or kill the oppressive lie
to destruction. I set
[ ]
[ ] her face
on her world is accidental:
with liberty [ ]
immune to the satisfaction
to release her unhappiness
aside from experience
of both to let fascination
a decade since I last
[ ] possess a temper
a companion to desire:
by a newly deserved recoil
but do not ever spell
is curious and indifferent
[ ]
and prefer to keep nothing
to gain love. My hold
how demonic I might become
of an alien [ ]
how I split the text apart
or kill the oppressive lie
that I might help her:
to release her unhappiness
into a regulated life
is curious and indifferent
to destruction. I set
her scar and her split lip
aside from experience
to turn upon a starry axis
[ ]
[ ]
count it too wasteful
of both to let fascination
dissolve a friendship
and prefer to keep nothing
[ ] her face
became labelled and secret
a decade since I last
practiced such crude magic
to gain love. My hold
on her world is accidental:
an absence of control
[ ] possess a temper
uneven enough to show
how demonic I might become
with liberty [ ]
but restraint is no longer
a companion to desire:
it is shrouded in the home
of an alien [ ]
immune to the satisfaction
of being less haunted
by a newly deserved recoil
[ ] to consider
how I split the text apart
to make space for her name
but do not ever spell
it in full [ ]
[ABSENT | VACANT]
absent | vacant || erase | dissolve || vanish
Herdsman
too severe to accept
some woodland
king for his model.
In delirium
the yellow waste
bag became an animal
and delicate red
bird life crackled
in the harsh
air of the isolation
ward. Of course I
am no better than
a d‚class‚ market
trader. Horus:
This wine is corked
Het Up
the alcohol behind each chocolate
sketch: eye
more beautiful
in this migraine glitter. I tell
her that the Greenwich axeman
is a sad | scribble | hair fixed
in a chopstick halo no weirder
than a biro or two. That smashed
cat head is just wood | space |
painted some kind of elfin hunt
upon the second
Urusei Yatsura
but element is less useful
to her than the correct armour
how she followed
a life that coiled overhead
to dock in cloud |
did not mean to hold her emblem
in the supernatural world.
Sally Day
it is shrouded
hood
but the other
siren
is kind
haze hedge
taught
me to construct
a bomb:
match head
and nail
varnish
deluge
bird catcher
her crayon
spectre
upon
the blackboard
Mas Abe
Miro
Once open the window to let him in
to open it and not open it
to clear it
the scholars in
preoccupied regions
from extended souls
sought in where he shuts the window's
conceived harangue
shuts himself in
no nothing perceptibly
round
just a window
and munching blackness
squeezed to cosmic
round
black in green
aside
ever growing literal viruses
come out in serenity amendment
brusque distension
loyal to where is not as translucent
as an opened wound
that future's enveloped lies,
progressed gesticulations onto uncertain sheets
ever articulate
wiped out
best transferred in shape
silky quietude to go from
all over wiped out
antennae
at the centre
squelched twice, and stuffed, beaten, beaten.
Picasso
Green iron and the wet mind
for unable to meet on his
definite in transposition
pruned
in equation
the body, covert sunshine is made
to grow in corrugated exposition of well
marked
slim
what never seems to pin-point his ache
what seems to scratch out,
out,
never jumps out of,
out,
wilfully in register
man
and another man, again,
gave, again,
whatever through the surface liquor
petrified nutrition in touch with,
this gentle touch,
recriminate strokes in Latin
dashed to planets
in blush, sugar
modes of caterpillar nude of late;
it dithers
with many I
it rains
in newer drops
by patterns.
Deceived in this pantheon prayer
of a man
suave
as many as
strict in physics,
almost cataloguingly smart in furrows,
that man,
that smoke,
striped, and striped, and striped.
Hodgkin
Everything grows and knows
like everything chats with every
specific plot,
stares,
each of them,
placing skin
everything lies in growth modelled
on no nostalgia land
of enlivened proposals
aims
diminishing green exit,
wryly drawn spheres
pulled, straight,
and pulled.
Nothing veers,
from top,
from those chameleon mountains
born evangelical studs
did push
for nowhere
while awake to the re-negotiated supplies
on board everything wipes out
on fields
steers clear of
kingly nonsense prime
to call it
intertwined
eye
resolute in make up forward
clashing
etched, eaten, in the bone.
Bellini
Remaining you there squirrelling
chits
heart-breaking monument
abasement scored in hand
in readiness
snaps
in hand
remaining small husk
of a wired windmill out of an intricate
stimulant, antibiotic meditation
in hand,
on purpose leading up to
the winter's tale
slaughtered fiction pool
given
a chill
still early and green
yet masterfully explored beyond the bridges
in those charcoal grey
sins
in hand
in the green hands of the uncompromising
electrical thinking
dire
pollution, it is to define another
exteriority, hardly a dream,
and walking
gripped
in the place
into the place.
Nicholas Johnson
World glitter scraped off sea shore
off the carbon coal
shore, remunerative, halfwit
patch of sun colony: trace,
got, how, spat, it is, hours and hours
since I, called out, you
heard from me; prison hospital magenta darker than
cavalry on plateau whirlwind
planks bergamot scent
a fleuve streamed with detritus a flaming bangle
Reconnaitre result restoration why?
days are damp muzz See that
the first call of the bird a bird
it was golden scent of barrack
and horses it is
trust in the Lord falange
ff la la yiep delight
brine caulk tra
la la
World glitter scrape
seashore enamel desist
prest You wait it is argent sure
magnet-strut with your
half drink
Rock gorse assent converge
high shag surveys prey
circle dance, snatch thru foam dance on froth
blood daub paste assuage confer
all my life and it is a long one
I have searched for a grace.. Spiritualist. Weaver thru
the bees. A house I built
moss lip vortex
Grandfather lion of the sea bend your leg
Grandfather perpetuate the still shore
white pool of foam on the shore
the tracks the sandridges a lethal undertow
dislodge silk shirts of amoebas coral copper
life gnawing at your gut
praise velocity in and out of passion
drop twice the cufflinks and rap the tableboard
he is there Who is there a train of
thought argent-sure thru the same
the very same rushes catkins plinth
Wild fruits at night's seam
fell ax's sun
courtships gone to mush
stayes light's wafer
suc hailstone
grail,
meadows and territories
of mud candled by hail,
Such artics cackle,
cartwheels rust
lonely marsh's
gullet. Snow's thick
below the space of sun
hailstones
get miles to fall
at jetties of churchyards
alternate version-with two lines adapting Barry MacSweeney's verse
Bright joins o stone
glint from tool depths
a September morning spume
joining stones to lozenge
rosy suck, beelike
we cluster hover
Broken water-reed
swung ax'd sun
courtship gone to mush
left with wafer-thin lumiŠre
suc hailstone grail
swilting mud
cackles in these artics-
cartwheels sink
thru marsh's gullet
below the space of sun
the hailstones
have miles to fall
fall like prayers
jetted on churchyards
husbandry of colours
on graves
winter swing
David Rees
The John Riddle
to the veterans of Trafalgar and Waterloo
I-Spy Goat Eye
Porter Cod-Head in Cod-Head's corner
spat his bitter cud over the ashy table
and pulled out patterns with a finger,
circles bigger than the Laxey Wheel,
more bladed than St Katherine's Wheel.
At the second bell, triangulates the bar,
takes his nightly centre stage
and reads his riddle to the floor.
"I have been with Pecke-in-the-crowne,
Sacke and Sugar, Newes, Jarmara,
Vinegar Tom and Ilemauzar,
remember me? The lying tideman,
greened and sawn-up founder on the Strand
with my pocket-book of wrong times,
I will be each lane, each square,
I will be the eye on the square,
the eye in the triangle, vein of the building,
waster of muscle and lamer of heels.
In the high lodgings, the table
of the judged looks down and judges,
distracted, ball-eyed, vine-stem puking,
the corbel woman, keening by the south porch,
bearded kite-heads, enemies and kings
crowned and braided, and long-faced I
spy in the middle with my goat-eye."
Fox and Goose
Remember here the man that we refused
our mastiff scraps.
he was found behind a curry caf‚,
dead from licking the salt off the wall
by the bins. His little soul
stopped in its ascent by hot pipes
caught in an angle, looked like cobwebs.
He used to live in the circus square,
but the bell-noise from St Botolph's
and the traffic, as well as being kicked about
drove him further down the bank.
Helped to hot food by the Methodists,
shining with red hittite fervour,
dosed up and brilliant specks
like Mother Carey's chickens, then.
Read the herbs that grow by the river,
used the live stalks for the reading
to see one week into the future
and won the pools in that July.
Got through the ten thousand quid,
survived the swimming and the peine forte et dure
and the filling with twenty pints.
Ah but he was young then and hang the currency,
like the goose caught by a snared fox
that is waiting for the huntsman's dog.
Saint Old Nick
Saint Old Nick back from the sea,
bringing presents for his children
who know his smell of varnished parquet
brings godless beasts to wooden Noah.
His round head buzzes like bad bell-metal
and finds a fixed point. "Keep your body
upright and you won't get seasick."
Deck too big to stop the pitching,
hands too red to use for money,
flex wire winded 5-ply round the fingers
stung by bonfire, slit by glass-edge
fumbled, caught thank christ thank jesus.
Singled out by his sailor's rolling,
stared down when he asks for rations
and chased along the Wapping High Street,
leper-christened or bit to pieces
or hectored through the one-way system,
takes position on the District & Circle
and scratches tool-hard words of harm
the same as on the wall in Walbrook,
Saint Old Nick, old wall, old brick. Defictus est, defictus est,
defictus est, defictus est,
defictus est, defictus est,
defictus est, defictus est.
The John Riddle
Tarry Jack who fends the black-backed,
simple Jack Lack on his knife-back bookend,
bastard Jack on the other,
leans on his back with his dagger elbow,
digs for a nut of jet in the nape.
In the slips with Jack all-afraid,
Jack dismayed at the ground-eye view
of mustard girls with their gravy, gravy.
Gunpowder senses crack and smack,
bearded, curling, oaken flavour.
Leg-of-Mutton yard back row joining
leg to leg the running corner,
three-leg sack race Young Jack winning.
Comes the Pressgang, led by a stammerer.
Bad Jack later, leading the mopping up,
scrubs the hansom, scrubs the cobbles,
loads the offal into the basin.
Quand sang impur song Free Jack whistles
by the child-bed churches near the river.
Three tides rise but Jack comes smiling
back to barside, dripping, detailed,
plugged with oakum, dry side out, steaming.
Lastly, Yellow-haired Jack the naked,
kept for safety under the crossroad
for his murders on The Highway.
Steve Harris
Theda Bara
Comical now in a cynical age w.no sacred cow
her wrist-on-forehead emotiveness
but then, back then,
a kohl-eyed destroyer of men;
a sepia-shadow skull for screen.
Cloaked, serene, swaying
mesmerizing her prey the audience.
Eyelids shivering, definition of vamp originator of vamp
captivating w. caprice & coy canter of the lips
the bumbling heroes dumbly tripping
over chivalry's empty scabbards.
Remorse-she has none for romance what motives then?
her face a gatling gun of mirrors taking in adulatory gazes
like bullets to fire back their own naivety
reflecting the depths
of their sacrifice along every inch
of trajectory.
She so brassy shell; loaded & cocked to snip mien.
Addict's hooded stare starting to snood the diffluent eyelines.
Broad cleft chin & brutal lips preparing bourd or boutade unpredictable.
blanked by statements in exclamation marks.
black frame sentence in white gilt.
played out to insane piano.
an entire ethos feagued in a decade to foreclose.
from slim, pallid Cigarette smouldering
she will go east as emollient Salome
igniting w. a dance of the seven veils
men compelled to throw
their hair to her fire.
Divine precursor to feminist desire (or feminine paregoric)
taking hold where it hurt the most
even before most knew where that was
& what they'd lost
Was something not in the can
Theodosia's 'arab death' became theirs too.
The Onomatopoeia of Uma Thurman
Uma rhymes w. orgasm,
Uma is the demon I incant to deliver me
As vertebrae curve, contort backward in chants of ache
& scalp scours hair in arc after arc
Almost to the forehead, eyes furrowing
The whiteness of the knuckles that grip the gambolling headboard
& Thurman is the exhalation,
The peeling off of adhesive labels from hirsute lungs
Or is Uma a unique type of tart citrus fruit
Neither pomegranate nor navel but nippled
W. rind dextrin rich, w. gooey flesh slinked in white tabinet
Fun to kyanize w. a hypo (or Thurman's lance)
As they rest, cupped, in mauve polystyrene mattresses
Or is Uma the skin at the nape of knees
White as milk, texture of eyelids or rose-petals wrinkled
Or Thurman an adornment, a trim to taffeta hems
Or is Thurman a little-known Detroit car manufacturer
Now defunct like Cord, La Salle, Studebaker or Packard,
Noted for its whale baleen grille & tulip leaf wings
Known as Umas which extended into running boards
Where gangsters stood in the forties aiming
Thurman grease-guns onehanded at barber shop windows
Where Thurmans, the first mass-produced latex condom
Were offered for weekends, or was Thurman
The Nazi who, in 1945, as Berlin fell to the Russians
Flew to Paraguay in a Junkers Ju52 (codenamed Uma)
Laden w. gold bullion & objets d'art (most notably Monet's
'Uma in daffodils w.sheep' & Gauguin's 'Uma scratching')
Or was Uma a type of Antipodean flightless bird
Or was Uma only what was heard at second hand, a third party lie
& Thurman a cursed Egyptologist strangled in his study
By assailants unknown, sherds of ten thousand year old bandage
Snagged in his snarled fingertips the only clue
Or was Thurman the pet name for Byron's bear at Cambridge
Or Uma the spirifer shape growth in the brains of basilisks.
Or Uma, as the low ululation emanating from the thorax
& Thurman, its chafing on the uvula
Causing a low baritone murmur, a spissated growling
Throaty & sexy, commonly associated
As a symptom of advanced nymphomania
Or an American film actress of the nineteen-nineties
Who once had to kiss Richard Gere while I had to watch
& who became responsible for this diallage
Henceforth to be identified in dictionaries as Umatopoiea:
& this was the beginning of language.
A Smile Can Go
A long way
when down seems THE only direction & every abyss
is lipsticked into tempting a long sweet kiss
like a fly to molasses
Is kettle boil, LAST bus or rainbow's crock
Rely on a domino theory & topple from LOOKS on high to lowered blinds
& can happen anytime, to anyone, anywhere & not be
cheap provocation or corporate merchandising;
I was SOLD on that moment
Thanks for THAT-I really NEEDED that; that hole taken whole out of my HEAD
Just a smile (honey, that was the buck passed)
Can amaze & enchant w.the strangest of details
HONEY it was the shoes, of all things, SHOES
say ma'am, can I take one off & sail in it inhaling y'day's work?
Heel & sole of Cuban heart & soul thick & HIGH
Hallo, Hallo, can I come & live in y'shoes sunny aisles?
could've been like passing anyone, anytime, anywhere
Cept for this FEELING of filling up
like a bucket under an all night tap
kinda dazed me
in a GOOD way, felt fleeting
& kneecaps ebbed to feathers & flittering nerve fluxed that leg-back tenotomy
& courage softened like rice-paper to dry mid-swallow as tendrils of taut lust
& the stomach was plucked by its stem thro' the engine of incited heart
& powerballed & balanced tremellose & gravid w. goodness
& misery bolted like a hare from a lurcher
& excuse me, Miss, can I be y'tongue
& can I feel those teeth from the INSIDE as they press down on my lobe
& clumsy will y' hold my hand for hopskotch
& light is bleeding low across the meadows so will y'walk w.me
& night is calling like a little CHILD for her lost mum & dad
& city dissolves around us & exists less & less cept as a vacillating dust
Hey! Stranger! you didn't have to, not like that, not at me
But I'm glad y'did
To you maybe as a leaf to an autumn tree, to me
that smile went & pulled me up
like a good samaritan from a pit of self-pity's tar;
like a gaol break on my in-step out-of-use emotional Alcatraz;
like a mermaid at the far shore's jagged vista;
So much for my lizard stance; lazing stone ego ushered to y'sun-soak smile;
So much for my slug instinct; frozen to a twig of liquorice by y'sun-soak smile;
So much for my bear cage-this involuntary DANCING for all for another chance of a smile;
This odd feeling decontrols me-Honey
I'm smiling back tho' it looks like a wince, like a cringe
I'm trying to say I'm grateful you took the moment, took the chance
Least I can do is purr appreciation
Every smile lets a little animal go
Coral Hull
My Mother's Face
1 Adult Pain
Let me feel the pain
as I walk
if I must feel at all,
but don't let me grow
my mother's face.
Let it feel like karate
chops to the throat,
chest, gut & bowel.
Let it knock me down now.
Let it hail on the plains
of my skin.
Let it freeze over
but let the wind change.
Don't let me look
like my mother
& the pain grow
into my face.
It's long slow haul,
topographic, weathered,
face like a map
for the world to trample on.
I rush home to a mirror
looking for signs.
I want my own set of lines.
But already her hands
that have grown
on my body,
are drying up
& twisting
into knots.
They were always too frail
for factory work.
Now it appears that the sun
has gotten to them.
I don't mind
weather worn people.
Just don't want to look
like poverty.
Don't want it
to show on my skin.
Don't want to walk
around
as an advertisement
for pain.
Don't want to look like her.
But I have inherited
how to live & what to feel.
Pain so strong
I can hardly stand upright.
Even in the sun
I bend like a tree.
Hold onto skin
as tough as wood.
Didn't know emotional pain
could be so physical.
Didn't know
it could stop you
from walking in a park.
2 Infant Scar
she twists up around the mouth, if the pain
could be released, this is where it would come
out, the wrinkles are lines of strain, holding it
in, sometimes during sleep, it is emitted, in
little pup groans, deep below an earthy frown,
as if it was my first blood, mum said, 'you are
getting your first lines', 'but where?', 'a frown
mark, right between the eyes, you should try
to frown less', but she is wrong, the line was
created from an accident, when i was eight,
involving my drunken father, after the
stitches, nan coming through the frontdoor &
me standing there, with my tennis racket,
every time i picked up that tennis racket, i
felt like i had hit myself in the face with it,
when cross-eyed, i could see the black
stitches, gathering up the lump of skin, into
its big infant scar, i heard nan say, 'no', i felt
the weakness in her knees, beneath her
pleated skirt, a momentary tremble in her
heart, i will admit to liking the attention, i
pretended to be sick as well & got the
measles, but for nan something had been
ruined, she should have stepped in sooner
than this, then mum bought me an iceblock &
a basket ball, at school i was called into the
deputy principal's office, when he asked me
what happened, i said, 'i fell over', he didn't
believe me, but he couldn'tget a thing out of
me, i sealed my lips, the house, my heart, i
forgot, the little blinds pulled down, closing
my self blame in, even when the kids watched
me, bounce the basket ball against the brick,
waiting for me to pass it to them, i could
sense they were wary & didn't like me, they
saw me behind my infant scar & i saw them
through it, mum had told me what to say,
now from looking at it you will be able to tell,
i have been injured, somewhere inside, that
broken piece stored in a cupboard, this is the
line that separates us, it is not a wrinkle
setting in, mum's face sinks into the cotton
pillow slip, at night her lines rest themselves,
the sheets collapse down over her bones, she
is deeply asleep & the pain is working inside
her, like fingernails grown longer in the
morning, it's not natural aging
A.C. Evans
Transit and Culmination
Now even
pale angel Aemyrge
winged
hope far cloudless horizon
where mist rises now
away
oblique opaque strange transit
not planetary motion
not white fire
not cold ocean shoreline
drift lattice stone bird faint tremor
stifle desire may erupt
out to culminate tryste residual
cyclamen petal a wing
last ember
residue
we become un-dead marble mutant
pattern
last small movement
muraille
lone
18th November 1995
Simon Smith
Figure Eleven: Silver Rail
(takes 1-21)
(for my parents)
The fixed arc is designed to erase
What we should do in the coming white days
Michael Palmer
twenty-eight
October was a lie. I itch with exile like the wind
syllables in train to appal or dissolve as one of Ovid's beasts,
all the signs of life working quickly I sought
three
white noise refracts on a brown field
(Lower left panel) my lucky star glows, as shown by the workings in Mallarmean white
You barter away smelling salts or mints,
to excuse the choice,
and I choose your words, the prism in the other's camp or envelope
as fusewire trembles, (for more
room and daylight see Gaeta Set II)
for protean and far flung chromatic scales condense
and throw away
thirty-four
The weather-girl predicts the future 48 hours or so into your own time
you locate the false prophet, and through the sunny day let it float,
to hold down a second job and pay the rent.
Light bounces off the silver rail.
All this encased in a kind of idyll, or jelly, or amber. I would try and hide
the chart if I were you. The sea was a white, unbroken wing of nostalgia.
We enter the world of cones, rhomboids and crystals
the study of German Romanticism smuggled as contraband,
searing and milky as dawn.
I say a flower.
six
the ghost writer passes through that region of the Isles, what lies out there digging snow
digging to cut perfection out of the Big Ideas. A grey tile loosens,
slithers down the rooftop. Lushness of a green field the memory remakes the head.
A's the letter of your absence, in the limits of song
twenty-nine
Hero staring off to the left a middle distance fifth by fifth
in the untitled grey rain which buries all the atlases and listings of the world.
twenty-three
whiteout
forty-one
(a murmur) I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, I thought I'd heard your step among bullet points
zero
pencil marks like human hair.
Lucky 7
Biography the heat-generated roar, the white mask things touch.
when a flocked paper would suit where brightness might fall, then you'd have more room and
daylight, a massive cloud white, massive which number
Your duvet bears a likeness unarticulated as much as creased over itself.
window air city
to the edge, flinty with detail/liquid flow a theory of colour; orchid partly
distraught I carried my body to the choppy Hellespont
forests of sawdust, a humble spoon or I could lend you my fleece.
Blue chalk outlines the advocate, a real showman or situationist,
(twenty-five
rain faltering, cornfields unpack daylight. Inside I mass-produce
or perish, toil in suspension, write one last speech from the upper gymnasium.
Blue coat and wrapped up warm 2 a.m.
flatout under streetlights laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and
fallen backwards puffs of blue snow and laugh and laugh and laugh.
Venus lost her footing worked to death
more like a paintbrush than advice, a scar,
disinherited. Simply reverse the polarity, power into somebody I revere,
a delicious drop to the fairground.
Time now to mow the lawn, my life's work titled Hero and Leander
a calm blue to the upper atmosphere, snow shovelled into great piles
thirty-five
(unclassified) cite works of translation
forged objects shoplifted a few ideas
nothing but burns left (a guest writer writing this down).
we all look in books and it rains
it rains everyday
Water spills momentous green putting blue between us, his expression tucked
in, inscrutable as the Gulf of Mexico, the smash and grab of style my throne and home.
Poem made out of white
forty
His queen enjoys a sunset complete with a search for the real thing;
iridescent tangled as fusewire the fear of everywhere grainy monochrome lies,
motor functions cross-hatched for shade (visibility) and safety, veins of lead
or gold or a gentle caress, or a sparrow calls through traffic
Drumming its pure form shivers
Pyramid of the Sun
white acrid smoke
all the colours dragged through the snow move of
their own free-will about the landscape
air sea
earth
and nights at Tournon
sites to rest
twenty-one
the easy optimism of Twombly's Suma (1982) beams away in a monograph;
the colours red knocks into are stars over Teotihuacan buckled with Time,
metamorphosised space into ball/sun.
eight
Psyche splits, listing any adjectives she likes, like "feathered" for ocean.
the edge chalked.
where brightness might fall sunlit relief
plums flopped from the string-bag. The black
searing freeze sticky freeze sticky objects to a laboratory wall
a white wall, the heron flown off
nine
seventeen
scentless as a bled rose, close by the language machine
lived; its silver teeth chewed the line black and blue
The black lantern, rococo style. Alone and wary I had dispensed with technique
the north rain proof of an aleatory event or border dispute
Armies run the idioms, the central argument its words cut and creep under my skin true
or false, dry rust stuck fast
score and read for improvement and education. Made out of the sea.
one
Is, its particulates describe the folds and tucks of a red blouse and you describe nothing but the subject where there is none but technique and games, tricks, lines, plains, solids, melody, silence, music, dark, light trembling disobedience, jangled all over the skin at all levels through Time blotted ink, blotted out
automatic reveries took control of my limbs, arms and legs jerky,
but in H”lderlin's best voice the rain's soft thud.
Beauty's fifth column proceeds from a state of general alert,
yellow as the meadow, green as the meadow
a murdered sister's body made into a harp sings itself
I sing a flower ruined
formal solutions on Monday afternoons, by a birthmark
and the space around it
In this example the workings were shown, as in prehistoric times
twenty
white bones scattered on a brown field
five
Second Experiment: Untitled (Boat) 1991
Baked Synthetic Clay, the same energy loss
interference dampened to the immediate environment
Using a 2B STAEDLER MARS LUMGRAPH 100
scissored heat and light as bi-products
(I scribbled hurriedly "studio notes" over Silver Rail)
Today is a story and a clear head.
24th October-22nd November 1996
Niall Quinn
banded nerves had opened cycles:
warmth ached liver in through
sound-a light breath even the
standard; wind fell beknighted on
the little grass-
fell plaything arrogates the bent whistle
and night follows grating pictures to his
bent mother astride a guitar. Anxiety turtle
flusters through word, ground,
hisself black heart strains open.
Beards and nineteen hefty mariners. Yes-
a disconsolate navy varies its hats and
one more time her voice invites-playing
the stairs, happy instrument of divine
happenstance: take her note and game
that last delight-a window's sudden
return, half light and a delicate tonsure.
Soldier soul come in.
Single-bind picture exuent General: halt
Concealed candle follows
Feathers hats upon the green:
Quiet master flows serene blemish
or tried clown rises, preen and lash
smokes the past/wasta belated junky
hies on the smile vision betokened guilts
bare oh honest, driver exuent glad
spoken elected and seats in joy eliptic
bastard one-to-three she speaks-how
hopeless perfect is the sky-
speeches delicate hoes lining the shore
is place constructive his spider resting
such movement about his black thigh. Dither,
losing and ends are come for the first, foods
are eaten big body caves without/smiles/so
intimate the animal descries and abandons
posture prepared for flight the equals
rebourne. Beneath picture is
framed disclosure never again.
That Sudden Storm
Prosperpina cigarette
shuttle is clean comes
urinating downstairs stiff bread.
revisiting the scene of old infirmities
snapped to
when it gets dark and the hill is green
and the children leave cheering, chuckling. The lights on the black
shun the black deep water the cold shudder
spirit blind embrace.
Mimesis.
Clowns hand sinking bored. Then the pure brow furrowed in the
market place. A wretched history, the shaven hill
desire in the clear light. The bird is silent and the sun falls through
the hole in the world the monkey shown his box and the white grunt
then leaving.
Medallion-Slight Return
I
Pious cat drimmed blather
License fold outmatch
Devilish banter plural forsaken
Metal hulch drain at bore
Unlicensed fetid hatch.
II
Ever blackened an arch
Over swain delectable at the past-
Written plover over brake in green
Marched or flew.
Three heavies gleamed frosted
Belly snake in the grass. Glanced furtive
Blonder shell a larger bather
Exuent the hut. Sea athere pointed
Bloater, heaven on a hill, poured
Libations to the true and back
Heavy with winter sinisters pride
Brushes plonker out.
III
Limestone primacy: tombs of
Spectacled gatherers lunching
On afters. Aces ahide the fact
IV
Sinboiler with mettle cast astride
A fancy blunder wrecking holes
Lambent, greasy from a distant pier.
All hallows to the mother unbabbling
Weighted pair and man
Cried dusty bark for all is fable
Flutes and bankhead of wanderings:
V
John Bulb under luscious tent sweats
Orange of fantastic morning who cast
The spell. Colander shaken at the scene.
Bast hell bent spider ese.
D.S. Marriott
Return to the Real
Tonight all my shames recede. I know the restless voices of my youth,
whores without blame sucking tricks of fate.
Lie, the night air seems preoccupied with the assuring,
disarray
of distress, amid fevers gliding through scenes of heaving lust,
for now the tide extends to all linking.
A memorial for fear above lakes of pain. It produces a raw stink
as the sky retches in the advocacy.
According to legend there were swipes, clouds and flat-backer sprees
too close to the real.
Within Thamesmead,
ringworm gods chant idylls of swans repeatedly,
they choose our arteries to express the purity of island stories,
we love the obsession
and their blunt civility. We didn't know air could burst into white flame.
Spectators to our deaths, the bootboys sing their Lieder,
can someone who hasn't been poisoned by whiteness know it?
Overseers of skin mirror the rebirth of Malcolm's autobiography.
They love us for our impurity. They invite us to a symposium
on hair - rich, black and curly.
But imagine, for example,
shades of X flashing in front of my eyes-
imagine goodgirl flood my whole being
feel the poison touching me or biting me
flying out on jolts as hammershakes come all over me
like metal manicuring hands
pressing their way
deep down into the long sweet paralysis in me
deeper than this loss I cannot reach.
Imagine also
white wolves roaming more slowly in memory,
as when wading through a warm stinking mess to meet my father,
lightscreens sheet into the back of my cropped skull
and whirlpool of shapeless heads scream in the darkness.
Each command a current that bores the flesh, scales the tongue,
and there's a yearning joy in my father's obsession that will never pass
my own failure.
Night is falling,
I didn't know the depths of these unspoken things,
or why I had to wait until 1963
to sound them out shaking in the cold on a rundown wicker porch
watching the horizon disappear as if on a dreamlike journey
drifting back to the real.
The Consolation
Do I hear voices, or do I hear voices
as if there had been no rain for three years, exodus where sleeping apart from strangers
stops the trembling
of the old dream's desired limbs,
when in the performance of rituals doctors describing dead bodies
are no longer alive but in coma.
And there is nothing but dry veld. And I touch the innerpart of my flesh. And the
animals look like old people
with no mouths or skin,
the way a savage tired to death with free will spews up morsels of the condemned
in pendular arcs without any sense of embarrassment.
The way a slave is fearful but chooses not to think of it, desolation without sorrow,
unburied in the purple-black mouths of gods. As pools of rain
gather on the floorboards
watching these shuffling wounds
where sleeping apart from strangers means I choke on the severed tongue,
hearing, or not hearing voices so piercing in their evidence
or extreme modulation, the extremity of sounds cuts through
the body of meaningless ritual-
these babalawos, or ngomas, trailing lightning or thunder on the dry veld
never to be known beyond the mysteriousness of ritual,
unerring as a wish returning from the land of the dead.
And I touch the innerpart of my flesh.
And the animals close their pinched eyes sickened by their shabby-genteel
surroundings.
Drowned as we are we haul the boats ashore
mythic and moulded, held aloft above tides of excrement
when the earth hurls my mind against the ship of the sea
inside a ward of stone and ledges, as if the coming rains
went beyond the dreams of human desires, or the flowing waters
were legends for a world inverted, for us as for others,
there is a frenzy of angelic demands to guide us, inexplicable, incredulous.
A symbol, revealing nothing but catastrophe and flood,
barely alive but in deep coma, nailed to the prow of the mast.
Does it matter that each echo
is a symbol less innocent than assent,
a switched-off machine to carry us to the land of the dead,
where the sounds are glorious and giggling nurses rush in
to follow the departing wish,
the gurgling of the condemned,
as rain splashes down on the storm of my eyelids
where I hear voices, where I fail to hear through the dark folding pain
of a life lost without them.
Names of the Fathers
'love no-one but yourself'
I want to die so as to know who I am.
I want to be given everything so as to know what to demand.
My shadow doused the light when the stars fell
black against a black daytime black again.. and the light, the light
freezing into blocks of ice falling through pitch-black heaven
as the stars fell. What isolation
abstract law - the grief-blackened exiled earth -
and why this monumental impossible light, black again?
And why has the blemished child returned to us?
And this parting though we absent mourn
a turning away from a fascination so dear to us?
And what will happen to the fathers who refuse to deny us?
what will happen to the stigma of THE NAME?
A dream of the hearth
and then the lure of murder... forced to take the dead son's place.
Each child was a radiant witness
there as the last light faded away,
exiled before a figure which cast no shadow,
killed repeatedly in an ecstasy of time.
There was no child and yet the father compelled us
and the dead figurine was a shining darkness
mournfully unveiled.
Lying father, lying ghost - in whose name we speak.
We need the tomb of the murdered child
buried beneath ice and fallen snow;
we need the trauma that predates us
the issues and the summons,
weaned into the loving memory of death and of nothingness,
the sacred delirium of our fathers.
As we go out onto the black frozen lakes of night
murmuring remembering possessing
wanting to cry out in the dark
in whose name should we remember you?
What will happen to those anasemias
thresholds and lieux de memoires
born knowing the hiss of life through vampire breasts?
In this living memorial
will the long-memoried become an empty husk not to be passed on
like a lover's remorse
amid news of the world's end and a black sun,
doomed to roam the stars in the company of the lost one?...
As the last star fades into nothingness
we are born knowing
that in my father's house darkness can't be forgiven...
Exile is a story not not to be passed on...
Robert Smith
Sonnets
LIGHTNING CROCUS, STREAK
the sky theatre,
flash on
the spider-ground
soft eggs goggle
& skirts
are breathing through gills
they mushroom
& frighten, photographed,
orageous in saffron.
BLADE-MECHANICAL-EFFICACY
hands shuffle
& blur
the layers
striped black
the recess there
the secret
voice or cave
the bled thing
dripping on ash.
HEAD RIGGED, BUCKLED
a dwarf arm
capped by
three-clover-pod,
cracking it.
Mouth like a thumb
plunged into
the counter-wave,
what chance
if not bound fast.
BEADED-TRAPEZE-BLOOD,
silver balls
that fire along
the magic circuit
of sand,
you science!
you rods
in the air!
you looking up
from your team.
ALCHEMY HEADSET, RADIO ON,
intuit the dry basin
where crystals remain.
The competent pilot
sparking with signals
leads under instruction.
It goes to his head,
the fire becomes green
& tubes disappear
into the face.
LOVE-BANK WHERE
the liquids balance,
silver nets
both naive heads
that rest,
the water glass &
glass their eyes
exchange infinitely
to the gravel-bed-
a fund of white discs
FADING...SECOND SELVES
blur & shuffle
past slow cars.
Inside, lit switches
& exits
in outline only.
How do we
carry the body
of what was lost,
what goes out.
SKYBLUE LYRE BLACK THROAT
the box vibrates
& earthquakes out
into a wooden rose.
The wreaths are set,
wire twisted
round a martyr
head that hums
from heavenly crack
eyes slit upward.
LENS FLAKE SHOWERS
unbridled, casting
ranging through worlds.
Shootings-
each grain
magnified,
blown up
& gusting in
toy snowstorms
of the head.
SPOTTED FACE-FILM
grey skin
not space
but hymen
shone through
by stars.
Old light,
red gone white
& sacks of ash
to look up from.
RESTS UPON CAPITAL:
the headland,
the deposit,
the mineral wealth
& after a time
acculturation.
Flowers appear
on metal & stone,
the sense of
interest changes.
TAPE RETURNS CINEMA HAZE
over the hill
the harvest
silhouettes grow...
Some details
are lost,
the good abstracted.
memory wrappings,
take-out returns
romance the gold.
FAST-SLOW PICTURE-HOUSE,
lit boxes,
moving figures,
not bodies:
only records
can be changed.
The colourless review
commences
at any rate
still eyes yield.
GAUZE MASK MOTH,
amber eye-gum
& shuttering
of lids
or is it wings.
Fine things,
the light inside
revolves while birds
alight in silence
on the battle dress.
GOLD LETTERS ROSE
in coiled dust-gust
flaps to the ear
hair brushed aside,
confidentially,
precious truths
circulate, unfold
& fold in
through the slit
of silence.
CLEAR MANDARIN PASTE
dried leaves
shuffle & bond
as a screen.
The royal body
then removed
the skin wall
stands glossed
with orange
& china blue.
PROPPED THINGS, WOOD & BONE
in a moonlit room
angled to lick silver
coating
from frames
folding, anorexic
dying from
the outside in
lunar deckchairs,
radiant half-lives.
THIS ICH, THIS BODY-BREATH
this death.
Avenues
of trees
& the pelt
of deer
moving behind.
We are blind
in our lungs, we
touch on dead birds.
Andrew Jordan
Palimpsest
"...on our field trip we found giant letters concealed in the landscape. Huge forms edged by footpath and motorway, the ditched and banked council estate. A text of place, a knowledge in the field edged with pylons." Dr Charles Mintern
1
She wore the mantle of
the real world: Utopia, masked
and wrapped up in wounds,
a myth of repression.
"..walking along her edged field,
pulling serifed trees
from out of the view
easily for her,
and she'd do the distances
as if they were real."
There's no way to recall
what can't affect you.
2
Was she blessed
or merely brain damaged? How she
read the holy script
of the edged embankment,
recovering
whole sequences of words
from scenery.
"It's hysteria," she said,
"before it was seen."
(And all based on
an image of
herself as her daughter.)
3
She stood beside
the letter N
at the base of
the airless motte,
then walked to
the strange font
of a massive A
stretched out below:
"It's all a part
of nature", she said,
laughing at
the way the land
could still describe
the after glow
of the time God spoke
the word she'd read.
The Antiquarians
1 Phoenicians
In early May, singing uninvented songs,
they climbed the hill to the high field,
praying in the shadowed Roman ditch
and marking the tunnel entrances.
They talked of ancient graffiti- the image
of the horse, Ireland crucified and-
in the rarified, pre-dawn aura of success -
of the buried armouries they'd find.
They'd keep place as place, cleansed of placelessness,
and make the low, post-English hills
a Hades of the placeless world, seeing
a newly fleshed-out view, shining,
that called for Eve, renewed by death,
to rise out of the grave again- her hair
shocked white by sin- her heart
so broken with remorse that she'd do anything
to be pitied and then killed again by them.
2 Heritage, Southampton
Someone was executed near the reservoir.
That's good. Near the A33.
A butler killed for stealing plate. His soul
is trapped in water, slippery, like
a pale organ, shot from the skin,
dropped by butter fingers into place.
Meanwhile, in Lord's Wood, archaeologists
dig banks and ditches that did not
exist before they came to make
a cold, prosthetic history. Quaint,
how they make the ground look old.
The Cutted Thorn beside the road
seems like a place of ritual, ancient,
instead of something just made up
so we'd be passive within history.
3 Kore
I sang the field edge, bloody minded,
lyrical - the nameless row of cottages
along from the silos, the grain depot.
I saw my father, my fracturing,
in the distance with a gun, walking
out of first light- a clear remembering-
with a pheasant in his hand, for us.
I found a schoolgirl in a ditch, fainting,
and walked the course of the run.
Her earthen arms kept me lingering
by the hedge, where she painted her lips
with a rain-wet blackberry, strangely.
She liked to see herself as innocent
and, as a symbol, she overwhelmed the loss
of place in me by grounding it in flesh
and then, as symbol, place was held by her
until she too was locked inside a myth.
Nick Macias
Red
Extracting up,
he denial Earth,
Evolved stage
stage white upside embryo,
through venture emerald in mountain
paper mouthed, my so opened,
Daddy, makes of for serving,
in composer, me angel arms baby chain,
one crystal dream, on we, just recipes within,
womb always work,
cutting shower ahead,
here, that alive,
Daffodils, the from eyes,
The, & all, scrape earth,
in composers table,
may standing, born child,
serving all, head in ease,
black food wedding,
Christ, the morning, found into cross,
back the limbs, back inside feet,
we to burn beyond, in horseback,
when Ball the thoroughbred together,
where feeling devil, fat on through,
tear's screaming friend,
climbing front fertile,
fertile composer, table throughout,
moving the in, before purposefully.
My accommodate your very life,
& in morning, born into devil,
orange child, use red hand,
moon partners opened,
tried on reaching,
ground the canvas hill,
grown to get Ireland on,
seek all thoroughbred,
through the furnished silence,
unborn power to us,
move combinations in born,
wild in use, into wedding.
Perceptive new partners,
born open togther,
the in case, we how the tried
on my the high
but in, the future grown,
to kitchen are all,
there the partners,
form all daughters,
born Gold knowledge,
took close by,
we the arms be,
& man use hat silhouette,
with burning we with,
on my very authentic eyes &
to spirits, you upon the world,
shower the revealing,
mountain have wild present
daughter resplendent sunset light
us, mother, big formed & before,
my orgasm, to very mist, words the God,
their weapon kicking, grown in spontaneously
felt up in abort, stretch formed your child,
on the you, light your to family,
turn God are into creation,
the Resplendent festival,
allies green said mouth,
decorated of to core,
raised full as the, the Christ,
the prepared have Gorilla in the shirt,
Gold surprised mud,
the face demon Red God,
inspired pathway, raised,
Africa be womb, raised now,
born presently,
conceived in to in, in surprised,
Evenings seem completion,
to welcome God, we together up,
Big you the so, to in sacred baby,
Triad
FROWARD CAPTIVE IMPAIRS
WALLOWING BULWARK VERSE
RATHE VATIC PIDGIN
AVAIL USHER FARTHUR
SPLENDID LEAD PICKING
FORUM ENGRAVED CROWN
HUNGER MARCHED RESCUE
WIT EMANATES STREAMS
POURED STRAIT CLAIM
FORETELLS PEER STAID
GULLIBLE WALLS BREACHED
FLOWING GLADIATOR BLUSHED
CAUSE ASSISTING DEMONSTRABLE
HEARSE CALL VISCERAL
BALE MEANDER GLEANING
RIBALD REGARDS EXTRA
PLIGHT MITIGATES KLAPS
BLONDE LIPS ADVANCE
WINDES ASTERN TONIC
HOWL EAVES SOLE
BEWILDER SHEDDIN PAST
CITES HACK SCEPTRE
LIFTS CULL DISMAY
EMPURPLE SHAVEN APOGEE
SCENT HIGHER DOMAIN
DIVULGE MELDS FICTIVE
PURKS FACE AROUND
PRECIPICE RAISES YARN
EBULLIENT CASE SPILLS
DAMNED TRUTH SEWAGE
DEFT HEM RIFT
TOMB ABLE LEEWAY
LOCKS TRAUMAS WORD
PEDAL NASTY WARMTH
VIOLATES HORNED GAG
PROACTIVATES RAPPORTING
ASSERTS HYPE GUERDON
QUEENS RICH TURN
CHECKS OLYMPIAN KISS
AFTER SHED MORALS
TORRID CHANCE -MEDLEY
SPLIFICATE HERRING PURSE
GREW PERIL SELECT
FERVENT WITNESS DRUEL
GAD ORNATE HUMOUR
UMBRA IMAGO WILLING
KEEN PICKET FINIAL
HALLOWED REAL ARM
PITH TASTE JESTING
MENTOR BYGONE POOP
WEAVER VESTRY CRISIS
ACROSS DECOYS ANCHOR
FLATTERED DREW WEST
TROUBLE JEU D'ESPRIT
BLUNDER DOUBT HARBOURED
EARNEST FELICITY COMING
Kismet Eve Mauve Breasts of Eden
CERECT LIPS KISMET CONGENIAL A TIP IDYLL
VALIDATE RIALLEDIN ATALLION RENCOUNTER BEAST
HOISTED MALE AMOK ON SCYTHE ISLE HERSELF
TWO RINGS LOUD FUCK GOLD UNRAVELED VIGNETTE
VOUCH STIR FOUR LESS VAMBRACE LIMBO DINE OR
WITHERSHINS BLOWHARD NEXUS 'O' 8 WARBLE
LIPSNOTLIPSSLYYELLOWWINK REIGN HIS EVE SUNG
UNISON
NICKEL OWED DENIAL BROKEN BY PLAGAL UPANISHADS
MAXIMUM DIVALENT GUARD BEDABBLE FORTE MEDLAR
PECCADILO FEVHER CONGENERIC ATHIRST SON REALMS
IN HIS LANCE SPIREBED SOLD PRECIOUS DISPLAYER
FER DE LANCE FUSED LEAPT THORN VALETING ROSE
RAPE ABREAST MOLEHILL FLORID TROJECTION BLUE
RIBALD SEMANTIC CAT SEE GULL TO SCORCERER OF VIEL
SPELT IN ABSENT TO HER SALARMY ACKS OWN FEARS
OF WAR APEX OPTOMUM SOPHISM A PROPER GATE
FULGENT & BELLY KICKS TRAVAIL NONSUCH
NONSUIT FORESTALL TUNIC
I've said it once & I'll say it again
Prise poet dare
why pout lares
rose to wardens gate
his rank stunk of pride
butch famished
gay lic abroad
spun a spell
for freedoms miss aisle message
faireign prose pleadin
in vest bare chest
rodeo son steps up
to watch fathom due met
drew fate through a teat
plight soared holden tight
birth grape cups her glass
pure riot art soul truth
brave slug lambent down to thrust
prince spider fuss
green spore vainglory
co-ordinate pillage ace
pore woman
loose mentor gust over stripped
mojo to wardrobe me
dye a claimed woman
axe of steal
invite hunt not simple
I'm'age in
his kilts mischief elope
to wet her appetite
spiel whisps her dress
rare highs pique queen
dip both hands in
breach even jangle pensive troy bid under fable
pulling back for skin and sci, a
match muscle quest hung down below
men tuned sundries duel
upper tree stalking
beast bowed a hatrick
exight fly pious two
secret purse jewelled swan
wishes breeze despite candle
deep hot venom method
spuriously webbed togather
gilt mared bedevil
plots of gems
verse snare and kindle
denounce horns
hell peer through
out lept piper ardent
interfemoral swoon
mighty chewed fresh love
prey smelt mothers cleavage
grate looking bust
seven crossed heart felt mountain
haven't you talked enough
druel salava neo lust
cider slept ordeal
laden wrung craft
both climbed in
dice twilight
at hatch kneeling
sentry guitar reaps true us
see us playing trait blues losin
on hopes bough
upper steeple sinew
pidgin father
blast raid the belfry
Dan Lane
Luna Lacuna
the fecund purple Gitanes girl
paints her lip & yellow eye
printed magnolias on painted water
in some collusion among the alfalfa
the painter on her yellow chemise
on the linen in her pretty dream
he imagines her white ones
in an otherwise slack moment
she yawns & sees Rothkos
in diminishing vulnerable light
the etymology of lovers
in a tightening mouth
rocket sticks falling
as burnt syllables to earth
o helen
hello again
here in the summer heat & you
a carnival moon in green shades
creamy clothed sodium blonde
& loosely buttoned
she gives a little
sunlight to the silos
her second hand denim
in the stop of your eye
the back of her hand
on the beech wood veranda
her shoe prints
on the dash of the Renault
a whole day's grammar
smeared with lipstick
on the tap room wall
your people are lovers
in a retextured passage
beyond the portico
crenellated fields
most of 96
For Lucy's Journey to Aldeburgh, Suffolk
Collect a small South-Easterner at Liverpool
Street bound for the flat lands across the Stour.
It is an experiential world.
Canary Tower is gold
From Bethnal Green
Further
Beyond Stratford breakers
Essex Pylons
South Suffolk.
By road, there is a road
Cool below traffic
One road you need
And past Margaretting
You're clear.
Maintenance money runs out
This side of Eyke.
It's a slow summer
East of the dry sun
Reclining in hedgerows
Fields
Between blood pink houses.
I wrote a line in Waberswick
And gave it to Kate
Who kept it
Some years in Forest Row.
Good times on the steppe
Each evening, breathless
Confident yellow reeds
Outside the concert hall.
Acetatae
(vellum version)
nature's
perfect
blow
job
as nature's
imperfected
so
blow up
job centres
as nature's first
rule
the
imperfected
leaf
so sweetly falls
as the blow up
shows how
each job centres on escape
flung across tables
from
tree or
office safety
deposit box
you have it now
written down
to bias nature's first net
rule that begins
absorbing the soft
imperfected gossamer of your
dress as a leaf
also sweetly falls here
as the blown up image
shows him howling while
each job centres on escape pods
flung across tables
from a broken
Cyprus
tree or
as gripping
office safety codes
kept neatly in
a deposit box
skipping along the happy surface
so you have it now to hand and
written down in your feather gloves
to bias nature's first penetrating
self-sustaining auto-erotic rule/that begins
absorbing the soft metallic impression
formed here as the imperfected gossamer of your
dress as a leaf drifts from a bird's nest and
the bird that also sweetly falls here
silent as the blown up image reflects
in damp light shows him howling while he recalls
how each job centres on escape pods little
beans flung across empty tables in all
this soft sex from Arcadia a wall that is broken
down in Cyprus rocks splayed between links
a little tree or a little shade to lean against
mechanical as gripping as as gripping as was
falsifying office safety codes alert to skin
deep in the humus he kept neatly instant upon
gold silver a deposit box in the shepherd's heart
New and Soon Publications
(This is not a complete listing, but a selection of appearances I think our readers might be interested in. Omission might indicate that I think a book is boring, or that I hadn't even heard about it. My thanks to those exceptional publishers who supplied information.)
Books
Contemporary British Poetry: Essays in Theory and Criticism, ed. James Acheson and Romana Huk (SUNY Press) _Ian Hamilton Finlay, The Dancers Inherit the Party etc. (Polygon)_ George Mackay Brown, Selected poems 1954-92 (John Murray)_ Barry MacSweeney, The Book of Demons (Bloodaxe) _Peter Redgrove, Assembling a Ghost (Cape)_ Les Murray, Subhuman Redneck Poems; John Ash, Selected Poems; Frank Kuppner, Second Best Moments in Chinese History (all Carcanet)_ John Welch, Greeting Want (infernal methods) _Adrian Clarke, Doing the Thing (Writers Forum)_ Michael Palmer, At Passages (New Directions)_ Kelvin Corcoran, Danse Macabre (with Annwn, Halsey, Selerie); Melanie's Book (West House Books & Simple Vice)_ Tom Raworth, Clean and Well-Lit: selected poems 1987-95 (Roof Books); Frames (Geona Editions)_ Carl Rakosi, The Earth Suite (Etruscan Books)_ Richard Caddel, Larksong Signal (Pig Press)_ John Wieners, 707 Scott Street; Maggie O'Sullivan, Palace of Reptiles (both Sun & Moon)_ Gavin Selerie, Roxy; Ed Dorn, High West Rendezvous, a sampler; Alan Halsey, A Robin Hood Book (all West House Books)_ Jennifer Moxley, Enlightenment Evidence; Karlien van den Beukel, Pitch Lake (both rem press)_ Geoffrey Hill, Canaan (Penguin)_ Caroline Bergvall, Eclat (Sound & Language)_ Glyn Jones, Collected Poems (University of Wales Press)_ Walter Perrie, From Milady's Wood; William Hershaw, The Cowdenbeath Man (both Scottish Cultural Press)_ David Wevill, Child Eating Snow (Exile Editions)_ George Campbell Hay, Collected Songs and Poems (The Lorimer Trust)_ Dr Charles Mintern, Where ale reams and peasant reeks (Dryad and Dolphin Boy) _Simon Jenner, Von Kopf bis Fuss (bilingual edition with German trans.; K-Tek) _Sean Bonney, Now All the Popstars Are Dead (Damnation)_ David Greenslade, Burning Down the Dosbarth (Cyfres y Beirdd Answyddogol)
Pamphlets
Andy Brown, The Sleep Switch (Odyssey Poets)_ John James, Schlegel Eats a Bagel; Grace Lake, Tondo aquatique (both Equipage)_ Maggie O'Sullivan,That Bread Should Be (as an issue of RWC)_ Allen Fisher, Pulling and Quasi Queen ; Ulli Freer, eye line (both Spanner) _ Colin Simms, Bewcastle and Other Poems for Basil Bunting (Vertiz International Press)_ Tom Raworth, silent rows (the figures)_ Kelvin Corcoran, The Name Apollo (West House Books)_ Ian Taylor, Provisionally Entitled Bones (Spineless Press)
Anthologies
Sleight of Foot: 4 young poets (Reality Street)_ Penguin Modern Poets 10 (Doug Oliver, Denise Riley, Iain Sinclair)_ Etruscan Books Reader 3 (O'Sullivan, MacSweeney, Gascoyne)_ The Other Side of the Century: a New Poetry 1960-1990 (ed. Douglas Messerli, Sun & Moon)_ Public Works: new sequence-length writing by women (sound & language; ed. Ira Lightman, includes Lisbeth Keiley, Elizabeth Burns, Juliana Spahr, ShaunAnn Tangey, Fran Webb, Sarah Law, Lisa Samuels)_ A State of Independence (non-mainstream poetry, ed. Tony Frazer, Stride)
The work Out of Dissent New Measure, by Clive Bush (one volume of critical prose, one of poetry anthology) has now come out from Talus. The John Kinsella collected poems alluded to in AE 14 have now arrived as Poems 1980-94. JK has also edited a special issue of Poetry (Chicago) on Australian poetry (Oct-Nov 1996) - a statement we've all been waiting for.
CDs
cris cheek, Skin Upon Skin (sound & language)
Award
The Miles Champion Clone Poem Prize Horse Brasses for 1996 have been awarded to Thomas Raworth.
