The Grove
‘It was with awe That I beheld Fresh leaves, green leaves, Bright in the sun.’
Issue 3: November 2008
Basho, in ‘The Narrow Road to the Deep North’
Hello there, a.Welcome back to another year at Durham. For those of you who are new to Durham we are a poetry magazine that publishes established English language language poets, translations and student poetry. If you're a a fan of this, keep a lookout for Forced Rhubarb which is another magazine, full of great student writing.
Contents:
b. Email us to be on the mailing list! We can’t print 4 000 of these and flood Durham with them, so we print a few, and email it as well. If you want to make sure you receive the next issue, tell us by email.
Page 1: Poems of the month - short relationship poems by Amy Goodwin, Toby Newson and Lemn Sissay. Page 2: English language poets picked by Chris Hogg.
c. Don’t be shy, send us what you write - we want to showcase you! c.m.hogg@dur.ac.uk or maxdf@hotmail.fr
Page 3: Translations picked by Maxime Dargaud-Fons.
d. Instructions for use : Go to Thailand, have a message, relax, eat some good food and enjoy The Grove.
Page 4: Student poets : Jamie Baxter, Rowena Knight and Amy Goodwin.
The Grove team
Page 5 : Special topic by Amy Goodwin: Poets from the Durham Book Festival.
PS : Post-design rules.
Poems of the month: Short relationship Poems
Library I read a paragraph Then look at your face, Then another paragraph, Then your face. Toby Newson
Love Poem
Roundabout
You remind me Define me Incline me
The last time I was here, A year ago, We were just falling in love, Walking at three in the morning, Our glances nervous but shining, Fascinated by each other. Now I stumble upon it again, A year later, Alone, And we are strangers.
If you died I’d. Lemn Sissay 'Artificial Intelligence' If I were a Robot, I would let you pour alphabet soup into my head and arrange the letters into attractive words.
Toby Newson
You could call me a revolutionary figure of the 21st century. Amy Goodwin
Lemn Sissay’s poem is taken from Rebel Without applause (Cannongate).
Fern Hill
This Be The Verse They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. But they were fucked up in their turn By fools in old-style hats and coats, Who half the time were soppy-stern And half at one another's throats. Man hands on misery to man. It deepens like a coastal shelf. Get out as early as you can, And don't have any kids yourself. Philip Larkin
ďż˝
Another Westminster Bridge
go and glimpse the lovely inattentive water discarding the gaze of many a bored street walker where the weather trespasses into strip-lit offices through tiny windows into tiny thoughts and authorities and the soft beseeching tapping of typewriters take hold of a breath-width instant, stare at water which is already elsewhere in a scrapwork of flashes and glittery flutters and regular waves of apparently motionless motion under the teetering structures of administration where a million shut-away eyes glance once restlessly at the river s ruts and glints count five, then wander swiftly away over the stone wing-bone of the city. Alice Oswald
The Fall In the flatlands children make empires out of lone trees or an aerial rising high above the housea lightning strike stretched to remove the kinks and set as a totem to the static of isolation. They’d always called him a wild boy with his unkempt shock of red hair; a fireball crashing through the atmosphere from a forbidden perch up high, a plunge by which an onlooker would only have made the darkest of wishes. John Kinsella
Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green, The night above the dingle starry, Time let me hail and climb Golden in the heydays of his eyes, And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves Trail with daisies and barley Down the rivers of the windfall light. And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home, In the sun that is young once only, Time let me play and be Golden in the mercy of his means, And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold, And the sabbath rang slowly In the pebbles of the holy streams. All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air And playing, lovely and watery And fire green as grass. And nightly under the simple stars As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away, All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars Flying with the ricks, and the horses Flashing into the dark. And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all Shining, it was Adam and maiden, The sky gathered again And the sun grew round that very day. So it must have been after the birth of the simple light In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm Out of the whinnying green stable On to the fields of praise. And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long, In the sun born over and over, I ran my heedless ways, My wishes raced through the house high hay And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs Before the children green and golden Follow him out of grace. Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand, In the moon that is always rising, Nor that riding to sleep I should hear him fly with the high fields And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land. Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means, Time held me green and dying Though I sang in my chains like the sea. Dylan Thomas
Like Our Bodies’s Imprint Like our bodies’ imprint Not a sign will remain that we were in this place The world closes behind us, The sand straightens itself. Dates are already in view In which you no longer exist, Already a wind blows clouds Which will not rain on us both. And your name is already in the passenger lists of ships And in the registers of hotels, Whose names alone Deaden the heart. The three languages I know All the colours in which I see and dream :
The Deposition of the Burden He came to us and said you are not responsible either for the world or for the end of the world the burden is taken from your shoulders you are like birds and children play and they play they forget that modern poetry is a struggle for breath Tadeus Rozewicz
None will help me. Yehuda Amichai
God of the mountain, May you be kind enough To show me your face Among the dawning blossoms? To talk casually About an iris flower Is one of the pleasures Of the wandering journey.
Basho
Basho
Basho, part 3 Nowhere in this universe have I a fixed dwelling he wrote on his cypress hat. Death took of his hat, as should be. The sense has remained. Only in his poems could he dwell. Just a little while and you will see the cherry blossoms of Yoshino. Leave your sandals under the tree, lay your brushes aside. Wrap up your stick in your hat, build up the water in lines. The light is yours, the night too. A while longer the cypress hat and you will see them, the snows of Yoshino, the ice cap of Sado, the island that takes ship to Soren over gravestone waves. Cees Nooteboom
To the Heart I saw a cook a specialist he would put his hand into the mouth and through the trachea push it to the inside of a sheep and there in the quick would grasp the heart tighten his grip on the heart rip out the heart in one jerk yes that was a specialist Tadeus Rozewicz
The chesnut by the eaves In magnificent bloom Passes unnoticed By men of this world Basho
Yehuda Amichai translated from Hebrew by Assia Gutmann. Basho translated translated from Japaneese by Nobuyuki Yuasa, Cees Nooteboom translated from Dutch by J.M. Coetzee. Tadeus Rozewicz translated from Polish by Czeslaw Milosz.
'Amid Corks and Tabs'
At Sea
She gazes serenely forward, her eyes packed with photographs. Faded and brown, and curling around the corners, they are the unpolished copper which was long ago deemed unsuitable for presentation to the dinner guests. The bowls slouch against the wall on top of the wooden table in the back room, next to the dog-eared cook books. Their dusted rims tin cataracts neglected. She holds her hands delicately, glass dragonflies frozen in mid-flight against her thighs. Silver cutlery a muted, distant hum.
A boy in one hand and a drink in the other and I know I should be watching the boy, watching his hands, checking theyʼre anchored at my waist, checking his eyes are full of me, not horizon but all Iʼm thinking is how small my hands are, and is it just me or is this drink getting bigger, am I holding it or is it holding me. I had it. I had my fingers wrapped round it, I was counting the ticks of the clock, I was one sip a minute then I tripped on the hour hand and found myself in the glass, fumbling in foam and the boy I should be watching the boy, I know thatthey told me when his sails are full heʼs off and you canʼt signal to him, heʼs off following a light flashing from a pretty girl not me in an ocean of shoulders and pint glasses. But then if heʼs anchored am I stuck in this pub, is he pulling me down, am I stuck in one place with him and his hands. So much bigger than mine hands are all I can think of, I swear my fingernails are shrinking like sails on the horizon. And the sunʼs going down and heʼs looking at me and I drank too much, I swam too far out but
One could trace rivers in the chapped cracks of her lips.
how can I escape an ocean when I canʼt remember the last time my hands were free, or how many nights itʼs been since I clutched only at cool sheets, and pressed only the lips of a pillow to my cheek
Unopened imported, very fine.
Rowena Knight
And when she smiles she travels the world tooth after tooth. Refined pallet. Steady Economy. Her photo albums unfold in the mind. Dry rivers flooding over Wriggling toes in the gravel. Amy Goodwin
She Fell For Sympathy
Love With The Aid Of Computers
From the hole in his sock she decided he needed her sympathy. So they would roll around for hours going nowhere, finding nothing, finding nowhere. All the hiding places had been taken by sweat and lust and the attempts to cover up both with one word.
His affection welled up Into a single key (an X) and he pressed it hard but that was it, the flowers he bought were always shit.
He opened the window because she said “It gets warm when two people sleep in this room.” He did not recognise the walls, the feelings, the floor. Someone had cut her bed in two with one word. He attempted nothing and all their feelings slid out of the window.
Her love was control And C and control and V, which only took one hand, So back at him his Xs roll. That was it. Together, she said, their hands wouldn’t fit. Jamie Baxter
Jamie Baxter This is where we would like you to put your poems. Please send them to us at c.m.hogg@dur.ac.uk or maxdf@hotmail.fr - we are nice, unpretentious people!
The Woman Who Worried Herself to Death
Unfaded
She wasn't robbed or raped or made a scapegoat of, she didn't take ill-fated flights on shaky planes
The dead are villains we pretend to love. Their waxy faces a serene reproach. We learn their secrets with distaste: The things they did make them at least As bad as we are – even worse because Theyʼre dead, and weʼre alive and might improve. The dead are villains we pretend to love. They died deliberately to spite us, To leech our lifeblood for their awful dryness. We clothe their faults in all the virtues They never had, to keep them in their place, Where they should stay, away from us. The dead are villains we pretend to love Though every now and then we hear their voice Speaking exactly as they spoke to us,
and no one splashed her house in paint. Kids with hoods and sovereign rings and hates left her alone. That twinge she sometimes felt was just a twinge. Her fillings didn't leak. At office dos she danced and no one laughed. Her children didn't have disorders, fail exams, take smack. Her husband didn't love his secretary or get the sack. But, if you saw her fidgeting towards another dawn, her breathing playing tricks, a thousand what ifs snaking in a queue, you'd feel for her, you'd wish she had something to pin her torment to. Kathryn Simmonds
And see their smiles again as they once smiled, And their hair unfaded as it was in life.
The Bridesmaid
Jamie McKendrick
sits naked by the window, last light of a summer evening, pinning and tacking, turning the fabric, tailor-tacks guiding the darts into place.
Christmas Christmas can be split into two kinds of people – Those who look into the windows of houses of others And those who look out. Lemn Sissay
Clipping the curves of the hips to ensure the seam hangs true by the hidden cog-teeth. Cutting. Dragging out a false stitch, turning the fabric. The whispers: Why such a hasty wedding? No doubt she'll have to keep an eye on him! The lining sliding inside-out, held flush against the waxed-silk, warm as flesh. The looks exchanged when she walked by. The quick precision of each scissor-snip.
Humbles If you have hit a deer on the road at dusk; climbed, shivering, out of your car with curses to investigate the damage done, and found it split apart and steaming far-flung in the nettle bed, utterly beyond repair, then you have seen what is not meant to be seen, is packed in cannily, coiled, like parachute silks, but unputbackable, out for the world to witness: the looping, slicked-up clockspring
Close-by, a yellow candle in a jar and a heart-shaped box of shuttles & pins. She pauses. Lights the candle. Her reply: It's no concern of yours. A give-away. The flame sobs & steadies, her back bunches, and her fingers work with spider-efficiency over the delicate circuitry of the dress. Paul Batchelor
flesh s pink, mauve, arterial red, and there a still-pulsing web of royal veins bearing the bad news back to the heart; something broken, something hard, black, the burst bowel fouling the meat exposed for what it is, found out ‒ as Judas, ripped from groin to gizzard, was found at dawn, on the elder tree, still tethered to earth by all the ropes and anchors of his life. Frances Leviston
These poems are taken from : Jamie McKendrick: Crocodiles & Obelisks (Faber and Faber) Lemn Sissay : Listener (Canongate) Kathryn Simmonds : Sunday at the Skin Launderette (Seren) Frances Leviston : Public Dream (Picador) Paul Batchelor : The Sinking Road (Bloodaxe) Our apologies to fans of Michael OʼNeill, but of his pieces will be featured in the next issue. Promise.