Month: August 2012

A week of running beside the canal

~ oxfordbrookesuni

On Monday, three yellow goslings
and the gander’s tongue thrust out.
On Wednesday, three goslings,
each with a dark Mohican streak,
the gander’s tongue thrust out.

A face comes back from
Earlier times; freckled, round,
brown eyes, and red, fair hair,
nothing beyond ordinary,
that always seems relaxed.

The gait below it; slightly
splayed and rolling.
On Thursday, suddenly
the may was open everywhere,
its small white clusters

like the rowan or cow parsley;
the florets twisted, flicking
on the breeze. On Sunday,
one upon the water, its head
tucked beneath its wing;

the other adult bird was resting
by the bank, the water
rippling its drowned head.
Of the goslings, nothing.
On the canal, warm dots

of summer rain. Among
the grasses, Friesians walk
from grass to grass. That face
opens out upon itself; the bee’s
feet touch the flower.

by Ian Pople

‘A week of running beside the canal’ is copyright © Ian Pople, 2011. It is reprinted by permission of Arc Publications from  Saving Spaces by Ian Pople (Arc Publications, 2011).

Ian Pople was born in Ipswich. He was educated at the British Council, Athens and the Universities of Aston and Manchester. His first book of poetry,  The Glass Enclosure , was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation and shortlisted for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. His second collection, An Occasional Lean-to , was published by Arc in 2005. He teaches at the University of Manchester. Read further selections from Saving Spaces, Ian Pople’s latest collection, on Arc’s website here.

Since it was founded in 1969, Arc Publications has adhered to its fundamental principles – to introduce the best of new talent to a UK readership, including voices from overseas that would otherwise remain unheard in this country, and to remain at the cutting edge of contemporary poetry. Arc also has a music imprint, Arc Music, for the publication of books about music and musicians. As well as its page on Facebook, you can find Arc on Twitter; search for @Arc_Poetry. Visit Arc’s website to join the publisher’s mailing list, and to find full details of all publications and writers. Arc offers a 10% discount on all books purchased from the website (except Collectors’ Corner titles). Postage and packing is free within the UK.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.

[Nineteen Sixty-Five] 1965

~ oxfordbrookesuni

The egg ferments, the one cell splits in two:
again, four: again, eight: sixteen: thirty-two.
Droplets of fat, like miniature dabs of butter,
nourish and sustain. Welcome, morula,
little mulberry… free-falling, spineless,
until, upon the uterine surface,

touchdown. Transparent, semi-opaque, solid,
the heart comes to fruition, big as a head.
Welcome, tiddler, mild water-scorpion.
Gills disappear, cartilage becomes bone.

Full term: seismic waves, electrical storms,
the twelve-hour haul of not being born,
between two worlds – induced. I make it late,
this bloody, headlong drop towards the light.

by A.B. Jackson

‘1965’ is copyright © A.B. Jackson, 2003. It is reprinted from Fire Stations (2003) by permission of Anvil Press.

Notes from Anvil Press:

Born in Glasgow in 1965, Andrew Buchanan Jackson grew up in Bramhall, Cheshire, later receiving his secondary education in Cupar, Fife. He studied English Literature at Edinburgh University and now works in Glasgow.

One of ten poets chosen for Anvil New Poets 3 (2001), Jackson was singled out by John Greening in Poetry Review for his ‘demanding and ambitious work: direct, sharp in manner, with an intellectual edge, a valedictory quality.’ Fire Stations won Best First Collection in the 2003 Forward Poetry Prizes. Find out more about Fire Stations from the Anvil site, and more about A.B. Jackson from his website. You can read further selections from the book here. In 2011, Jackson published a pamphlet of twenty-one poems called Apocrypha.

Anvil Press, founded in 1968, is based in Greenwich, south-east London, in a building off Royal Hill that has been used at various points in its 150-year history as a dance-hall and a printing works. Anvil grew out of a poetry magazine which Peter Jay ran as a student in Oxford and retains its small company ethos. Visit Anvil’s website here, where you can sign up to their mailing list to find out about new publications and events.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.

Photography

~ oxfordbrookesuni

At the photographer’s, you can get a portrait of your likeness after death, but the process is painstaking. A newly engaged couple once proved so hard to satisfy, the photographer had to continue the shoot the following day. Finally, at closing time he’d managed to position them, and the light, the mark of such photography, was also perfect. He turned off the lamps, locked up the shop, and left the couple to stand in the studio overnight. ‘I love you,’ whispered the girl in almost total darkness. Only a thin streak of light from the street lamps pierced the studio from the store front. ‘I love you too,’ replied her fiancé, ‘but stand still now and look right into the camera.’

by Carsten René Nielsen

‘Photography’ is copyright © Carsten René Nielsen, 2011. It is reprinted from House Inspections (BOA Editions, 2011), which was translated with an Introduction by David Keplinger and published by BOA Editions in 2011.

Notes from BOA Editions:

Born in 1966, Carsten René Nielsen is the author of nine books of poetry, most recently Enogfyrre dyr (2005) and Husundersøgelser (2008). His book of selected prose poems, The World Cut Out with Crooked Scissors, was published in English by New Issues Poetry and Prose in 2007. His poetry has been featured in magazines in Italy, Germany, Canada, and the US. Nielsen lives in Aarhus, in Denmark. You can read more about Carsten René Nielsen at his website here, and find him on Facebook here.

David Keplinger, the translator of Nielsen’s work, has won a number of awards including the Colorado Book Award, Truman State University’s T.S. Eliot Prize, a NEA fellowship, and grants from the Danish Arts Council. He directs the MFA Program at American University in Washington, D.C. Find out more about him on this page.

BOA Editions, Ltd., a not-for-profit publisher of poetry and other literary works, fosters readership and appreciation of contemporary literature. By identifying, cultivating, and publishing both new and established poets and selecting authors of unique literary talent, BOA brings high quality literature to the public. Support for this effort comes from the sale of its publications, grant funding, and private donations. In 2011, BOA celebrated its thirty-fifth anniversary. To find out more about BOA Editions, click here. You can also sign up for the publisher’s newsletter here, find and ‘like’ BOA on Facebook, and follow the publisher on Twitter by searching for @boaeditions.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.

The Skagit Valley Beekeeper

~ oxfordbrookesuni

          for Jerry & Kathy Willins

At home my door looks out on a wild sea where boats come and go.
Here, doors looks out across miles and miles of blueberry bushes.
They make me think of Frost’s “Blueberries as big as your thumb”.
But it is only May, so early in season the bushes are all empty-handed.

Yesterday, sitting in a diner in Burlington, eating ham on rye,
a farmer slid onto the seat beside me. Wendell, the waitress called him.
“Goddamn cell phones,” he snarled, “they’re messin’ with my bees.
The signals have them so dizzy they couldn’t find a sunflower.”

He said it in a way that wasn’t funny, for here was a man
whose livelihood depended on a pollinating bee. “Now, Wendell,”
the waitress muttered, “don’t be bothering the preacher.”
“Sorry, sir, but Christ, I have to fly in bees from Alabama.”

And as we sat there in the silence of that Burlington afternoon.
the waitress counting bottles, Wendell eating fries,
I just prayed my cell phone, my bee immobilizer, would not ring,
not even with a buzz, buzz, buzz from you, to help pollinate our love.

by Tony Curtis

‘The Skagit Valley Beekeeper’ is copyright © Tony Curtis, 2011. It is reprinted by permission of Arc Publications from folk by Tony Curtis (Arc Publications, 2011).

Tony Curtis was born in Dublin in 1955. He studied literature at Essex University and Trinity College Dublin. An award winning poet, Curtis has published six warmly-received collections, the most recent of which was The Well in the Rain: New & Selected Poems (Arc, 2006). In 2003 he was awarded the Varuna House Exchange Fellowship to Australia. Curtis has been awarded the Irish National Poetry Prize. In 2008, Days Like These (with Paula Meehan and Theo Dorgan) was published by Brooding Heron Press. He is a member of Aosdána. You can read further selections from folk, the volume from which ‘The Skagit Valley Beekeeper’ is taken, on this page from Arc’s site.

Since it was founded in 1969, Arc Publications has adhered to its fundamental principles – to introduce the best of new talent to a UK readership, including voices from overseas that would otherwise remain unheard in this country, and to remain at the cutting edge of contemporary poetry. Arc also has a music imprint, Arc Music, for the publication of books about music and musicians. As well as its page on Facebook, you can find Arc on Twitter; search for @Arc_Poetry. Visit Arc’s website to join the publisher’s mailing list, and to find full details of all publications and writers. Arc offers a 10% discount on all books purchased from the website (except Collectors’ Corner titles). Postage and packing is free within the UK.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.