the IMPpress by John Richardson

Design draft Issue 0 – May 2011 – Poetry & Art Featuring the poet Jay Arr & artist Stevie Gilmore 1

Publisher IMPpress, downstream, 55 Broadtown, Wiltshire, England, SN4 7RG website: www.IMPpress.co.uk Editor Guest Poet-editor Proofing Guest Artist R&D + Design Delivery Printer

John Richardson Jay Arr A. Volunteer Stevie Gilmore A. Friend Issuu Magcloud

Acknowledgements The Editor gratefully acknowledges the help, support and encouragement of his BlueGate Poet friends.

Donations Your gifts of ones, tens or hundreds would be wonderful!

Subscriptions There are no paid subscriptions to the IMPress, it is a free online e-zine available from the website. You are also able to download a free a digital distribution copy for off-line reading. If you require a printed copy this maybe obtained for a small fee via our printers, direct from their website.

Pamphlets & books We also publish poetry pamphlets and books. Visit our website for further information.

Contributions Your poems and art are always welcome, preferably via email, please see our website for submission details.

Cover art part of Trismegistus

and interior artwork all courtesy of Stevie Gilmore

Editorial Welcome to the design draft edition of the IMPpress! From the outset the primary goal of the e-zine has been to easily (and quickly) publish quality, contemporary, poetry and art together. There is still much negativity about online (and self) publishing – a belief that standards are lower because it’s easier. We hope that the work demonstrated here at the IMPpress will prove otherwise. Each quarter we will feature a guest poet and artist with the intention that one or two of their works are an ekphrasis exhibition. We will also ask several of the contributing poets to make audio/video recordings to appear alongside of some of their work and further enhance the online experience. In addition we will ask the guest poet to undertake an editorial role in choosing the poems. The e-zine content mix will be 4:1 in favour of poetry. The intention is for the artwork to enhance, inform and complement the poems and be a showcase for the artist’s work. Quality, readability and accessibility are the keys to successful publishing; if we have good content people will be attracted and enjoy the experience. We have employed Issuu as our delivery vehicle because it has set new standards for online publishing and is widely regarded as one of the 50 best websites. However because the goal of most poets is to ‘appear in print’ we are also publishing the IMPpress both as a printed magazine and for digital distribution. In the latter format you will be able to download a PDF version of the e-zine for personal, off-line, enjoyment. The two formats are available from Magcloud, an online HP print on demand service that avoids waste and unnecessary expense. FYI: Our format 8.5" x 11", is determined by our printers. We have also established IMPpress as a small, independent, poetry press with its own website. We’ll be working with talented poets to publish their collections as pamphlets. Our first poet, Jay Arr, is the featured writer in this issue. His, about to be published, pamphlet, poems from the private life of gargoyles, a third collection, is targeted for launch in the autumn of 2011. For now enjoy this e-zine design draft. We’d encourage you to also try the download digital version and very much appreciate your feedback via the comments page on our website.

John Richardson Editor

IMPpress

Contents Issue O - May 2011 poets Jay Arr Elinor Brooks Janice Booth Teresa Davey Tony Hillier Beryl Kellow Mo Needham Katherine T Owen Jill Sharp

4 6 7 8 9 10 11 13 14

the featured artist Stevie Gilmore

brief biographies

artwork John Barleycorn is dead Photo - Sunflow trio The English Dreamtime Spirit Winds Penhill Lament Spirit of the Hill Sanguine pencil study Salute to the sun The Ridgeway path Athene

4 6 8 10 13 14 16 16 18 19

interview Jay Arr on Strawberry Green TV

ekphrasis Jay Arr & Stevie Gilmore

Jay Arr misplacing the possibility of haystacks Eventually things resolve and come to this: ladders, graveyards and sea mist in Byzantium there's a hammering, a laddering heavenward desperation for the company of angels, to counterpoint the delight of falling graveyards keep their own, special rules apply, there's summer sun, long lie-ins and Time's constancy of sea mist like the horizon's vast Northwall, those ladders are needed for a glimpse of the other side but I've misplaced the possibility of haystacks to host the certainty of fall and the hammering, hammering need that drives us all.

Jay Arr summersault Will you do it? I asked, knowing Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d start a perfect synchrony. Their knees bend, bodies tuck and with six small hands spread, my grandchildren take hold of the earth as if it were nothing, or at least the heft of it on their shoulders, as if it were nothing. And as they tip-me-tail the world under I wonder, is this what I missed? The taking hold of you, my hands spread as if it were nothing, held you as you should have been held. Not stupidly asking, Will you do it? As if it were nothing.

she was flying and had never flown before, so instinctively held on to her shopping bag whose contents, spewed across the pavement, are almost all gone. Flying with her is the tin of chopped tomatoes that will survive, if slightly dented, but not the storm of cornflakes, which like snows falling, engulf the about-to-be-crushed bystanders by the blundering bus that mounts the curb; its driver blinded by the hush of wings, the figure in white, the haloâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d light heâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;d seen. Was it this or the luminous feather that smashed his windscreen or the sight bursting inwards of fractures, frosted filigree surprises: leafy glades, waterfalls, cathedrals, temples lost landscapes, the weird lace that would propel his imagination on journeys in time as well as space?

Elinor Brooks

tournesols Sunflowers are captives of the soil. Factoried in fields, they turn their open faces to the sun forever following its path across the sky, counting its steps. Tethered to the earth, they strain at ropes invisible. Sunflowers themselves are suns kept from the sky where they would float and bob burgeoning until they fill its blue with overlapping brightnesses a canopy of yellow drying to autumn brown raining seeds upon the ground to nourish the dead skyward on their journey home. Sunflowers are worshippers their gaze unwavering: on nightwatch they do not close their darkened eyes but see the stars played out behind the curtain of the Milky Way and planets steadfast as themselves untwinkling stare: now Mars, now Venus, now Jupiter's blood-smeared gold and moons that swim in retinue treading deepest water, holding invisible hands. And yet at dawn, the light that seeps into the eastern sky will draw their faces turning on their returning god that same look that they gave him when he set.

Janice Booth

in an Olympic year – Sichuan province after an earthwork The men in hard hats are stepping back and someone is reaching for your swollen palm, slips you a gift. We watch your lips. It is early morning. You are caught, splayed in a fault of concrete, on your belly, as if simply reluctant to rise; we see you pant. This is Chinese television; there are pinyin characters on the screen. You grasp a small cell phone, a life line; breathlessly inform your wife. ‘I do not expect to survive.’ You are broadcast live.

night moves In the dark hallway two weary pairs of shoes are slung together at awkward angles; her heels toppled, his toes turned inwards coquettishly: performing still, a courtship dance.

Teresa Davey recurring dream Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;m here once more, moving through a grim deserted house, set within a dark and fungoid place, of thick gnarled trees and fetid growth. Stone steps slime down to sunken cellars, narrow treads reach up to angry sky, and inbetween, graceless, gloomy rooms, of tattered drapes and gathered dust, sullen behind high shuttered windows and unhinged double doors. Outside, a walled garden of jungled shrub, tangled with bramble and tearing thorn. And here I am, not knowing how I came, or why I should be here.

Teresa Davey

the hurricane subsides A red a brown to get on next red followed by flourish of 7 blacks 7 reds: a final break of 61, in 147 seconds. At 61, potting a grave-deep black, Alex uses the long rest that sets him free of that three horned triangle of fame: fags, booze, media. Sometime Headbutter, Crowd pleaser, Self pleaser, Rule teaser, Shot to bits by cancer, cancer his last shot to nothing, chemo his last bloody shot ………………….. For those of you watching then in black and white: the blue was indeed drifting slowly behind the yellow. For those of you reading this now, perhaps in black suit and white gloves, perhaps clearing your throat as any white lies are over, our colourful Hurricane has subsided. He will thrill or foul no more, nor build Massive Break-downs. Here endeth his lessons. Here endeth his talented driven, pot-luck life. As he stretches beneath his slate-flat green baize, his legacy never endeth. Hero. Famed. Framed Untamed

Swindon’s Community Poet, Tony Hillier, reflects on the death at 61, of an icon of Snooker: Alex “Hurricane”Higgins 2010.

Beryl Kellow

tell me Where does the wind come from? Over the hills throâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; the trees. First it starts as a breeze, then gathers pace and builds up steam. Thundering like a threshing machine, worrying creatures as a gale sweeps throâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; the barn and upsets the cat, off to stalk a big grey rat. Alarms the horses, ears pricked eager for a gallop. Still it blows and twists and turns reaching force ten, Richter scale till slates fall and pylons shiver, fail to deliver power hour after hour. All is still and tranquil again. Tell me where did the wind go?

Mo Needham

structure

Mo Needham touched

Katherine T Owen frozen devotion A man lies on my doorstep this morning, curled up frozen in my porch. Came to tell me he loves me; wrote a note and did not wish to leave until I read it. I shake him till he wakens; he, embarrassed â&#x20AC;&#x201C; shocked with location and with cold. Come in, I say, and cover him in blankets, bring shifts of tea and toast. Then leave him in his frozen devotion, until the shaking from a night in snow diminishes and ceases. We talk. I read the note. But as he already knows my heart does not melt with love for him. And so, he goes.

Jill Sharp

clee hill Evening. We drive along lanes in the late August sun to the far hill, a gravity in the landscape. The windscreen’s ablaze; quick hands rise to pull down shades – our faces baffled, squinting at sunlight. I turn onto the upward winding track watching the hill’s mass shift from window to window; close now, small, familiar, nothing special, its abstract artistry turned to particular scars and recent wounds still gaping. I stop the car. Even with sturdy boots this walk would be arduous: the sudden gravelly cliff, no obvious path. We search for an easier way and finding none hoist ourselves onto the hill, steady each other, laughing, advising on footholds, till silenced by exertion. Hauling on air, we begin to feel pleased with ourselves, our progress, but stop at a sheep, a mud-crusted mound that won’t budge. It looks from unblinking eyes, eyes of amber holding all they have seen in their orbit, vivid, not faded to memory. The creature stands its ground. It’s we who must scramble around on all fours, muttering our disgruntlement. From here, the hill is a fruit nibbled, thrown down, its raw sides yellowing, and along the ridge, sealed off, a tracking station has set its sights on space, the mighty golfballs placed on the tee and left – surveyed, perhaps like us, by unseen eyes. Our own light’s fading now, so that we see the simple lightbulb of our neighbour planet, a steady blaze. Side by side we sit, the earth plotted and apportioned to the horizon, its sectors edge to edge, its colours separate – that picture on the postcard we rejected as unreal. At the corner of the eye appear faint stars – sky’s soft reflection of the earthly constellation as the town maps itself in bands of glowing lights. We are silent. I know you’re sitting there and yet you’ve gone – the cross on white paper held at arm’s length in that zone the mind admits as emptiness. In this new stillness, single sounds detach from the surface and float up – a call, a closing door, a car changing gear to circle round the hill, headlights marking moments on the road where earth and eye and motion coincide moments entered once and left behind.

Jill Sharp on first looking into his fridge My soft tug releases an odour. The light stays off. Along the top rack lies a tube of puree, twisted, missing its lid. A streaky rasher dangles between the rails. What was once lettuce drips onto a ripped-open empty package and a bruised wedge of cheese. Stuck in the bars, dried halves of onion, rings shrunk apart, lose their skins over a closed container holding nothing but sprouting spuds and an egg-box, its sole sticky occupant cracked... Iâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;ve already eaten his meal, but I pull free the Eiffel Tower souvenir magnet and leave beneath it a brief note in lipstick on a white unfolded serviette.

the featured artist

Stevie Gilmore has always been drawn to the more mystical machinations of the works around him despite coming from a strongly atheistic background. He finds himself particularly drawn to the chalk down lands of the West Country and the local traditions and rituals. It is here that he feels closest to the heartbeat of the universe and his works are, in part, a way of trying to capture these intangible designs.

Stevie & friends playing love makes a fool out of me on

Beryl Kellow’s love of poetry began in her childhood, stimulated by enthusiastic teachers. Her career was spent in communication as a speech and language therapist working with children and adults. She loves rhythm and rhyme and wordsmithing. When she retired she decided to pursue writing poetry and found the BlueGate Poets.

brief biographies Katherine T Owen spent 14 years of her life with little movement and little speech. She pursued spirituality to find peace. She is author of It's OK to Believe – spiritual poems which take the reader on a thought-provoking journey of faith, or which simply serve to inspire. Interviews are available on her site http://www.a-spiritualjourney-of-healing.com

Elinor Bookes writes: There is a thin line between the time-bound world of our senses and the world of our imaginative empathy: I like to cross these borders in my poetry. I was born in Edinburgh, love romantic landscapes, and when I'm not writing can be found in the pub playing an Oriental strategy board game called Go. Jill Sharp works as an associate lecturer with the Open University – the best work in the world, teaching adults who are returning to study, and eager to learn. She also enjoys running a local life writing group. Jill is a member of Swindon’s BlueGate Poets.

Jay Arr says: I've been writing poetry seriously since my late forties. In 2000 I completed a post grad. 2yr course in Creative Writing at Bristol, in 2004 an undergraduate course on Elizabethan Literature at University of Bath in Swindon. My poetic interests range from the Tang dynasty, through Argentinean, Greek, Russian, Spanish to & 20th Century American poetry. I write mainly but not exclusively about: family, friends, relationships, love & cheese

Mo Needham escaped from Liverpool on a stormy night about 30 years ago. He’s always been a storyteller so the concise and suggestive nature of poetry does not come easy to him, why use one word when paragraphs abound? He started his first apprenticeship as a Machine Repair Fitter at the Ford plant in Liverpool in 1967, and started poetry studies in Swindon at the Bluegate plant in 2010. He was a successful engineer but I will always be Apprentice Poet (No 3). All his stories and poems, warts and all, are published on his website http://www.Original-Short-Stories.co.uk, it is called ‘The Adventures of a Strange Mind’, he thinks that says it all.

Self styled community poet and teacher, Tony Hillier, runs unique workshops at usual and unusual venues and on the streets. He has over five years’ experience of taking poetry back to its roots, to working people within everyday settings. He has worked in Swindon, the South West, and Clapham Park Estate, London. He has performed at several festivals e.g. Big Green, Poole Book Festival and Guildford as well as at political and community gatherings. Birthday parties, charity fundraisers and yes, weddings and funerals have become a stock-in-trade as well.

Janice Booth has seen her own children grow up in Swindon but she herself started life in Norfolk. Meaningful landscapes and a working life as an acupuncturist, fascinated by East Asian medicine and its underlying philosophy, are two ongoing sources of inspiration. Writing helps to justify living; a poem can make the self, as writer, feel more at home in the world. Janice attributes much of her vitality to running, dancing and being prompted to write by the Bluegate poetry group!

ekphrasis 1

ridgeway

how many dawns have chilled your west? hawkâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s wing dip shall dip, pivot him shedding cumulus, rippled high ground yellowed and raped. here castles squat the horizon busy folding back, landscaping fertility dances in the horseâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s magic eye, sounding smithy. and you: tracked by blue stones, barrow bones secrets long gone, chalk white among the green, ancient footsteps. Walk.

ekphrasis 2

is the answer none of the above?

this weightless scimitar scythed down air vane and quill were intimate with wind ruffled alone black mourning black gave voice to bird as light as a wingless there is a woman on fire across the street (the pyrotechnics of love are complex) the traffic whispers draw horizonâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s sky curve once feathered wing sings echo echoes the lake mid-applause its meandered shores meadows poppy-full a breeze of bindweed plays kiss-the-girls all sticky back while the woman smoulders older now a feather weighs down my hand why is this pen aflame for her?

Re-drafted excerpts from a Jay Arr

interview with Andrew Brewerton – 19 mins - Episode 2 24-Sep-09 AB: How long did this latest poetry collection of yours, “and what did you want?” take to write? JR:

Oh, this one was quite quick, about ten years.

AB:

How did you get into writing poetry?

JR: Well, my background is mathematics but like most young me I got into writing poetry when I first fell in love but then put it aside for twenty years and only took it up again in my late forties. I was told early on in my career that I should do two things to the best of my ability. One because I loved doing it and would do it even if I wasn’t being paid – that should ideally be your job And the other because you really detest and loathe doing it and it’s not something you do well. For me that was writing. Now on a good day I can find suitable words and on a really good day mange to get the into some sort of order and write a sentence or two. AB:

Are there some things easy to write about?

JR: Naturally anything that moves you emotionally. The difficult thing to do though is to write well, it’s taken me about twenty years to become articulate. But when you do. and when you connect with and audience, it’s like a bell that starts to resonate. The sound & music get inside your body it has same kind physical effect and that’s the magic of the thing. I have on occasion had people in tears when they’ve read my poems. And I’ve had people fall asleep! Actually, as one famous poet said, it’s all about getting the right words in the right order. I have particular trouble with the spaces between the words. When I stand up to recite that’s when they become important. For example the title of one of my poems is: Don’t think of me. Add a full stop, which comes out as a long pause when you read the last line of the poem and everything changes e.g. Don’t. Think of me. AB:

Do you always have a pen and paper with you?

JR: No, not until my son, who went to university allegedly to study but spent his time doing stand up comedy and passed on some advice he was given. “Father,” he said, “always carry a note book.” three years higher education and that was the most sensible thing he said to me. And as I get older I’ve learnt that I have to write notes down, I can never remember things. Fortunately my iPhone has an excellent notes facility. AB:

Did you always know that poetry had a kind of power?

JR: No, I didn’t. Though often, once it’s written, it’s all in the reading. I’ve heard actors transform a mediocre poems into something magical. If you could bottle that you could charm birds off trees. I’ve a theory poems were originally devised to tell stories and to get people into bed. And nothing has changed much in several thousand years …AB: So why the interest in writing love poems? JR: First I should explain that all my love poems are fiction. The I tell people that twice because they never believe me the first time! Love poems are difficult to get just right, that’s the challenge. Nearly every poet worth the title has had a go and few in my estimation have really mastered the craft and can turn out consistent quality verse. Exceptional are: John Donne, Shakespeare, the current poet laureate, Brian Pattern, Sharon Olds, C.P. Cavafry, AB:

When do you find time to write?

JR: I write a lot at night, suffering from an old man’s complaint, means I often have to get up. It’s quiet and I can contentedly take two hours to write something that might normally take two minutes, a line or verse, and then take another hour rewriting it. AB:

And when do you know when a poem is finished?

JR: Well, it has been said that a poem is never finished it’s simply abandoned. For me it’s intuitive, it has to be sometimes because I may start out writing about one thing then a word or phrase intrudes I take a turn and discover I’m writing about something else completely different. It’s as though the poem takes over. It’s also about running out of breath. Maya Angelou said that a poem doesn’t have life until it’s spoken. I think that poetry was the first (definitely one of the first) art forms. It certainly existed before writing. It has thousands of years of oral and aural tradition. So as a poet you have to be sensitive to how the words appear on the page, for the reader, and how the sound they make strikes the ear, for the listener. A quality poem will clear both these hurdles with ease, and then some! Quality poetry can be differentiated from the run of the mill by craftsmanship and musicality. I once asked a famous Punjabi poet what was his take on ‘good poetry’ and his answer was simple. “It has to move me.”, he replied. And how do you know when a poem is finished I asked. “The poem tells me.” he said. AB:

And how do you feel about standing up and reciting you poems.

JR: I still get nervous, sometimes very nervous. I used to get embarrassed but not any more. My poems are a bit like children. I’ve nurtured them and they quickly grow up and find their own way in the world, sometimes they come back to me (particularly when I’m reciting one of them) and I think, was I responsible for that? AB:

Well, thank you for reading some of your poems. I could listen to you all night.

JR:

So could I, I often do.