cleary talks about the poetry revival in Britain during the 1980s and what inspired him to start 'The Echo Room', which became one of the seminal magazines of the decade. The anthology he mentions right at the beginning of the clip is 'In Dark Times', which is a selection of<br />poems from the first 10 years of 'The Echo Room' . As such it is the most representative anthology of that time. And unfortunately out of print.<br /><br />The period from 1985 to 1995 witnessed a wide-scale, provincial revival of poetry at a grass roots level in Britain, much of it produced as a reaction to the social, political and economic conflicts of the time.<br /><br />This revival was, as Brendan says, a kind of loose affiliation between poets and small press editors up and down the country. It was a de-centralised renewal of poetry which caught the metropolitan establishment completely by suprise. Without this initial revival, which raised the public profile of<br /><br />poets and poetry for the first time in a couple of decades, there would definitely have been no 'New Generation' Poets, no media blather about the 'Poetry Boom', and possibly no Forward Prize and National Poetry Day either.<br /><br />None of this is acknowledged and neither is the work of dozens of poets who made it happen. The establishment recovered its ground and continued the usual game of promoting a handful of star poets. This was a period of poetry productivity in the UK as important as, if not more important than that of the 1960s. The real history needs to be recorded. This video forms part of my effort to form an archive relating to that period.<br /><br />The sound quality on this clip is OK, but the visuals are rough. But it's better than nothing.<br /><br />Copies of Brendan's poetry collections can be bought on Amazon.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-42145198175816688792008-02-02T15:37:00.000+00:002008-02-02T15:40:15.259+00:00Brendan Cleary Reads Three Poems<center> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://blip.tv/scripts/pokkariPlayer.js?ver=2007111701"></script> <script type="text/javascript" src="http://blip.tv/syndication/write_player?skin=js&posts_id=646350&source=3&autoplay=true&file_type=flv&player_width=&player_height="></script> <div id="blip_movie_content_646350"> <a rel="enclosure" href="http://blip.tv/file/get/Sunkisland-BrendanClearyReadsThreePoemsSemanal08642.flv" onclick="play_blip_movie_646350(); return false;"><img title="Click to play" alt="Video thumbnail. Click to play" src="http://blip.tv/file/get/Sunkisland-BrendanClearyReadsThreePoemsSemanal08642.flv.jpg" border="0" title="Click To Play" /></a> <br /> <a rel="enclosure" href="http://blip.tv/file/get/Sunkisland-BrendanClearyReadsThreePoemsSemanal08642.flv" onclick="play_blip_movie_646350(); return false;">Click To Play</a> </div> </center><br /><br />Brendan Cleary reads three poems from a forthcoming collection by tall-lighthouse press: 'Out Take', 'The Hostages' and 'Gift'.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-80695091192394306762007-11-01T10:23:00.000+00:002007-11-01T10:30:46.576+00:00Local History - a Poem by John SimonsDriving the A15 at night is like flying over Poland.<br />You see all the towns glowing on the plain:<br />Lincoln, Gainsborough, Brigg.<br />Poznan, Gdansk, Torun, Lodz, Wroclaw.<br />And then you see the bumps in the fields <br />And the buried villas and deserted villages of Lincolnshire.<br />And then you think of the buried names:<br />Lincoln Lindum Colonia, Brant Broughton Briga,<br />Kirton Linsdey Inmedio, Broughton Pretorium<br />Poznan Posen, Gdansk Danzig, Torun Thorn, Lodz Littmannstadt<br />And for Wroclaw, astonishingly, Breslau<br />Where the stripey-capped students,<br />Fraternal, cicatrised and Latinate,<br />Sat bolt upright in their seats and cheered<br />When Brahms rolled out <span style="font-style:italic;">Gaudeamus igitur</span>.<br />And then you think of the buried boys<br />From Boston Lincolnshire and Boston Massachusetts, <br />From Lincoln Lincolnshire and Lincoln Queensland,<br />English, American, Aussies, Poles turning Germany into Poland -<br />Blacksmiths with mallets made of TNT -<br />The buried metal waiting for the detectors <br />In celeriac fields near Horncastle or Banovallum<br />Or tough grassed dunes near Gydinia or Goteshafen <br />Where the panzers first crossed the border<br />And everybody took the boat to Hel.<br />There was no rejoicing for them while they were young.<br />And I see them navigating the great plain<br />And steering by the fires of burning cities.<br />And in the houses from the Roman ridge<br />Twenty thousand Poles are fast asleep,<br />And, smiling, dream of history.<br /><br /><br />John Simons is Dean of the Faculty of Media, Humanities and Technology at the University of Lincoln. His interests vary from mediaeval history to cricket and animal rights. His publications include a monograph, <span style="font-style:italic;">Animal Rights and the Politics of Literary Representation</span>.Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-41361683740338153082007-10-14T18:09:00.000+01:002007-10-14T18:17:55.973+01:00The Vanishing Trick - Short Story by Neil GrimmettWe picked this quiet, out-of-the-way pub for a drink and a moment to ourselves; maybe also for a final taste of the area. The place is so dark we have to stop and allow our eyes to adjust. It must be the normal thing, because the old lady behind the bar watches the two of us blinking and swaying without stopping drying the glass in her hand or changing her expression of boredom. There are four men and a blonde woman at the bar. The men are seated and do not bother to notice us; the blonde is standing at one end and I catch her look before she turns away. She carries on a loud conversation with the barmaid, which is obviously meant for the men, and now us, as is the short skirt and high boots.<br /><br />We buy two pints of lager and move to a corner table which at least has a semblance of natural light gracing its cigarette-burned surface. Larry tries to pour some of the beer onto his wound. He looks pathetic. "Is it bad?" I ask.<br /><br />"Still too numb to tell," he mumbles.<br /><br />I had to drive him to an emergency dental appointment or we wouldn’t have been passing this dump in the first place. His teeth have been decaying for years. Eat more fruit, I used to tell him. It was what my father always told me. Too late now, I guess, like so many things. Though at least my teeth have stayed strong.<br /><br />I see one of the men at the bar staring over at us. He is slightly built, with badly cut, short black hair and a mean expression. I imagine he’s noticed the way Larry is performing with the beer - treating it like a mouthwash - and is just curious; or possibly he’s taking offence, spoiling for a fight. The blonde has given up her performance and is lolling against the bar scratching herself as though there is no one else present. The walls have running brown stains and the low ceiling sags and flakes. "Welcome home," I feel like saying. "Welcome fucking back!"<br /><br />We used to live in this ‘dirty old town’ years ago, though this would never have been one of our haunts. You would not have caught us dead in a place like this; we were the local heroes: the best band in the whole area. If you wanted to find us off stage you had to seek out the ‘hot spot’ - wherever that might have been. Because I seem to recall these locations used to change, mysteriously and suddenly, leaving behind those unwilling to accept that it had occurred. Larry always said that it had something to do with the nearby beach and its treacherous landscape of ever-shifting mudbanks. "The mud dance," he called it, and liked to imagine that we took the lead - always stepping out of the morass before the wallowing began.<br /><br />The man, who has continued staring, slides his way towards us. I see the blonde half wake-up and try to cling to his skinny arm in its shiny, Oxfam jacket as he passes her. She pleads for something and he spills coins onto the bar before shaking her off and whispering a few words that make her straighten and turn to look. He moves to our little table. "I know you two," he says. "My name is Ric; we were at school together. You might not remember, but I do."<br /><br />I don't recognize him, and feel certain there was never anyone called Ric from back then. Larry’s up before the man has hardly finished speaking.<br /><br />"I knew it was you,” he says, “as soon as we walked in.” He embraces Ric for too long. "Just been to the dentist," he tells him, opening his mouth and pointing in as though it’s the most important thing in the world.<br /><br />Ric sits down at our table and keeps grinning at me. "My wife," he says as the blonde shifts herself in front of a fruit-machine close to us and begins to feed in the coins.<br /><br />"Congratulations," says Larry without noticeably looking over at her. “A real stunner.”<br /><br />Now it is true that I am not very good at names. And even worse, I sometimes get them wrong and then persist in calling the person what I first chose, often for years. Most people think it's deliberate and done for affect - so I get away with it. Truth is, I have no memory of certain things that have happened in my life. No names, maps, or descriptions that could give colour or adornment to anywhere or anyone. Instead, I have a series of untitled photographic plates of actions locked behind my eyes. Usually slipping or stumbled exits, quick vicious snatchings and blows, the soothing touch brushed away. And I have a mind full of recorded echoes, a whole soundbite library of pleas and tears, beggings and apologies, the crying out for another chance or one more deliberate put-down. What does someone's name or the colour of a sofa cushion matter anyway?<br /><br />Larry insists that he can remember everyone and everything. But on what level? I always ask myself. And for what gain?<br /><br />"Ric," he is now spieling, "it must be over twenty years."<br /><br />"Twenty-five since I last spoke to you," says Ric. "Twenty-five years since we all walked out of the same school. It was another five before you two left here for good. And still everybody talks about you. Now you just stroll in here as if it were only yesterday. I can hardly believe it."<br /><br />"Look," I interrupt, "were we in the same class or something?" I don't really want to say anything but I can see that Larry is beginning to feel pain because he is now covering his face with both hands and sagging onto the table. "It’s just that I’m having trouble placing you, exactly."<br /><br />Then Ric's wife hits the jackpot and the machine starts coughing up coins like it’s rehearsing a death scene for the local drama society. Ric leaps out of his chair and goes straight at her and they begin fighting over the prize. He scoops a generous handful of coins out of the opening and she does the same. As they try for more their hands meet. I see her long thin nails claw into him and he crushes her hand - hard and slow - so that hidden within her grasp those gold tokens must indent their congratulations in a fading red calligraphy. She slaps him across the neck and they entangle. The machine rocks to their rhythm and keeps on regurgitating its bounty. The men at the bar continue drinking without bothering to take a look; the barmaid carries on shining the same empty glass as when we entered. I cannot help noticing that the blonde has weals and bruises around the tops of her thighs and she is wearing the brightest yellow knickers.<br /><br />"What did you go and say that for?" Larry asks me through his fingers as they continue to tango. "You can never allow anyone their dignity, can you? This is our past; this place, these people were all important. Nothing or no one exists without purpose and meaning. You are someone who has never really belonged anywhere. Now you have got them fighting."<br /><br />"I don’t know who he is," I state truthfully. "Or what the blue fucking yonder you are going on about. Yesterday, you stated that the whole place was a shit hole and everyone in it was drained worse than you remembered." I could go on and say again whose over-ambition created the void we now live in, and that it was only his guilt over something from our past that has brought us back at all. But I know too well where that trail leads and how it never ends, so I let it go. Larry picks up his glass and tries to drink some beer as if it might be the last he ever gets. Instead, the fighting couple crash into his back. The glass thumps against his tingling lips and spills down his front. He groans. For a moment, I see the familiar darkness enter his eyes as he looks around, searching, I imagine, for the usually present road crew that would normally, by now, be dragging this character outside for a good beating. Ric and his wife stop and stare in fear at him.<br /><br />"Sorry, mate," says Ric. "I'll get you another. And one for Kenny," looking at me and getting my name right. He stands there for a second watching his wife who is now crawling around on all fours picking up the spilled coins. I can read it in his eyes that he would just love to kick her tight, skinny, little yellow butt right out of sight. He fetches drinks, including one for her, and sits down.<br /><br />"I heard that you were still living in America," he says. “Though there hasn’t been a record for a time.”<br /><br />"We are," I say.<br /><br />"There is one due shortly," Larry says. “It will be something different and we know our fans will think it’s been worth waiting for.”<br /><br />They could have knocked the rest of his teeth out and he’d still have managed to spit that bit of bullshit out with the fragments.<br /><br />I ignore him. "We just came over for a funeral," I tell Ric. "One of our oldest friends passed away…" and before I get the chance to say his name or anymore, Ric blurts it out.<br /><br />"Paul," he says. "Poor Paul; so young."<br /><br />Larry raises his glass and both of them drink a bitter and slow toast to the memory.<br /><br />"I didn't see you at the funeral," I say. "I know it was crowded but I'd definitely have spotted you and your wife."<br /><br />Paul's funeral had lined and stretched along the gray streets towards the dismal seafront where even the clouds seemed unusually sombre. There had only been a handful of close friends and family allowed in the church, but outside in the cemetery every morbid eye had been glaring. Mostly, I felt, at us. I had looked into their blank hungry faces as we’d trailed the pallbearers. I might have seen every one of them before, or never.<br /><br />"We were stood just outside the church wall," Ric says. "It was as close as we could get. I said to Judith," he nods at his wife still hoovering up the floor, " That’s Larry and Kenny who used to be in the group with Paul."<br /><br />"That's right," Larry has to add. "The Three Musketeers: all for one and one for all..."<br /><br />Judith gets to her feet and joins us at the table, shoving and shifting until she is virtually on top of Larry. She has a tatty black handbag stuffed full of her prize and is clutching it between her perky little breasts as Larry ogles her.<br /><br />"You two are famous," she says after draining her glass and shoving it to Ric for refilling. “We have all your records. You are really great.”<br /><br />Larry never gets tired of this stuff. And it does not matter who comes out with it any longer, if it ever did. Everyone is equally qualified so long as they know the shibboleth (Larry’s name) and keep intoning it. In return, they will be granted the comfort of never hearing a contradiction or one syllable of fact about anything that may damage their dreams. Anyway, he could no more utter a truth like that than grow another tooth for the one he's just had yanked out.<br /><br />"Famous," Larry agrees, "but not so rich as you today." He fondles her bag of money with a genuine affection. She is smiling in triumph at her husband; he is smiling in some sort of misguided pride at Larry's attention. I have seen this sort of thing so many times before, dressed up in every mask, that it hardly registers. I can tell by his claw-like hand and hooded eyes that if his mouth were up to it he would have her out in the car and spend a good hour shagging himself limp, while I made small talk with her husband. And she is fully aware of the fact.<br /><br />"Are all those stories I've heard about you true?" she teases. "Were you really that bad?"<br /><br />"Worse," Larry exclaims, and a blast of anesthetic settles over the table.<br /><br />"And I have only told you the half of it," says Ric. "Some of the things that these two used to get up to I still wouldn't dare tell."<br /><br />"With you and Paul," she questions. "You’ve said lots of times that you and Paul were part of it."<br /><br />Ric looks awkward and guilty and they are both silent waiting for Larry to confirm or deny. He’s lost interest and is probing inside his mouth with one of his fingers, which he then withdraws to stare at and sniff before having another go.<br /><br />"So what do you do nowadays, Ric?" I ask, trying at least to divert them from watching Larry’s disgusting display too closely.<br /><br />"He's a magician," says Judith.<br /><br />"Part-time," Ric adds. "Just setting out really; a new start. You have to learn to adapt these days if you want to survive. Well, you know that I was always the one for doing tricks, so I decided to go for it."<br /><br />"So much talent," says Larry. "That's what I always recognized. Everyone of us had so much to offer. You, Paul, all of us winners in our own way."<br /><br />"Especially Paul," I say, taking this chance to remind him.<br /><br />"I could never understand Paul not staying with you," says Ric. "He was so lost and lonely after you went - walking up and down the street with his guitar case like he was always going somewhere himself. It was a bit of a joke, really. Even though he had the one hit."<br /><br />Larry doesn't even flinch. "Tell them," I want to say, "how you sacked him. Or rather, as usual, how you got me to do it; me, breaking the news to him that he would not be coming with us after all."<br /><br />"We never lost touch," says Larry. "We wrote most months. I was always listening out for him. I actually helped him on that song."<br /><br />That much is true. Larry never lets go of anything or anyone. 'You can't win a prize if you don't buy a few tickets,' one of his great philosophies. It was me that Paul decided never to speak to again and blamed for abandoning him. The one who’d refused to dress up the truth in a load of flowery promises, letting him know instead the real reasons behind his being cut out of the group: mainly, the fact he was never going to become the ‘yes’ man Larry wanted and that his refusal to accept compromises were not part of the great future.<br /><br />"He did a couple of shows with his new band," Ric tells us, "in the old club where you used to play. Hardly anyone bothered to turn up. It was quite sad. We thought he sounded great, though, and told him so."<br /><br />Larry manages to look heartbroken for a second then begins to gargle again.<br /><br />"I am going to be his assistant," says Judith. "I've got a little purple dress covered in sequins. I'm going to wear black fishnets and gold boots."<br /><br />"Stunning," Larry exclaims, glad for the chance to re-inter Paul. "I would sure love to see you in that." Then, looking at Ric, "And your show, of course: rabbits out of thin air, sawing the lovely Jude in half, vanishing up your rope trick and all those magical illusions."<br /><br />"It's mostly card tricks and sleight-of-hand," Ric explains.<br /><br />"He rips up a lot of paper," Judith adds.<br /><br />"Actually," says Ric, "I’m doing a show tonight, a short spot at the local British Legion Club."<br /><br />"You could come," says Judith. "And see me in my outfit."<br /><br />I see her shoulder move and know that her little hand is getting busy under the table.<br /><br />"We'd love to," says Larry. "We’ll be a fair but critical audience, won’t we, Kenny?"<br /><br />I give them my famous ‘coat hanger’ smile.<br /><br />Ric looks stunned. I can see his mind working faster than his wife's boney and coin-stained fingers.<br /><br />"I would really appreciate that," Ric says, it would mean so much to hear what you had to say; how far you think I could go. If there was any chance of...well, you know."<br /><br />"Sure," Larry gasps.<br /><br />Judith rushes off to the ladies keeping her back to her husband and almost skipping.<br /><br />"She's pleased," I say. "Gone to slip into her stage gear, perhaps, and give us all a sneak preview. Or maybe she spilled her drink."<br /><br />Ric looks at me as if he has suddenly remembered something nasty about me that he’d been hoping to forget. Larry looks as if he’s in pain again. He finishes the last of his beer with a slow swirl in his mouth. Ric immediately offers to fetch him another.<br /><br />"No," says Larry. "We have to get going now. We'll have one tonight before the show. That is a promise."<br /><br />Ric shakes my hand, "See you later," he says formally, then throws his arms around Larry. The men at the bar carry on sipping the flat-looking murk in their glasses and the barmaid has turned the empty one into a diamond that fills her eyes with its gleam.<br /><br />As we are halfway across the car park the door to the pub swings open and Judith stands looking out. She has been putting on some make- up and tidying her hair. Her disappointment is clear. I see the smile fade and her mouth open as if trying to find something to offer. Ric comes out and, as I watch in the car mirror, he tries to place a hand on her shoulder. She shrugs him off, flicks her hair and fills the mirror with her form. I can see that she knows what is going to happen but stays proud and defiant, dismissing us as we truly deserve. Larry keeps his head down and dabs away with the huge wad of cotton-wool the dentist gave him.<br /><br />Then he begins flicking away with his tongue into a space that is unfamiliar and his mind still insists is full of tooth. A bit like, I guess, trying to scratch a limb after it has been amputated, or praying that the dead hear regrets, or that ghosts would turn up to see you perform magic.<br /><br />***<br /><a href="http://www.eclectica.org/v11n3/grimmett.html" TARGET="_blank">Neil Grimmett</a> has had over fifty short stories published in the UK, Australia, South Africa, Singapore, India, and the USA, where he has appeared in <I>Fiction</I>, <I>The Yale Review</I>, <I>DoubleTake</I>, and <I>The Southern Review</I>. He has appeared online in <I>Blackbird</I>, <I>Tatlin's Tower</I>, <I>Web Del Sol</I>, <I>In Posse Review</I>, <I>m.a.g.</I>, <I>Word Riot</I>, <I>Blue Moon Review</I>, <I>3AM</I>, <I>Gangway</I>, <I>segue</I>, <I>Eclectica</I> and others, and he has made the storySouth Million Writers Notable Short Story list for the last two years. In addition, he has won the Write On poetry award, the Oppenheim John Downes Award three times, and two major British Arts Council bursaries. He is a member of the US branch of PEN, and his first novel, <I>The Bestowing Sun</I>, came out last year to strong reviewsUnknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-50067778667953310042007-09-19T11:58:00.000+01:002007-09-19T12:14:07.041+01:00* <a href="http://video.google.co.uk/videoplay?docid=8366841400633623711&q=poet&total=10865&start=40&num=10&so=0&type=search&plindex=2" TARGET="_blank">Donald Hall talks about wanting to become a poet.</a> My wife wouldn't let me out looking like that.<br /><br />* I'm not normally a fan of performance poetry these days, but I like this rough vid of Murray Lachlan Young doing a park-based rendition of <em>Simply Everyone's Taking Cocaine</em>.<br /><br /><object width="425" height="350"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/-T17S_0jH30"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/-T17S_0jH30" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="350"></embed></object><br /><br />* Obits: two poets died very recently - Lydia Tomkiw, a US poet; read <a href="http://virginformica.blogspot.com/2007/09/to-lydia.html" TARGET="_blank">Sharon Mesmer's tribute.</a> I first heard about this on Martin Stannard's excellent ezine, <a href="http://timtim.typepad.com/exultationsdifficulties/" TARGET+"_blank">Exultations and Difficulties</a>. Lincoln hosted one of the gigs that Lydia was on with Martin and Paul Violi. I have photos. I may dig them out.<br /><br />The other poet was <a href="http://tomraworth.com/notes/" TARGET="_blank">Bill Griffiths.</a>Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-3126286796311938943.post-37803573975566817752007-07-19T17:16:00.000+01:002007-07-19T17:19:18.180+01:00A Poem by David Lightfoot<span style="font-weight: bold;">Two Down</span><br /><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">2. Liz hears me, disturbed</span><br /><span style="font-style: italic;">by this condition (10)</span><br /><br />We'd have it done,<br />I used to boast,<br />and found it fun<br />before the toast<br /><br />had cooled much. I<br />did clues across<br />while she would try<br />the downs. We'd toss<br /><br />a coin to name<br />which half was whose<br />in this shared game<br />neither could lose.<br /><br />I used black ink<br />and she chose blue:<br />bruised interlink<br />between us two.<br /><br />But now it's not<br />the same: she sits;<br />I do the lot.<br />Without her wits<br /><br />it takes me hours<br />but I don't mind -<br />with all these flowers<br />and Nurse so kind.<br /><br /><br />David Lightfoot is a retired Deputy Head and a former founder/editor of <span style="font-style: italic;">Seam</span> magazine. His most recent collection of poems is <span style="font-style: italic;">Wounds Heal</span> (Rockingham).Unknownnoreply@blogger.com0