New Year

New Year and all - I'll write a more coherent post soon, but in the meantime check out (&buy obviously) Amy De'Ath's 'Erec & Enide'. It's fab -- as is Amy's blog.

In other news there's a new interview with Josh Jones up on Misosenstive.

Happy New Year!


of the rovers

a life of merit
against the fist

so dispirited a measure stands
at one remove

this versatile muscular panic

who demands and who'll
work for it?

mass retaliation
fortune favours
the fixtures

                            most! mannered! of champions!
                            brisk! exhibits! of champions!
                            legit! accounts! of champions!
                            stern! thoughts! of champions!


                           we came up fighting!

Qui

Stem 'le flow'! Oh the crowd
erupts, it's slang for the
vulva you know -- not 'le flow'
but the dyke grows -- the quip
cut short. We are saturated.

Found Chat - by Jamie Larkin

i'm going to be Julie from the movie Julie and Julia
who writes a blog
then becomes famous
i'm going to become the new Stefan Zweig
i'll know everyone in the literary world
(just without the suicide in Brazil)
or like Ezra Pound
(just without the anti-semitism or the crazy)
what's your essay on?

(Thanks to Jamie Larkin for letting me use his webchat)

winch away

who'll take that tantrum
and being late is a phone call
away

a quota of firmness
salient the point in the
face of i'll need to speak

to my husband

be still and let everything
out through
what the surgery will do

watching cheap news
and there's always
something to worry about

I've read your blog and I
think my foot's trapped
whut an agonising complication.

original draft

turn to the steps sand out the stain and forget
right there is no lollard turn to the step and
forget right keep conquerors from the door
step and forget no confidence in the new
so turn to the steps – not wanted – and forget

A few links

Some interesting reviews of 'difficult' poetry by the Guardian -

Collected Poems by Tom Raworth

Poems by J.H. Prynne

I appreciate this is evidence against some of what I said in an earlier post, but then as Whitman says:
"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself,"

National Poetry Day

Despite a grumpy refusal to engage in National Poetry Day in any real or active sense, I thought I'd post a poem. A grumpy refusal of a poem.

Congruence

We're sequestering,
I suppose, yes,
everyone's sequestering -
Hey you, with
the bludgeoned eye and
the coffee grounds
gravelling your lips,
what are you sequestering?

Each one's sequestering,
I suppose, yes,
every one is indeed sequestering -
a blunt instrument, a parading praxis
or a childhood cape.
Hey you, what's so quick
to be sequestered?

In other news, Josh Jones of Etcetera has a book out. His sterling taste is perhaps reason enough to investigate. Get the book here.

Looking at the site, it's not actually up at the moment - check back in the next few days I guess. The book is called "Thought Disorder".