It is a truism that Elizabeth Bishop was in the habit of waiting for decades for her material to discover an apt form, something her friend Robert Lowell celebrated in a poem: Do you still hang your words in air, ten years unfinished, glued to your notice board, with gaps or empties for the unimaginable phrase– unerring […]
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Three Poems
Girls Rowing after Sailing to Byzantium, W.B. Yeats, 1926 What with all the mackerel, and the trees full of birds the left-behind elderly women still see possibility though it’s no country for old men, or so they say, having listened long to the sages or figured themselves in that way. The last to leave – […]
Beehives
Beehives “Cartwright, Patrick, 2nd January, 1982, aged 28, Hewer. Killed by a fall of stone. When filling coals at a longwall face, a large stone fell between two slips and killed deceased. The place had been carefully examined by the deputy, and was found to be insufficiently timbered.” If an asteroid hit […]
‘For a Child of 1918’: Elizabeth Bishop at Seven Years Old
‘For a Child of 1918’: Elizabeth Bishop at Seven Years Old by Jonathan Ellis 1 ‘Bishop is parenthetical. Her parentheses create emphases even when their purpose is to hesitate not asseverate.’ These are Maureen McLane’s words, not mine, from her astonishingly sharp essay on Elizabeth Bishop and Gertrude Stein in which she reflects on how she came […]
Three Poems
REMEMBERING THE AMBOS MUNDOS They gave us the room next to Hemingway’s: the hotel’s best view — harbour, fortress, green wooded slopes right opposite our rusted balcony. Still we’d drag the shutters closed at noon, struggling to twist the eggshaped handle that kept them locked and stopped the wind banging them on the frames. And […]
My Family and Other Immigrants
My Family and Other Immigrants (Mixing Memory and Desire) The other day I heard someone say that one should treat all recollections with suspicion. *** In 1892, nineteen-year old Adolf Ondruš, travelled from his native Brno in Bohemia to Zagreb. In this town of 80 000 inhabitants, the capital of the autonomous […]
Three Poems
The Plural of Unconscious, or Painting The Forth Bridge Single example in the OED of its use being owned, at least, by a volitional subject, is Norman Mailer, of all people, havering, ‘but that may be my unconsciouses speaking.’ Living ten flights up, the sky’s traffic comes to displace street level stuff, […]
Book Learning
BOOK LEARNING A young man emerged from the Tube station looking positively heroic. For a moment, Gareth was uncertain, not quite believing his eyes, but, yes, it was Sebastian stepping into the sunlight, tall, tanned, and desperately handsome—more his mother’s son than ever. Here was Gareth’s only child, back less than a week from […]
The Fates Visit A House Which Is Not Charles Darwin’s
THE FATES VISIT A HOUSE WHICH IS NOT CHARLES DARWIN’S I The Fates stand by the crib. It is midday, but they have darkened the room for effect. The baby’s mother stands opposite them, her hands folded over her apron. First Fate: This child is destined for great things. Second Fate: This child will change […]
The Life of Roberts
The Life of Roberts hello! I’d forgotten it was you today. I’m all over the place this week! What’s that? No, no, nothing to worry about. I’ve just changed my blood pressure meds and I’m not sleeping so well on these new ones. It was like that when I started on the Statins. Yes, […]
Three Poems
Baptism When the brick work becomes important, and then the wall, perhaps the river will help us, offering its taut surface and mild depth, in the way that a horse so loves the alien taste of peppermint, or molasses rubbed on the bit.
‘I know I’m from here’: An interview with Anne Compton
‘I know I’m from here’: An interview with Anne Compton by Evan Jones Anne Compton was born in Bangor, Prince Edward Island. A two-time winner of the Atlantic Poetry Prize, she won the Governor General’s Award for Poetry for Processional, her second collection; and the Raymond Souster Award for Alongside, her fourth. In 2008, […]
Four Poems
Q&A for an unfair world Will this meeting ever end? No. What are we saying goodbye to? Everything. Is the wrong person in charge? Yes.
Transfiguration
Transfiguration An indifferent god raised his fist and before my eyes crushed my son. I stood frozen in the yellow light of the tiny spare bedroom I’d made into a study, breathless at the cruelty. I’d failed the first test. I felt sorry for myself, stunned by rage at the corruption of my new father’s […]
Family Traditions
Family Traditions It was February 29 again, and I was wondering which member of my family would try to kill me this time. An hour ago, cousin Luke attempted to murder me with a rope. My guard was down, damn it, giving him just enough time to creep up behind me and wrap the […]
Time to Murder and Create
Time to Murder and Create I see it all. I see it all, but who sees me? You could say I run the show. Well sure, you nod. From a technical point of view. The lighting-guy gets the cues wrong or goes AWOL, the actors perform on a dark set. But that’s not what […]
Two Poems
To Carolina Kostner on Boléro XXII Olympic Winter Games, Sochi Because I live for the comeback staged in black—cold expanse waiting to be writ—because I love the way one arm lifts in time to what Ravel imagined as a masterpiece with no music, repetition made magic only because each shift intensifies, piston or hammer in […]
Vincero
Vincerò I love my job. I love standing in the darkness taking in the smell of their cooking, a whiff of perfume, or a trace of lemon fabric conditioner on a clean tea-towel. Tony and I stand very still for a few minutes to make sure we haven’t been heard. We come in the […]
Flowers Are Prettier When They Grow Wild
Flowers Are Prettier When They Grow Wild Some people find reading hard. They can’t finish a book in one month, one year, if at all. Some people, and Jonathan knew these people and he liked them, didn’t read any books at all, wearing it like a badge of honour. It wasn’t a problem he […]
Callow
Callow The girl who brought the tea trolley leaned over their mother’s chair. ‘You’ve got visitors today, Mrs Lindley,’ she said. ‘that’s nice, isn’t it?’ Their mother tilted an emaciated face in her direction. ‘I’m slim now,’ she said. ‘You are,’ said the girl, whose name, according to her badge, was Jade. ‘More than […]
Commission
Commission Jameni, I lost the silver bracelet my nyanya had given me when I was a little girl when I heard the news that he would appear on the Goldenberg Commission. I ran around our small shamba and through the fence to his clan on the next shamba to tell everybody and the bracelet fell […]
The Art of the Body: An Extract
Chapter 1: An Extract from The Art of the Body by Alex Allison Maintaining one person’s dignity comes nearly always at the expense of someone else’s. I have learned this for you. My morning ritual begins in the bathroom. At the sink, I wet my hands and lather, dancing my fingers through their trained routine: […]
Claiming Home
Claiming Home Under light drizzle, a cable TV reporter stood at the corner of Burdett Avenue and Quadra Street, leaning onto her camera like a pilgrim resting on her staff, alert for signs of movement. “They have a spokesperson, but so far I haven’t gotten her to talk with me,” she whispered. When a […]
(Not) Keeping Kosher
(Not) Keeping Kosher By Sharon Goldberg I was eighteen and a freshman at Northwestern University when I ate my first slice of pepperoni pizza. That saucy crust smothered with mozzarella cheese and topped with bright red chili-peppered circles marked the beginning of my deliberate departure from Kashrut—the Jewish dietary laws with which I was raised. […]
Two Poems
The Comeback There I was hunched over a canso in the aparthotel, the day grey, the year unclear and the bed empty. A city again, jackhammers and cranes, the district repeating itself, rising from the mud for the umpteenth time. My love, I began, what have I done to wake up again? From the tangle […]
Three Poems
Second Sight Some lads see a gap where others see traffic, shirtless stroll across immune to horns and gestures. In clubs they take their chances with promises and boasts. They meet their matches. But I see ghost cars on an empty road. The days of taking off my top for football in the park, […]
Two Poems
Ms Mott Appoints a Future Bot as Apostle Because you don’t have cells that will forget, because I trust that you’ll uphold all that I ask you to uphold, that you will not reshape, distort or falsify to serve a purpose much at odds with one it seems would never harm a soul, it is […]
Three Poems
Men More Comfortable in a Flat Back Four About war, they say, there is nothing new to expect from its aftermath. It is as common to come home to a performance in both song and dance of long narrative poems, as it is to come home to silence and recrimination. It is the conduct of […]
Two Poems
Hernia Perhaps the inguinal canal was weakened by the piano we hauled down three flights with a chime and a plink, out to the lorry where we rolled and smoked a spliff. Or compromised by those concrete slabs I lifted and laid with dad. Or charcoal bags, hoisted and hefted into the van, delivered to […]
Three Poems
Poems from Squid Squad #25 As she walks in a widening circle, Lola Wheeler leaves a spiral of footprints in the snow. Bradley Ridley feeds the chickens the chestnuts. Hank Strunk drums on an upturned bucket. Any metaphor is a metaphor for the idea of metaphor, Natalie Chatterley mutters. Chaffinches chew at the chocolate sultanas. […]
Uncles
Uncles I went into the living room suddenly to find one of my little nephews scrubbing his arms with an eraser – huge livid weals had formed. I asked him what he was doing and he replied he was trying to rub himself out so he could be drawn all over again. I said it […]
Two Poems
I Am There was a time he could fix anything – opening the Telegraph on his iPad – on a tractor himself – scraping his mother’s jam on his toast – everything was done by hand – the printing press is dead – with a gripe, and they’d pile the shit up on the midden […]
Under the Bridges
Under the Bridges 1. I’m growing under bridges. Looking up at bridges, looking through one bridge to the next. Different shapes making different shapes. Trying to name all the shapes but having to make up names for new shapes. Octohedragon, climbadecadon, redrangle. The bridges don’t look like they move, but they do. Cars and trucks […]
Two Poems
Desire …Now women are at their foulest, / But men are weak since they are parched in the head and knees / By Sirius… Alcaeus Outside is that summer which we longed for on winter nights from underneath our layers of eiderdown, remembering the sudden dawns and sultry weather, the freedom of bare legs, the […]
Excerpt from Forgotten Work
Excerpt from Forgotten Work Like all young bands, they bandied names about All evening. Lou, the lead guitar, liked “Lout,” A word that clubbed you like a cord of wood. It’s dumb, said Lou, but arty dumb, like blood- Smeared dolls deployed as drumsticks—Henry Rollins Does Dada. Jim, on keys, preferred “The Dolphins,” After […]