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Irregulars
Irregulars
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This time around the Irregulars section have decided to bring you some poems published by Carcanet -the best Poetry press in the UK, in my rather biased but still credible opinion. So enjoy this delicious poetic treat and if you’re craving for more go visit Carcanet’s website: www.carcanet.
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The Last Song
by Fawzi Karim I shall come back To say, ‘I’m drunk on idleness,’ To breathe the scent of rain-dripped walls And watch the restless sunflower’s growth. I shall come back To say, ‘I’m drunk on the shade Of the mulberries that overhang our glasses.’ I shall come back To sing of those who drank with me. And it is enough To mourn my father’s house; To mourn for us - who abandoned it And, for the slain, A shadow is enough; As a frightened shadow’s kohl-touched look Is enough to feed the ache Of those Iraqis who forget to ache; Those who will never come back; To say, ‘It’s here, The hillside where my growing-up expressed itself.’ And it is enough to express my impatience. . . Everything in ruins. . . from Plague Lands and other I shall come back poems by Fawzi Karim, published To sink my nails in your sorrows, by Carcanet in February 2011. Use your silt to stain my hands Reprinted with permission from And say, ‘I’m drunk on your bitter Carcanet Press. Baghdad coffee.’ www.carcanet.co.ukhttp:// I can be drunk on hope as well. . . www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/ . . . once in a while. indexer?product=9781847770639
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Camargues by David Morley
I will wake up in a world that hooves have led to -Les Murray for Fiona Sampson
Some horses are caves; you catch that by the way they flicker and shy at shadow. You can walk inside horses and sense their walls trembling around you. Camargues are air-delvers, the pile-driver we’re gripping on our reins, chiselling granite miles. We caught their backs like luck then held on. Camargues are not cave, but they passed through like wraiths slamming silently through the walls. Thug-faced, hog-necked, anvil-hoofed Camargues - necking the paint’s hay £on cave walls of Niaux and Lascaux; cantering behind the wasted warriors of Rome, Persia and Greece. We rode them here - or they rode us, chests thumped out like wagons heaving our wagons; warmed to our genius grandfathers because they whispered to them in horse and only in horse. We should as well cremate ourselves alongside our Camargues, riding them through heaven’s walls, hoofed pyres to our Saints Mary Jacobe and Mary Salome. We might have fired our horses ; on our deaths as we fired our houses; burnt ourselves upon the deaths of our horses since we were their houses. All horses are spells, but Camargues are myth. You catch that on horseback. from Enchantment by David Morley, published by Carcanet in November 2010. Reprinted with permission from Carcanet Press. http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781847770622
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Irregulars
Irregulars
Part 3 from 'A Life' by Iain Crichton Smith
Our landmark is the island, complex thing. A rock, a death, a house in which were made our narrow global seaward-going wings, the rings of blue, the cloth both fine and frayed. It sails within us, as one poet said, its empty shelves are resonant. A scant religion drives us to our vague tremens. We drag it at our heels, as iron chains. A winsome boyhood among glens and bens casts, later, double images and shades. And ceilidhs in the cities are the lens through which we see ourselves, unmade, remade, by music and by grief. The island sails within us and around us. Startled we see it in Glasgow, hulk of the humming dead, and of the girls in cornfields disarrayed.
from New Collected Poems by Iain Crichton Smith, published by Carcanet in January 2011. Reprinted with permission from Carcanet Press. http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781857549607
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BUTTRESS ON A HIGH CUTTING by Les Murray
Angophora, rusty-shelled tree without a deep hold but when its hill split, this side root, jutting out into the sun glare bent and flowed down, tight as a mailbag wax, rain year by drought year to the new ground level buttressing its trunk still in high bush overhead far above blue roadbed a nd palm-tree eruptions, this pirouette of wood- coated trouserleg, taller than its many-buckled man.
from Taller When Prone by Les Murray, published by Carcanet in November 2010. Reprinted with permission from Carcanet Press. http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781847771230
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Irregulars by Toon Tellegen
My father promised everything, pledged everything 'even love?' my mother asked 'everything' 'even, even. . .' she searched for a word that was greater than happiness 'everything!' my father cried, 'or don't you know what everything is?' and he gave her everything and my mother burnt down then my father walked across seas and oceans, his voice echoed by the earth's aversion, the stiffness of the years he was still thinking, he cried about dissolution and syrup! 'patience! patience!' and he promised a golden spider in a golden web and billions of golden flies of a devastating short-sightedness in the radiant dawn of insanity my father was so alone. . .
from Raptors by Toon Tellegen, published by Carcanet in February 2011. Reprinted with permission from Carcanet Press. http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781847770837
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