The Hidden Fighters

September 24, 2012April 11, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

We retraced our steps though the signs were bad.
At twilight a huge man stood in the road with an axe
and when he saw us he whimpered in terror and plunged into the undergrowth
though we were just two peasants, a child, and a deaf horse.
At night we found our moonlit road
obstructed by wheels: wheels of carts, phaetons,
coaches, surreys, toy horses, all frozen.
So we drifted along by the logging paths
that were sometimes just accident, angles of snow and windbreak.
Sunrise was black because we were so deep,
the rustle of the owls stopped,
we came upon a child’s swing dangling from a branch
and then another and another, a forest of swings.
We found a glass case covered with branches:
it contained an encyclopedia. Then we looked up
and saw the carcasses of butchered deer
lashed to the treetops and painted chalk white
like enormous clumps of snow and we knew
we were in the camp of the partisans
and the silence around us was not ours,
nor was it the silence of fear.

by D. Nurkse

Welcome to the first in a new series of Weekly Poems for the new academic year. It’s a pleasure to begin the series with a publisher new to the Weekly Poem, CB editions. Don’t forget that the Poetry Centre can be ‘liked’ on Facebook and followed on Twitter (@brookespoetry).

D. Nurkse lives in Brooklyn, New York; he has published ten books of poetry and has also written on human rights issues. His parents fled Nazi Europe during World War Two. Voices over Water was shortlisted for the 2011 Forward Prize. The book records the emigration of a woman and her husband from Estonia to Canada in the early 20th century; in the fine detail of their experience it evokes the larger forces to which their lives are subject: war, the unyielding land, famine, silence, and the irreducible strangeness of the bond between them. You can read more about D. Nurkse on the CB editions website, where you can read reviews of his work and some further excerpts from his book.

CB editions publishes no more than six books a year, mainly poetry and short fiction and including work in translation. Since 2008 its poetry titles have twice won the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize and have twice been shortlisted for both the Forward Prize and the Forward First Collection Prize. In 2011 CBe put on Free Verse, a one-day book fair for poetry publishers to show their work and sell direct to the public; the event was repeated in September 2012 with over 50 publishers taking part. Find out more about the publisher from the website, where you can also sign up to the CB editions mailing list, or ‘like’ the publisher on Facebook to keep up-to-date with its activities.

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.

INSIDE THE BOOKS…

September 10, 2012April 11, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

Inside the books
is quietude –

No echo
of the poet’s landlady’s
nagging
the rumble of guns outside Jena –

Inside the very
loudest of words
is quietude –

As though they’d arrived
at a place which we
may never reach –

Even if you
plug your ears:
as though from far away
the siren song
of the blood

IM INNEREN DER BÜCHER…

Im Inneren der Bücher
ist es still –

Kein Nachhall
vom Gezänk der Hauswirtin
des Dichters
vom Kanonendonner vor Jena –

Im Inneren auch der
schreiendsten Worte
ist es still –

Als wären sie angekommen
wohin wir vielleicht nie
gelangen können –

Auch wenn du dir
die Ohren verstopfst:
wie von fern her
der Sirenengesang
des Blutes

by Ludwig Steinherr

The Weekly Poem will be taking a week’s break now to ready itself for the new term. We hope that you have enjoyed this year’s extended selection, and look forward to sending out an exciting new set of poems to you beginning in the week of 24 September. Many thanks indeed to all our generous publishers for providing us with such rich material. You can find out more about them from our Links page here. And if you have enjoyed the work, do consider supporting them by investing in some of the volumes we have featured. Thanks for reading!

‘INSIDE THE BOOKS…’ is copyright © Ludwig Steinherr, 2010. It is reprinted by permission of Arc Publications from Before the Invention of Paradise by Ludwig Steinherr (Arc Visible Poets Series, Arc Publications 2010).

Ludwig Steinherr was born in Munich in 1962, where he still lives, and studied philosophy at the University of Munich. He is now a freelance writer and lecturer in philosophy at the University of Eichstätt. Steinherr has worked as an essayist, a reviewer, a juror, a translator, and as an editor, co-founding the influential journal Das Gedicht (The Poem) with Anton G. Leitner in 1993. But it is as a poet that he has written his way into the front rank of contemporary German writers, one milestone here being the selection of his poem Legend (Sage) as ‘Gedicht des Jahres’ (‘Poem of the Year’) by the Autoreninitiative Köln in 1987. The present selection is based on the nine collections published in the twenty years after his early debut, Fluganweisung, in 1985. Steinherr’s poems have received a number of awards – including the Leonce-und-Lena-Förderpreis (1993), the Buchpreis des Verbandes Evangelischer Büchereien (1999), and the Hermann-Hesse-Förderpreis (1999) – and have been translated into various languages, including French and Czech. Steinherr was elected a fellow of the Bayerische Akademie der Schönen Künste (Bavarian Academy of Fine Arts) in 2003. You can learn more about Steinherr and read other poems from Before the Invention of Paradise at Arc’s page here. Ludwig Steinherr is reading at the King’s Lynn Poetry Festival on 21 September – find more details about the event here.

The translator of this poem, Richard Dove, was born in Bath in 1954, read Modern Languages at Oxford and taught German and English language and literature at the Universities of Exeter, Regensburg and Wales before moving to Munich in 1987, where he has since worked as a writer and lecturer. His early poems were recently collected in the bilingual volume Aus einem früheren Leben (Lyrikedition 2000, 2003), translated inter alia by Hans Magnus Enzensberger and Reiner Kunze. Since moving to the Federal Republic, he has written his poems very largely in German (Farbfleck auf einem Mondrian-Bild. Gedichte, Edition Thaleia, 2002; Am Fluß der Wohlgerüche. Gedichte, Rimbaud Verlag, 2008; Syrische Skyline. Gedichte, Rimbaud Verlag, 2009) while translating into English.

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.

Protest

September 3, 2012April 12, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

There is a way to drop a body atop a hard mattress,
to scrub gentle parts too hard, yank a gown
across withered flesh, to drag a weight smaller
than your own and slam it against a pillow.
There are ways to say the night is long
and there are twenty other beds to check.

There are ways to ignore chapping lips,
not to hear a rasping voice, to avoid the task
of filling a water pitcher. There are ways
to tell them, without using words, that you hate
the job, ways to leave them cold and shivering
and naked. There are ways to leave them alone.

But they had an answer, the ones we cleaned
and dressed and moved and fed and watched
over. On chair, bed, pillow, gown, on sheet,
diaper, floor, and shoe, writ repeatedly
in stinking letters: No, I am not dead.

by Janice N. Harrington

Notes from BOA Editions:

Janice N. Harrington writes poetry and children’s books. She grew up in Alabama and Nebraska, and both those settings, especially rural Alabama, figure largely in her writing. Her first book of poetry, Even the Hollow My Body Made Is Gone (2007), won the A. Poulin, Jr. Poetry Prize from BOA Editions and the Kate Tufts Discovery Award. She currently teaches in the creative writing program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

The Hands of Strangers portrays the tensions and moments of grace between aged nursing home residents and their healthcare workers. What does it mean to be a nurses’ aide in a nursing home, the lowest of the low, the typically-female worker who provides physical care for the devalued bodies of the elderly? What is it to live one’s remaining life on a county ward as an indigent elder? You can find out more about the book at BOA’s website here. Read more about Janice N. Harrington’s work and hear her read from it on her website here.

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.

A week of running beside the canal

August 27, 2012April 12, 2022 ~ 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

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.

[Nineteen Sixty-Five] 1965

August 20, 2012April 12, 2022 ~ 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

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.

Photography

August 13, 2012April 12, 2022 ~ 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.

The Skagit Valley Beekeeper

August 6, 2012April 12, 2022 ~ 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

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.

Face

July 30, 2012April 12, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

If we lived in a different world
            or near enough to try
I would approach you, girl, and say:
            You won’t believe my eyes:
yours is the face I’ve loved for thirty years –
            your high forehead,
            that urchin-cut,
            old half-a-coconut shell.
But I’m not shooting a line.
            I know you’re someone else.

Somewhere out there’s the man I was.
            And still I hope you find him –
            perhaps you have,
and it may help to know
            he has kept faith –
            kept faith to thirty years of loss.
–        I mightn’t know her face these days
          if seen by chance.
          Nor yet would you,
          as like or not.
Goodbye, old girl, go far.

by Peter Dale

Notes from Anvil Press:

Peter Dale‘s first full collection in over ten years brings together lyrical poems and monologues in which bleakness and tenderness alternate, conflict, and finally coexist. The bittersweet shifts of memory are evoked throughout with an understated tone, making the poems in Under the Breath compelling reading.

Peter Dale was born in Addlestone, Surrey, and worked as a secondary school teacher before becoming a freelance writer in 1993. As well as his selected poems, Edge to Edge (1997), Anvil has published his much admired translations of Jules Laforgue, François Villon and Dante’s Divine Comedy. His most recent collection, Diffractions: New and Selected Poems 1968-2010, was published by Anvil in autumn 2011. You can also listen to Peter Dale read from a number of his poems at the Poetry Archive.

The Fact Remains

July 23, 2012April 12, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

I’m heavier than some animals, lighter than others. Also, I’m more threatening than most animals, less threatening than a few; faster than some, slower than most. I don’t bite, though, unless provoked by desire. What I want to say is: I still measure distance in years. And swans mate for life. At least that’s what I believe. I want a pair of somethings to refer to when I’m trying to make a point. The point is this: I’m an animal who knows where he stands among other animals. I can outrun a snail and threaten a housefly. I can conquer an anthill and mate for life. But the fact remains: My favorite dog has bitten the entire neighborhood. Here, boy, I say, but he ignores me, intent on running down another frightened child on a bicycle. He’s mangy too. His collar’s too tight, and there’s no quenching his thirst. Raw meat’s the answer, but I’m too lazy to go to the store. This is the story of a boy and his dog. Though as far as I can tell, the dog ran off a long time ago.

by Christopher Kennedy

The latest Poetry Centre podcast, a discussion featuring Kate Clanchy, Jane Yeh, and Sophie Mayer which was chaired by Alex Pryce, is now available. Recorded at a recent symposium entitled ‘Sisters in Verse’, the debate examined the place of women within contemporary poetry and whether poetry itself is a gendered field. You can listen to the audio here, and your comments are welcome via our Facebook page, via Twitter (@brookespoetry), or via the website.

Notes from BOA Editions:

Christopher Kennedy grew up in a working-class suburb of Syracuse, New York. He received a B.A. in English from LeMoyne College and a M.A. in Creative Writing/English from Syracuse University where he is currently the Director of the M.F.A. Program in Creative Writing. He is the author of three poetry collections, Encouragement for a Man Falling to His Death (BOA Editions, Ltd.), which received the Isabella Gardner Poetry Award in 2007, Trouble with the Machine (Low Fidelity Press), and Nietzsche’s Horse (Mitki/Mitki Press). His work has appeared in many print and on-line journals and magazines, including Ploughshares, New York Tyrant, Ninth Letter, The Threepenny Review, Slope, Mississippi Review, and McSweeney’s. He is an associate professor of English at Syracuse University where he directs the MFA Program in Creative Writing.

The poems in Ennui Prophet, Christopher Kennedy’s fourth collection, range from deeply personal explorations of relationships with family and friends to examinations of the political climate in the first decade of the millennium. Whether personal or public, Kennedy gazes through a slightly distorted lens to better see the world around us. The novelist Dave Eggers has written that Kennedy’s work is ‘[s]ingular and deeply pleasurable. Christopher Kennedy’s prosetry is a lonely anarchic nation-state unto itself, half vacation funspot, half eerie purgatorial layover.’ You can sample a playlist that Christopher Kennedy put together to accompany his book at the Largehearted Boy music blog.

Castles

July 16, 2012April 12, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

We built our castles on the sand.
The tide came in, and there an end.

We built our castles out of fear.
Trust began to disappear.

We built our castles stone by stone.
Their shadow chilled us to the bone.

We built our castles far apart.
Twin halves of a broken heart.

We built our castles thoughtlessly.
No chance for you, no luck for me.

We built our castles in the air.
Nothing we hoped to find was there.

We built our castles. Let them fall.
Time disposes. Love is all.

by John Mole

Notes from Enitharmon:

Born in 1941 in Taunton, Somerset, John Mole has lived for most of his life in Hertfordshire, teaching English and running The Mandeville Press with Peter Scupham. An extensive and diverse writing career has seen him publish, alongside many poetry books, the selection of essays Passing Judgements and a libretto for Alban, a community opera which premiered in St. Albans Abbey in the spring of 2009. Recipient of the Gregory and Cholmondeley Awards for poetry, and the Signal Award for his writing for children, he is currently poet-in-residence with the charity Poet in the City.

In his most recent book, The Point of Loss, from which ‘Castles’ is taken, personal memories are explored with a sharpness which avoids sentimentality while the seriousness of many of his subjects is addressed with a blend of affection, sardonic humour and a characteristic lightness of touch. Political, intimate and exceptionally readable, The Point of Loss engages with its subjects in a variety of verse styles, ensuring that every poem is memorable in its own right despite the range of Mole’s interests. As John Clare, Herod and Billie Holiday rub shoulders with figures from the writer’s own life, it is the significance we have to one another which is fleshed out here without pretension.

You can hear John Mole read from a selection of his work at the Poetry Archive here, and read a poem he wrote as part of his work with Poet in the City here.

Enitharmon Press takes its name from a William Blake character who represents spiritual beauty and poetic inspiration. Founded in 1967 with an emphasis on independence and quality, Enitharmon has been associated with such figures as Samuel Beckett, Harold Pinter and Kathleen Raine. Enitharmon also commissions internationally renowned collaborations between artists, including Gilbert & George, and poets, including Seamus Heaney, under the Enitharmon Editions imprint. You can sign up to the publisher’s mailing list here to receive a newsletter with special offers, details of readings & events and new titles and Enitharmon’s Poem of the Month.