moving on or going back to where you came from

        

                                               Amy Clampitt

  

                   it is not the substance of a man’s fault

                   it is the shape of it

                   is what lives with him, is what shows

 

                                               Charles Olson

                      

a room crammed with sharp toys                              

                                     

a field zesty with fire   

                  

                   history as historia        

 

        cool as a shot to the mouth    

  

                            *

  

                                      in pinched shoes  

                                               cataleptic            

                                              

                            merely to show up

                  

                   the birdlime viscidity of the garden

                   the scalpel-like finger

                              of a shriveled leaf—                     

                  

                   not accusatory   

                                               shadowed only

                                                         by itself

                   not pointing

         towards a balance-act 

                                             but balancing         

                 

                            *

                   

I was six and made of violins

                                               stumped

                            by metronomic light 

        

I wanted to energise him away

         like glucose

                   globed

         into whiteness—

 

         a voice spoken slantwise

                            but faraway—    

        

                                      sleeping it off

                  

                   I traveled in the dark

                   so as not to be seen    

  

                            *

  

         dusk-nervousness

         in what is             unclaimed

 

I wait and fail      

         paying off warders

                   at your door—    

 

                                               the thrillbox

                                               of birthdays

                                              

                   whalecalls from waterclotted

                            condensation

 

                                      the gazebladed kitchen 

 

                   the uplander silences of television

 

                                      blackish fingernails

                                                         from window-mould

                           

                            eyes goggled

                                      towards a lit hearth 

                                               fringe fraying

                                                                 

                            or cupping at the curtain frame

                                      fearful of fire 

                                               on the domestic zodiac

 

bees cried in their flower-coats

                   collecting honey

  

                            *

  

                   how the air divides      

                            like cutting a loaf—

 

         as much childed           

                   as fevered

 

                                      left alone

                            in the dry season         

                           

         to feed from the day’s nutrients—

 

                                                                  naphtha mirage 

                                                                            over the wheatfield

                                                                                              at sunset

 

                                               foxfur grinning on a spidersweb

                                                                 

                                                                  dialysis of rain

                                                                            inside a garden well     

                                                                 

                                                                  equal to breath             

  

                            *

  

         —to hear the substance of the earth

                                      to know its shape        

 

                   blessèd as an egg

   and yet—

 

                   and yet bombarded

                            by the radio impulse

                                      of survival

                                              

                   the whistlework of money—

        

her ivied hair       

                   trenched at the oven or

         admonished at the fire-grate

  

                            *

  

shuffle-worn cards

                                      blanked-out letters

                                               from the on-dead 

 

how life tickles the palm         at twenty

  

                            *

  

                   dreaming up worser devils

 

thinking the lesser disease might be

                                               loneliness—

 

no-one to ignite

                   the red-eyed bird

                            of your mind

 

no-one told you why

                                        love

                                               blunts

  

                            *

  

if the bones sing          

 

if chaos is chaos         

         returned—          

 

                                               no atom nuclei

                   no definitive cure         

                                                           

*

  

enter fortune

 

         a ransacked house   

                   half-emptied—   

 

that which remains

preserved in boxes

 

                   now bulges

         like a museum   

  

                            *

  

baffled voices     vow trounces

         —as if from any archive—

  

I lean over and touch my ear

         to the grid complex—

 

                            like hearing ritual cannibalism

                                      in the byways of a river

 

by James Byrne

Please join us on Friday 19 February from 6-8pm here at Oxford Brookesto celebrate the prize-winning poets of the ‘Open’ and ‘English as a Second Language’categories in our inaugural International Poetry Competition. The event willinclude readings from the winners, as well as an exciting showcase of work fromlocal young poets, mentored by award-winning writer, Kate Clanchy. Lightrefreshments will follow. If you would like to attend, please let us know viae-mail: poetrycomp@brookes.ac.ukby 10 February. 

‘Historia’ is copyright © James Byrne, 2015. It is reprinted from White Coins (Arc Publications, 2015) by permission of Arc Publications.

James Byrne’s most recent poetry collection Blood/Sugar, was published by Arc Publications in 2009. Byrne is the editor of The Wolf, an internationally-renowned poetry magazine, which he co-founded in 2002. He won the Treci Trg poetry festival prize in Serbia and his Selected Poems: The Vanishing House was published in Belgrade. Byrne lives in Liverpool and is a Lecturer in Creative Writing at Edge Hill University. His poems have been translated into several languages including Arabic, Burmese and Chinese and he is the International Editor for Arc Publications.

White Coins rewards the reader with a nomadic poetry for the 21st century; one that mingles personal, social and historical spaces whilst celebrating, at all times, linguistic versatility and innovation. Read more about the book on Arc’s website, and hear James read from his work on the Archive of the Now 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. 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.

for Zouzi Chebbi Mohamed Hasesen

Inventor-cool that Ptolemy –

smoothed down via dream-dictation,
he discovered the beard of Serapis,
and made dynastic the perfect lie.

Led to the unknown        by the unknown,
(from Macedon to Alexandria)

for your face on this postcard, Mohamed,
Goddio’s magnetometer flashed green –

from the humming cave of a shiphead,
a four-month stint in the Grand Palais.

*

To Google –

Serapis the amalgamator,
the ghost-bearded messiah,

part-western bull           part son of Geb,
a Jesus decoy agent.

From the ruins of the Daughter Library,
to the Yorkshire garrisons,

brushed / rebrushed
the bunko of his rock face.

*

Zouzi,

because the conclusiveness of one entity
is so crucial, so believed,

it carried Serapis from Alexandria
through Rome                   to the Bishops of Christ,

to these glassy banks of Petrovaradin –

where you are God of Fertility,
God of the White River –

Half-hierophant,        
          half-king of the deep.

by James Byrne

Copyright © James Byrne, 2009.

‘Serapis from a Postcard’ is taken from Blood / Sugar by James Byrne, and published by Arc Publications.

Notes courtesy of Arc:

James Byrne was born in Buckinghamshire in 1977 and divides his time between New York City and London. He is Editor of The Wolf, a poetry magazine he co-founded in 2002. His debut collection, Passages of Time, was published by Flipped Eye in 2003. He has translated the Yemeni national anthem and is currently working on a project to publish contemporary Burmese poets. In 2008, he won the Treci Trg Poetry Festival prize in Serbia. In 2009 his New and Selected Poems: The Vanishing House was published by Treci Trg (in a bilingual edition) in Belgrade. In 2009 his poems were translated into Arabic for the Al-Sendian Cultural Festival in Syria. He is the co-editor of Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century, published by Bloodaxe, and is co-editing Paris and Other Poems by Hope Mirrlees (Fyfield Books, 2011). You can read other poems from his latest collection here, hear him read one of his poems at this link, and read more poems here.

Since it was founded in 1969, Arc 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. You can find out more about Arc by joining them on Facebook or by visiting the publisher’s website, where there are discounts available on Arc books .

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.