Conversation Poetry Quarterly
Editorial:
The Trembling Wire Poetry:
Ben Barton Nancy Charley Peter Dobson Federico Federici Nicky Gould Christopher Hobday Evelyn Irving Luigi Marchini Louise McCudden David Nettleingham Sue Rose Joshua Seigal Jos Smith Gary Studley John Trelawny
Autumn 2008
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Edited by: David Nettleingham Christopher Hobday who would like to acknowledge: All those who submitted poems to this and all past volumes, all our readers and supporters, Katie Blythe, Beverley Smith, Elizabeth Webb, Claire Brown, Maria McCarthy, friends and family, The Secret Cellar Cafe of Canterbury, Chatham Library, Orange Street Music Club, Canterbury Poets, Save As & Waterstones of Rose Lane in Canterbury.
Editorial: The Trembling Wire by David Nettleingham
p. 1
Jos Smith Annunciation Seraphim
p. 2 p. 3
Peter Dobson On First Hearing John Adams Live: Promenade Concert, August 2006
p. 4
John Trelawny Pike
p. 5
Louise McCudden A Sororial Kiss Carnival of Colour
p. 6 p. 7
Ben Barton Dorothy This Beach Magpie In Tiananmen Square Nicky Gould At the Market
p. 8 p. 8 p. 9 p. 10
Sue Rose Herculaneum
p. 11
David Nettleingham Mosquitoes
p. 11
Gary Studley First Night Between the Lines
p. 12 p. 14
Luigi Marchini Node Eat Your Hearts Out Descartes, Sartre, et al
p. 15 p. 16
Evelyn Irving Tears To a Poet
p. 17 p. 18
Federico Federici From Extra Password: IV. stillborn VII. the old stager X. scarecrow peasant
p. 19 p. 19 p. 20
Christopher Hobday The Throng of Exiles
p. 21
Nancy Charley Aubade - One for Sorrow
p. 22
Joshua Seigal Metempsychosis The Contributors Submissions
p. 23 p. 24 p. 27
Editorial: The Trembling Wire In John Kinsella’s poem A Rare Sight, we get a glimpse into the fleeting and exacting nature of poetry: to capture in words what I have heard called ‘that elusive seam’. As we sight a bird so rare that we feel the need to share the experience with a friend, the process of shifting our attention even for this brief moment causes us to lose what we had sought to show them. The bird has gone leaving ‘nothing but sky / and wire trembling’. In the course of seven lines our experience has begun and ended, but more importantly, was cut short by our attempts to share what we have seen. I have often wondered at a certain type of tourist who, with an eye permanently fixed to a camera, captures images of their trip for posterity and to share their holiday with others. It fascinates me, because in my own way I do the same thing. When I find that I am experiencing one of those punctuating moments, the first thing I do is take up my pen. In this act, am I allowing my own rare bird to slip from view before it has flown? Am I a tourist snapping broken images that make sense to me, but lack the emotion of the experience to others or over time? They will never understand the source of the poem, and I may forget. Today I am the tourist - in the Northerly climes of Europe, and I have decided not to take any photographs or a notebook. Call it an experiment in capturing the moment - a selfish consumption of the landscape. When I get home, and reflect on this ridiculous gesture; as the memories begin to fade and merge with other thoughts, perhaps I will be able to write a better poem than if I had reached for my pen every time something had happened. Or perhaps I am a fool, and the trembling wire is what makes the bird. David Nettleingham
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JOS SMITH Annunciation And the angel beheld the architect And said nothing; And the architect stood before the angel In silence. And so they remained In this way for some time – Oak leaves fluttering in the wind Crickets chirring across the hot meadow, Until finally the angel disappeared And the architect stood there alone. It was as if The sky itself had receded Leaving only his open heart Glittering under the galaxy beyond. And his hands And his eyes And his breath Were empty And the green meadow suddenly greener Than the colour itself would allow And he stood in the raw daylight Inexplicably afraid.
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Seraphim I have shouted to the angels of the sun AHOY! Redeem my teeth, I cried Redeem the lonely mouths that wail in my toes Redeem the round bellies of my thumbs My kneecaps, creaking like great beech boughs Redeem them, redeem the dormouse Asleep in my chin. No we won’t, they replied Across the hunger of space You do not need our redemption GO AWAY And they fed all the mouths in my toes On clover and radishes and bread And they tickled the bellies of my thumbs And whispered sweet nothings To the dormouse asleep in my chin. By sundown they’d left me alone, The whole tremendous day of it Not one of them looking me straight in the eye.
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PETER DOBSON On First Hearing John Adams Live: Promenade Concert, August 2006 I think I recognise that world, That sound-world coalescing in the hall. The flecks of instrumental colour, Ostinati, pedal points, the brass Angry or elegiac, the sense Of ceaseless activity and loss. It’s the world I inhabit, sometimes Unwillingly caught up, at others Engaging, searching for meaning, Feeling empathy for strangers, Carried on a wave of fellow feeling, Or dissenting fiercely, separate and old. A sense here of occasion: tides of music Graze the upturned faces, ears attuned, Attentive. Shared experience, dimmed light, Muted colours; listeners intent on ebb And flow, grand contour, keening melody, Melismatic flute, refulgent climax. Quiet. Unbidden water pricks my eyes. I think, I think I recognise that world. Post-modern, Complex, global, human world, Where anxious superficial newscasts Compete to translate life for decent millions Who, like me, can ration compassion with a switch. Can sense of self, soon lost in warring roles Defined by differences of class, or nation, Gender, ideology or race, gain strength from Hearing this eclectic voice, transposed to notes, This upward-climbing song not sung by throats But blind and almost inarticulate, like hope?
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JOHN TRELAWNY Pike There, in the shadow under the bank is a darker shade whose edges blur confusing and reducing its whole existence to a question Out in the dappled sunshine of the shallow stream there are flashes of brightness reflecting and sparkling on darting little fish The dark shadow rests, quiet beneath the overhanging rushes Manic and dashing, wheeling and diving the tiny fishes glow and glitter as they crop the weeds and stones in the shallow water A cloud across the sun dissolves the shadow under the bank into invisibility One of the glistening shoal straying closer to the bank to find larger, fatter insects goes hunting just a shade too far alone and suddenly is gone Slow as the old tree roots in the shade beneath the bank, the long dark shadow which flowed sudden as a sunbeam to the kill is still
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LOUISE McCUDDEN A Sororial Kiss You’re just like me, except the smoke doesn’t cloud your eyes, and your skin says ‘I want this’ on purpose. You’re all lips and tongues and touching flesh until we’re alone. Then, suddenly it’s ‘I’m inviting Mr Suit and Tie round for Sunday lunch because my boyfriend’s dinner party cocktail sausages just don’t fill me up.’ And I have to watch. Silky-lashed; candy-eyed, you are the princess of pink; spoilt by the boys who vomit on love, or affection. You display yourself inside out, and I have to watch. You kissed me because he was getting bored with you. I felt the wet shimmer of gloss sliding over me, like birth skin. I could never colour my own mouth in. My honest lips stay warm and blushing. You’re too pink for my tongue. You blow smoke in all our faces, and all the black-suited boys inhale. Their lungs and hearts get clogged with disgust and lust. They raise their champagne glasses and whistle with dry lips until you are toasted. 6
Carnival of Colour Yellow-green feathers Air spiced with footsteps slapping on the London road Rum, swirling, pink, mixed Curried chicken, tongues aroused Tender pearls of rice Soft wafts of herbal medicine, stroking the calm breeze with a taste of holidays, trips, flags Places still undiscovered A world on a hill Rhythm, street’s heartbeat, scatters clouds; the sky smiles gold warm as mother’s arms.
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BEN BARTON Dorothy swept up from Kansas and gently lowered here Her blackened house sat serenely on a sea of pebbles While a torrid storm swirls above Like the shifting sands and foam of the sea and Dungeness B shines on, industrial fairy lights An Emerald City for the new worlds.
This Beach Pebbles and rocks, laid to rest like old men though snug as warm eggs, and eager To tell us the story of time. Ancient wisdoms strewn in shingle we watch the flood assault the shore Until piece by piece stone by stone it collapses like quicksand And as it crashes all around us I take one last look to see the other poets Studying a whirlwind of shadows.
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Magpie in Tiananmen Square I look around it doesn’t feel that long ago, 1989 eighteen years on and still the portrait eyes of Mao shine on the distance surrounded by the khaki of his republic grandsons above a lonely aviator the magpie commands the surly air Imperial-faced at 9am it swoops above amongst the cloth-kites secured with twine to the tinkering fingers of young girls giggling on those cold, grey slabs imbibed with tank oil and the blood of countless sons Like a pendulum over our heads the magpie arcs and glides He settles on the obelisk, solus a hero of the people the one for sorrow, bird of joy He is today’s unknown rebel, surrounded by wan marbles and dim concrete I feel the Guide tap my shoulder and he offers the smallest knowing smile, as much as he’s allowed to give “No bad omen in China” he assures me “Here the magpie is lucky” 9
I look around it doesn’t feel that long ago, 1989 Then he lifts up the red flag a signal to us To keep moving on orderly in line.
NICKY GOULD At the Market She ambles, wide-eyed among the animals, her belly ripe with black packages. A surrogate ready to deliver for the unknown father. His finger caresses the button, muscles contracting, before his belief explodes.
The blasts on Friday 1st February 2008 at two animal markets in Baghdad left 99 people dead and up to 200 wounded, officials said. Iraq’s chief military spokesman in Baghdad, told the BBC: “The operation was carried out by two booby-trapped mentally disabled women. [The bombs] were detonated remotely”.
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SUE ROSE Herculaneum Statues stride into the air, heads shriek silently from doors and the walls bear graffiti from a time when latrines ran with water and taverns poured out drunks. My fingers slide over the gloss of pottery and glass, bone-hard bread, a meagre haul of twisted rings and pins— artefacts that survived the rubble’s weight when the future caved in— and suddenly the air carries a whiff of life: a fresh catch doing somersaults on the jetty, the early air smoking with oaths and laughter, the temples alive with sacrifice and flies.
DAVID NETTLEINGHAM Mosquitoes The water turns to wine and the mosquitoes gather. Dusk filters through its glass disciples.
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GARY STUDLEY First Night It’s early and The Fair’s lurked through the afternoon, like we who suffer a christening hanging on for the party. Through the air, above the traffic “Some distorted evening / There I met a stranger”rings out across The Green or so it seems though can’t have been, cos that’s not how the song goes. Patsy Cline, Bananarama, Elvis, Madonna are duelling loud in static, as back and forth prowl elastic go-getter barkers humming in sweat tops. They champion rides like Charlton Heston goading, enticing, all would-be passers to the dizzy pleasure of The Disco Twister tight boned jaws in The Gravity Cage a stomach’s hurl on over-spun Waltzer. At the Life-boat Station gangs appear as if rising from the sea cabbage and shingle. Armour-clad in The Bible trainers, Adi trackies and Burberry caps they swagger in clouds of Marlborough Lights staring out families oblivious tourists bobble hatted skater kids like off duty storm troopers drunk on power.
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Families grin candyfloss smiles. A mum and her tall-enoughs whoop on Umbrellas as below, busily trying to rein in their sugar-happy toddler, a machine gun prize, the pram held goldfish and cuddly Tigger, Dad’s casually wearing Mum’s handbag in case their pennies fall from the sky. Drafted-in police cars circle screaming past the fifties toilet again, their lights bouncing off the Paddling Pool’s sea mosaic wall. Inside, radios clack and cops scope from Pier to post alert for trouble, frustrated there’s been none so far. For the night’s still young, the boys elsewhere, loud at the chippie or kicking the frays on the Crazy Golf carpet. Here and there lean little knots of tease and want, arms draped around matchstick chicks with tattooed hips and over-kill stomachs, or big pastry girls with chests held in Lycra promise, bellies jewelled like currants in dough. And under the punched roof of the Marine Band-Stand She kisses Him fiercely like there’s no tomorrowyet they both have left the rest of their lives.
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Between the Lines In the black there is surety weight with each curl no matter the size, a water balloon on palm skin taut yet spreading itself outwards, liquid life close to the edge. In the black there is confidence a decision with every sweep and flourish, a whip of bitumen cutting hills in two, and even the crossed out, rejected, scar like tar on beaches. In the black there is substance solid matter in the starts and stops, guard posts on the walls silhouetted against the milky gaps, each dot and dash a nail hit home. In the black there is choice rise and falls 14
to be checked or crested just because, every mark a moment to think behind the knocked door, a tag on alley wall that asks What are you looking at? But in the white there are
LUIGI MARCHINI Node Alone perhaps always. First part of a circuit a prime number time only for itself wanting to change wanting more. A whole programme.
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Eat Your Hearts Out Descartes, Sartre, et al I am a clock. I am a clock who writes elephants. You see, say words I see elephants. It is eleven o’clock do not argue I am the clock. Do not look down on me- I have a purpose: I tell the time, write elephants. What do you do? I am a cloud, raindrop, computer they matter, do things. Do you matter? I doI am clock. It is four. Twice. I am a clock who writes elephants.
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EVELYN IRVING Tears pieces of amber, around my neck dead rising sap tasting of honey and sand and dumb, bitter pine slipping like old silk dipped in turpentine as far as I could see fields of samphire rolled grass-green lady-fingers enough salt to slowly kill it looks beautiful under water (just like Virginia) brine and brimstone sinking clay a crematory spray and a livid golden slick of flaming oil the sterling fleet sank long ago in a storm lasting years I was emerald-tinted semi-precious, full of tears
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To a Poet I would happily hitch up all of my many gauzy skirts for any passing bore who cares to stride where memories of your fathers of letters lay dead and cold in the shadow of moneyed vertigo I would merrily expose myself to the depravity of the boy-scholars who line the bar and with reverence tell of every single nothing that they feel and eye the dancing women’s legs and mutter ‘Jezebel’ I would embrace the tattle-tale the little gossip-bird who flutters by all human imperfection and common flaw with a song of surprising strength a canty duet of untruths and imagined infamy. I would cheerfully resign my name to your copybook a small and ugly smudge of affection a smear of hot wax on your bedsheets a sickening knot in your belly a modest study in bathos – but better a green-robed Lady Bathory.
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FEDERICO FEDERICI Poems from Extra Password IV. stillborn belonged to Catherine J. before her marriage to *** dried red flies by the Jackson Street lamp wires an infiltrated smoke through thick spotlights insisting on their million white collisions renewed in shortest spans, warmed comme le pain birth for burial - it all communicates the dying the slow extinction, the seed-flesh collapsed the tough thorns don’t burn the method is the metaphor the hillside of words the mother’s womb in her contracts to emptiness
VII. the old stager look down the way a throng queuing headlong to Main City’s square, unable to retreat, tanning faces, buttered lips, brown leather shoes quitting countries overseas, tossing back and forth, shoulders in a shimmy, sweaty armpits under packaged luggage, the pockets full of crumpets, open cheques you have them breed, puzzling the market squeeze hear them all speak 19
to one another snarling up the lips, like on some trumpet among the sneezes, the sick motion of the teeth chewing the cud, a whole herd of cattle, some hundred thousand head of cattle all beheaded here, the flies thus gathering new empty hives and you, an old stager between the sirens’ sheets
X. scarecrow peasant so the light paralysed his fist across the dark, the resonating light at a certain angle from within his throat, the bare-flailed tongue, graft to all the languages, damping down to words founded in one own breathing, the leaped up shouts spread out air-hooped lips like noise in gears of spikes the straw body on its stilts watches wide stretches of hills, fields, islands of birds, dumb dusky landfalls after thousands of collisions leave the winds a wake upon the awns, warm ash of fire-flies
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CHRISTOPHER HOBDAY The Throng of Exiles We went willingly towards the dark, eternal pilgrims. We found along the way a few relics, and the dead. It was not in our blood to burn or bury so we left our vanguard as they were, strewn out broken on the rocks. Their metal tools were not for us so these too were cast aside, like so many totems, faces, names. Will we end up like them, friendless, graveless, buttons freed from holes by the desperate fingers of those on our heels? Exiles live with such concerns. What hope did we have, just wanderers, shaved off when thunder last came calling and left uprooted and unmourned? We were travellers without tickets, our destination unknown, unknowable. Still, we made good headway, under wide stone arches and shivering trees, buffeted gently by the wind. Like being in the wake of a passing god, moving a universe away, thundering there, but here making leaves shudder, and no more. No racket here, no hundred-acre footprint.
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NANCY CHARLEY Aubade - One for Sorrow I wake to the tension of time taunting like the last seed of the dandelion clock we could not blow away. You left early, on the train, to face the judge, who on a whim of a government statistic sends you back, lets you in. My people fear your people will be like the parakeets in our local park supplanting sparrows. All I see as I stare out the window whose common view we shared, are clouds gathering and a solitary magpie.
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JOSHUA SEIGAL Metempsychosis Last summer they fought over garish plastic pogo-sticks; they jumped like electrons into puddles on the lawn, then mud-spattered and groping for breath they queued on the whistle at 1:00pm for lunch. Their parents have a book of last summers on the shelf, a nebula rising in dusty columns from the crunch. Last summer was science: saltations, evolution, a homeostatic church for longing worship. Last summer is a pleasant story to them now, like when they found out that they used to be apes, and their teacher said the coccyx was where their tale used to be. They say that the rainforests are being hacked down.
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The Contributors Jos Smith is currently working on a series of poems based on two themes: angels and stomachs. He is studying for a phD at Exeter, and until recently was responsible for the contents of the poetry shelves at Waterstones in Canterbury. Peter Dobson has taught English and Cultural Studies in Canterbury, London, Austria and Hungary. He has an abiding interest in the arts, has published music journalism and a book on the paintings of Cornelius McCarthy, and has written two plays for school-children. He writes to share and make sense of experience. He lives in Newnham, near Faversham. John Trelawny arrived late at the University of Kent and had the enjoyable experience of studying for his MA. He has had work published in several editions of Night Train, Scryfa (Cornish Literary periodical) and his novel, The Islanders, won an award in the Holyer an Gof Trophy 2008. He has published on Lulu for himself and others at www.lulu.com/johntre Louise McCudden lives in London. Her poetry has appeared regularly in this magazine, demonstrating a love of language, keen social observations and a celebration of the deeper meaning within the ordinary. Ben Barton is a poet and filmmaker from Folkestone. Recently called “a major talent” by Open Wide Magazine, his poems have appeared in books and magazines around the world. He is the author of Drop Anchor, The Hospital and The Red Book. His current project ‘the cinema of small gestures’ aims to capture poetry on film instead of paper, and has been exhibited at festivals throughout the UK. He has a website at www.benbarton.co.uk Nicky Gould is studying English and Creative Writing at Kent Uni as a mature student. She is passionate about reading and writing, and the loves in her life include her family, dogs, the beach and chocolate.
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Sue Rose was born and brought up in North London, though now lives in Kent, where she works as a literary translator from French and Italian. She has been writing poetry for many years and, in 2004, completed an MPhil in Writing at the University of Glamorgan under Gillian Clarke, for which she produced a fulllength collection and a thesis on the theory and practice of the translation of poetry. Her work has appeared in a variety of magazines including Connections, Encounter, Equinox, Interpreter’s House, London Magazine, Poetry London, Orbis, The French Literary Review, The Rialto, Seam and Smith’s Knoll and in various anthologies by Oscars Press, SLN, Arrowhead Press and, most recently, the Shuffle Anthology. Her first collection, The Dark Room, is forthcoming from bluechrome publishing. David Nettleingham lives in Faversham, Kent and is studying for a phD in Sociology. He is currently working on a foolishly ambitious philosophical poetry project with Christopher Hobday, which they hope to put out next year. Gary Studley was born and raised in the Beauty-in-Decay town of Hastings. He was educated poorly in Politics, English and Art throughout Sussex, London, America and Kent, eventually majoring in Dis-satisfaction and Hope for Better. He is co-author of Stubborn Mule Orchestra, a poetry collection written with Christopher Hobday and Luigi Marchini. Luigi Marchini was born in London in the 20th century, and escaped to Kent as soon as he could. He runs the Save As writer’s group, and is co-author of Stubborn Mule Orchestra (2008) with Gary Studley and Christopher Hobday. Evelyn Irving is a novice poet. She is a Kent graduate of Clinical Psychology, who has since returned home to Suffolk. She has a fascination with 20th century English social and cultural history, including the history of psychodynamic theory and analysis. She admits to being an avid fantasist, prone to introspection and a huge fan of surrealism.
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Federico Federici was born in Savona (Italy) in 1974. He studied physics at the University of Genoa where he also worked as researcher for some years. He published (under the name Antonio Diavoli) four poetry collections: Ardesia (1996), Versi Clandestini (2004), Quattro Quarti (2005), N documenti in cifra (2006), and the poetic prose collection written with Ilaria Seclì Chiuderanno gli occhi (2007); other texts in reviews such as Atelier, Cantarena, Kritya, Lo Specchio, PaginaZero, Private, in the anthology Leggere variazioni di rotta (2008) and on internet journals. He published two books of translations One Window and Eight Bars (2008) by the hindi poet Rati Saxena (2008) and Sono pesi queste mie poesie (2008) by the russian poet Nika Turbina. With his writings and short films he took part in festivals and readings in Italy, Germany, Poland, India and Venezuela. His forthcoming book is L’opera racchiusa (2008). On the net: http:// leserpent.wordpress.com/ Christopher Hobday was born in Preston, Lancashire in 1979. He studied English and American Literature at the University of Kent where he edited Logos, the University’s Poetry and Prose magazine. His work has appeared in Night Train and he has been shortlisted twice for the University’s T.S. Eliot prize. A selection of his poetry can be found in Stubborn Mule Orchestra, a collection of material that also includes the work of Luigi Marchini and Gary Studley, published 2008. Nancy Charley lives in Ramsgate. After having had five children, she discovered there were other creative things to do and is now enjoying experimenting with different forms of writing especially poetry. Joshua Seigal studies philosophy at University College London. “When I see or hear something interesting I usually write a poem about it. If my poems are boring this can only be because I’m a boring kinda guy.”
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Submissions • • • •
Up to 6 poems of any length, style or subject. Include a short biography explaining a little about yourself. Copyright for submitted work must lie with the author. We will not be held responsible for any breach of copyright that may occur. Online submissions can be in .doc or .wps format and should be sent to: conversationquarterly@googlemail.com
The submission deadline for Volume 6 is 21st December 2008. Any submissions received late may be considered for a future issue.
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1st Anniversary Tour To celebrate the success of our first year in print, we are holding a series of events in October and November 2008 with performances from Conversation’s poets. Entry to all events is FREE.
Saturday 11th October - Chatham Library Nancy Charley, Christopher Hobday, David Nettleingham & Gary Studley 2pm
Sunday 12th October - Orange Street Music Club, Canterbury Lily Sofia Gray, Nancy Charley, Christopher Hobday, Luigi Marchini & David Nettleingham 6pm
Wednesday 5th November - The Poetry Cafe, Covent Garden
Lily Sofia Gray, Christopher Hobday, Luigi Marchini, Louise McCudden, David Nettleingham, Joshua Seigal, Jos Smith & Gary Studley 7.30pm Full details are available on the Conversation website:
www.conversationpoetry.co.uk
Š 2008