Introducing the June 2009 Poets - 4. Allan Crosbie

Allan Crosbie lives in Edinburgh and teaches English in James Gillespie's High School. His first collection, Outswimming the Eruption, was published by The Rialto in 2006 and it was short-listed for the Aldeburgh Jerwood Prize for best first collection. He has been runner-up in the Arvon Competition and short-listed for the Forward Prize for Best Individual Poem. He is going to be a dad for the first time in September.

Below, from Allan, is a previously unpublished poem:

Anniversary

I hear the splash, the ripples, the slush of the overspill.
I hear the night come in the trees’ voices,
toast it silently with a sip of my margarita.
The board shudders its last breath and I scan
to where you flail like a bath-toy, oblivious
to everything until you surface with a gasp
that wets the empty glass in my hand where my lips’
red ghost has broken the brittle strip of salt.

When I think of drowning you, it’s not the image
of your frail arms slapping out that scares me,
but the future: Sunday afternoons with your brothers
round the barbecue, their grandchildren shrieking
in the pool which I won’t go near, and me
watching the coals grow grey beneath the meat.

Introducing the June 2009 Poets - 3. Katy Evans-Bush

Katy Evans-Bush was born in New York and has been living in London since she was 19. She writes reviews and essays as well as the literary blog Baroque in Hackney, and her first collection, Me and the Dead, is published by Salt. A pamphlet, Speculation and Conjecture, will be published by Rack Press in 2010.

A Crack in the Feeling

Broken in their box, quotidian eggs
— date-stamped, unusable. The omelette's off.

An ostrich-egg-in-dome, and plastic grass.
A dino egg, the raptors not drawn right.
These keepsakes can be lifted out of what
was meant to be (that bursting universe).
The robin, just a colour-sample (say
robin's-egg blue, a can of paint) : I never
see them lying cracked upon a path,
it seems too much to hope for now.
..........................................I like
your eggs arranged in circles on the ground
(the largest first, then smaller outer rings
like planets with unfledged inhabitants
whose language can't be spoken, round a sun
that spreads its light like yolk along the lawn),
duck-eggs, and seven empty pigeon shells
whose hatchlings hang arse-up along a wire.
The ceiling leans toward them like a sky
whose robin's-egg-blue arc has just one fault.
Before your outer galaxy I quail:
its compass points — ambition, comfort, luck,
a ghost, desire — are shifting on the chart.

O egging (over) of my pudding (proof
whereof is where? I ask). My open mouth.
O germ, O ovoid calm, O heavy world.
My love my love.
....................This rubber egg : the shtick
a child would use, to beat the laughter out.

(from Me and the Dead)

Introducing the June 2009 Poets - 2. Zorras

Poet Sandra Alland and musician Y. Josephine formed Zorras in December 2007. They quickly became known for their unique bilingual mixture of storytelling, sound poetry, percussion, singing, guitar, megaphones and projected images. UK gigs include: Museum of London, Soho Theatre, Moor Music Festival, Aye Write! Festival, Muse-ic, Itsy Kabarett, Manifesto Politikal Kabaret, VoxBox, Club Welto, Cachín Cachán Cachunga and The Golden Hour. They’ll also play Spain’s Kuiperfest this June. Zorras have published two volumes of a hand-made poetry chapbook, Maricón, and have just finished recording their first CD, We Apologise For Any Inconvenience, to be released in the near future.

Here’s a video of Zorras performing 'Nest'.

I'd just add that I saw Zorras performing live a couple of months ago and really enjoyed it.