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Saving spaces
Also by Ian Pople Poetry The Glass Enclosure (Arc), 1996 An Occasional Lean-to (Arc), 2004
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saving spaces
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Published by Arc Publications Nanholme Mill, Shaw Wood Road Todmorden OL14 6DA, UK www.arcpublications.co.uk Copyright © Ian Pople 2011 Design by Tony Ward Printed in Great Britain by the MPG Book Group, Bodmin & King’s Lynn 978 1906570 76 7 pbk 978 1906570 77 4 hbk Acknowledgements: Acknowledgements are due to the editors of the following: Antigonish Review, Black Box Manifold, Great Works, High Chair, Manchester Review, Oxford Poetry, Poetry Ireland Review, A Sort of Newsletter, Stand, Times Literary Supplement and Warwick Review. ‘The House of the Firmament’ [6 v 05] appeared in ‘Born into an Unquiet’: T.F.Griffin at Sixty edited by Ian Parks, Flux Gallery Press; ‘A View of Arnhem’ appeared in An Unofficial Roy Fisher edited by Peter Robinson, Shearsman Books. Particular thanks are due to John Clarke, John McAuliffe, Edmund Prestwich, Lynne Taylor and Tony Ward. Cover photograph: Lake Atitlan, Guatemala by Fran Antmann © Fran Antmann, 2011 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to provision of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part of this book may take place without the written permission of Arc Publications.
Editor for the UK and 4 Ireland: John W. Clarke
Contents
Kissing Gate / 7 For this relief, much thanks / 8 The Lace Wing / 9 Berkhamstead / 10 A Thousand Twangling Instruments / 11 A Week of Running beside the Canal / 12 ‘… As Dedicated Men’ / 14 Handiwork of Light / 15 i. At Church ii. A Lofty House iii. A View of Arnhem iv. The Kiss v. What the Car Park was Singing Set Elements for John Brown – Isamu Noguchi / 19 An Ordered Name / 20 Angels of Anarchy / 21 Effects / 22 Those Who stand Beside You: ‘After Hatzopoulos’ / 23 Seven Answers / 24 Owl / 25 The Hierophant / 26 Loaves and Fishes / 27 Disposable Icon, the Reply / 28 That Day / 29 The Bleachers / 30 The Shearer and the Lamb / 31 The Aerial Orchids / 41 William Blake at the Kardomah Café / 49 Man Facing North / 50 The Long Earth / 53 Confessions / 54 Winter / 60 Biographical Note / 61
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Kissing Gate
A couple stand without kissing: one folded in a dark duffle coat, beside the gate, inside the drawnto collar; the other sees the sun braid trees, float, show fox prints at the edge of the snow, and thinks, ‘I was a gate once.’ Beyond that: mill chimneys by sloping moorside that gesture to gable ends of terraced houses, a town centre that is settled on the earth.
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For this relief, much thanks
The magpies and the seagulls fly up here, and other, darker, fleeting birds that glide past roofs with railings, satellite dishes, clock towers above hotel conversions, the clouded background; down there, grass, a mulch of fallen leaf, people waiting. Behind me, my appointment.
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The Lace Wing
The lace wing gifts its life away, in and out of the lantern’s glance; whole or burnt, there isn’t a trace of substance, or fluid or blood. Only the wing beat’s jagged crawl, seen from the corner of the eye. The glasses neither here nor there, not taking it in, or even the carriage on the typewriter skidding back across the platen as we begin that letter again, feeling around for the final sentence.
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Berkhampstead
We quickly passed through Berkhampstead and it was green, all of it: houses, trees, cars, herbaceous borders, allotments. Everything except a pond that reflected sky, and Graham Greene’s father pausing beside a window.
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A thousand twangling instruments
You might as well pray for the cyclist to bend under branches by the dull canal. You might as well pray for the bramble to slink back away from the allotment path, and the strawberries to compete; for the boy to hold the kite above the generous sea-taut rocks, the water breaking its blacks and blues; for easy imprecations, and the grey moth that walks the page.
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