Introducing the February 2009 Readers: 2. Andrew Shields

Andrew Shields was born in Detroit, Michigan, in 1964, and raised in Michigan, Ohio, California, and England. His poems have appeared in many journals, as well as in the chapbook Cabinet d'Amateur (Cologne: Darling Publications, 2005). The most recent appearance of his translations in book form is Tussi Research, by the German poet Dieter M. Gräf (Green Integer, 2008). He lives with his wife and three children in Basel, Switzerland, where he teaches at the University of Basel. His blog is http://andrewjshields.blogspot.com, and his band Human Shields is at this MySpace page.


September Rain
for Dieter M. Gräf

Past autobahn construction sites,
threats

of traffic. Past television
towers

atop Hessian hills. Past
buzzards

soaring between sudden
showers,

kestrels hovering over
prey,

flocks of starlings
descending

into roadside trees. Past a freshly
plowed

field of crows. Through the
cloud

of spray from asphalt. Through
slaps

of rain from overpasses. Past
airplanes

starting and landing over the
skyscrapers

of Frankfurt. Everything standing, even
ruined

medieval castles perched
strategically

on the passing bluffs.
Passed

by a car from Cologne — how the cathedral
withstood

and withstood the air
raids.

The rain
clears;

soon we'll be home, safe as
towers.

— 16-17 September 2001

(from Andrew's chapbook collection, Cabinet d'Amateur)

Introducing the February 2009 Readers: 1. Jane McKie

Jane McKie, originally from Sussex, now lives in Scotland with her husband and two children. She has had poems published in Island magazine, New Writing Scotland, The Red Wheelbarrow, Other Poetry and Pennine Platform, and her first collection, Morocco Rococo (Cinnamon Press), won the 'first book' category of the Sundial/Scottish Arts Council Book Awards 2008. She runs Knucker Press, a small press dedicated to pairing writers and artists.

The poem below was published in Smiths Knoll 43, and will appear in Jane’s forthcoming collection from Polygon:

Flat Raft

Pulled across the Adur
one swallocky day
on a flat raft, cows

were restless,
mother’s long skirts curled
against her wet legs,

and all the children sat
at the end nearest
the animal reek,

elders up-wind.
It was a squashed day when
mud was water, water mud

and blood ran slowly in the veins.
All the talk and noise couldn’t
blot the buzz of the river

swollen with summer,
dying of it, from one boy.
He held the tiller of a modern

ship in his hand, sailed into
another age, just from wishing
the air be a mite thinner.

Introducing the November 2008 Readers - 4. James W Wood

James W Wood is the author of The Theory of Everything (HappenStance, 2006) and Inextinguishable (Knucker Press, 2008). His long poem about modern Scotland, Song of Scotland, appears in the current issue of Poetry Review. Below is a small excerpt from it.

In the early hours of a new nation we look out
On a la-la-landscape bequeathed by those who said
They knew best, those from the West, whose God and Glasgow
Labour Party would provide. This their mess, this underperformance
Theirs, heirs now to an early death, corruption their
Disease. Ours
................is now what they were. Left
with what? A nation? I’m no’ so sure. No nation without
Representation, but we’re the most over-represented
Non-Nation on Earth. One hundred and twenty-nine numpties sat
On the world’s most expensive wall. Look instead to the North
And East, where the black gold flows and the numbers know
The future lies, away from clichés about poverty
And deep-fried pies, towards culture and prosperity
Born from hard work, not depravity. Take a trip then from the barren
Southern border up through brokerdom in the Lothians
And into Prince Billy’s saintly Kingdom, then on to that
Stem-cell science park once known for its journalism (I
mean Dundee) and on. And on. Into Western Europe’s
Most precious resource, under waves that used to teem
With fish but boil now with regulation: this is where
The money is. Where our future is. Socialism
And Scottish Equity,
.............. ..........what a load of shite:
.................................. ..............the country

That created capitalism, old Adam, couldn’t cut it
Ourselves and had to head, Tam in hand, southwards
For a generation.

Introducing the Novemver 2008 Readers - 3. Patricia Ace

Patricia Ace was born in Cleethorpes at the end of the Sixties of Welsh-West Indian parentage. Brought up in England, the Middle East and Canada, she studied English and Drama at the Universities of London and Glasgow before settling in rural Perthshire in 1993 to bring up a family. A stay-at-home Mum when her kids were small, she qualified as a yoga teacher in 2002 and currently teaches both yoga and creative writing to adults in the community and to young people in schools. Patricia Ace’s chapbook of poems, First Blood, is published by HappenStance Press. She won 3rd Prize in the Mslexia 2008 Women’s Poetry Competition. She has recently completed a Masters in Creative Writing at Glasgow University for which she was awarded a Distinction. She lives in Crieff with her partner and two teenagers.

Ruby Turning Thirteen

She comes home from school smelling of rubbers
and Tippex and, faintly, of sweat.
She cradles her cat like a baby,
carries him around like a doll.
She slops milk into a glass, grabs a piece of bread.
She’s in a play about the seven deadly sins.
I’m this girl who’s dead full of herself – y’know, flirty…
I’m playing Lust.

She shoves a pink magazine in my face.
Who d’ you think is the fittest out of these guys?
She flicks the pages, playing it cool.
Her belt spells ROCK in silver studs.
Cookie Monster grins, ironically, from her t-shirt.
A guinea pig fidgets in the pocket of her hoody.
I study Shane and Jesse, Justin and Johnny.
He is soooo fit, she says. He’s got a six-pack. Look.

She pretends to be a dog, down on all fours,
tongue lolling out, hunting for hidden treats.
Good doggy I say, patting her head, playing the game.
(She wants a dog more than anything.)
She lies on my lap, pretends to be a baby.
Her braces knock against the lip of her sucky cup.
I’m not ready for a boyfriend yet, she tells me
I’m playing the field.

Introducing the November 2008 Readers - 2. A.B. Jackson

A. B. Jackson was raised by wolves in Lytham St Annes. An acrobatic child, he joined the Quaker Circus at 12 but retired early due to a hairline fracture of the arse. He has been smoking so long his lungs are the size of walnuts. His first book, Fire Stations, was published by Anvil Press in 2003. He lives in Glasgow, and will be leaving it like shot off a shovel as soon as the first opportunity arises.

The Christmas Pet

A blood-sport refugee
kicking its heels in sanctuary.
It was an impulse buy,

spurred on by the children
and the straw season.
Care required, minimum:

recommended food, anything,
make the den inviting,
give the gold nose-ring

a good polish.
It did not flourish;
I offered barley and mash

without success. It grew
lean and repetitive, slow,
lean and repetitive. Now,

having churned up the lawn,
it patrols
the small circle of indoors

scoring things with precise horns.

Introducing the November 2008 Readers - 1. Colin Will

Colin Will, Edinburgh-born poet and publisher, lives in Dunbar. His 4th poetry collection - Sushi and Chips - was published by Diehard in 2006. He chairs the Board of StAnza: Scotland's International Poetry Festival, and is webmaster for Poetry Scotland.
.

Sea dreams

Dead gull floats in the sea,
wings spread, head down.
For a moment I dream
it's alive, practising snorkelling,
peering down for unwary fish,
but it's just the waves
that make its feathers
rise and fall.

Tide slides up the slipway,
in little laps. Seaweed fronds
rise from the rocks, outspread
as incoming water lifts them.

It's all just... not going anywhere,
just... going; never arriving,
just... having been, a place
where time is liquid,
life and death
just... phases of the moon.

Introducing the October 2008 Readers - 3. Kei Miller

I haven’t received a poem yet from Kei Miller (if one arrives, I’ll certainly put it up here, but donating a poem isn’t obligatory), but here’s a link to one in the Cortland Review called First Book of Chronicles. Pretty good!

Introducing the October 2008 Readers - 2. Rob A. Mackenzie

I’m reading on Sunday, so here’s a poem – light verse, I suppose. It’s not in the forthcoming book and I doubt I’d send this to any magazine, so it may as well go here.

Credit Crunch

Economists agree a mousehole is a last resort,
but not without merit. Cheese is currency when money
has no object. It can’t buy even a crumb
of love and lacks the crunch of, for example, celery,
but comes freely available on kitchen floors.

What does it credit anyone to gain
a notional treasure, pay back
more than they’ve borrowed, and lose the lasting
tang of gorgonzola? A mousehole spans the bottom
rung on the cheese ladder. No interest so far.

Introducing the October Readers - 1. Hamish Whyte

The next readings at the Great Grog are on Sunday 12th October from 8pm. Here's the first of four introductions to the readers:

Hamish Whyte was born near Glasgow where he lived for many years before moving to Edinburgh in 2004. He is a poet, editor, translator and former librarian. His most recent poetry publication is Window on the Garden (essence/botanic press) and a new collection is due from Shoestring Press in December 2008. He runs Mariscat Press, publishing poetry, and has edited many anthologies of Scottish literature. He is an Honorary Research Fellow in the Department of Scottish Literature, Glasgow University, and was awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson Writing Fellowship in 2007. Currently reviewing crime fiction for Scotland on Sunday.

Angel, Torridon

Hi there, says the biker girl
in the garden of the last house
in Alligin, as I trudge past
with my new haversack
and silly sun hat. She smiles:
long red hair, big in leathers.
From the seat up the hill
I look back and see her
still standing at the gate
the Harley against the wall.

Introducing the September 2008 Readers - 4. Michael Schmidt

Michael Schmidt was born in Mexico in 1949. He was educated at Harvard and Oxford and is now Professor of Poetry at the University of Glasgow, editorial director of Carcanet Press and general editor of PN Review. He has written novels, poetry and literary history, and is an anthologist. The Resurrection of the Body is his most recent collection (Smith/Doorstop 2006).


'His father was a baker . . .’
for A.G.G

His father was a baker, he the youngest son.
I understand they beat him, and they loved him.

His father was a baker in Oaxaca:
I understand his bakery was the best

And his three sons and all his daughters helped
As children with the baking and the pigs.

I can imagine chickens in their patio,
At Christmastime a wattled turkey-cock, a dog

Weathered like a wash-board, yellow-eyed,
That no one stroked, but ate the scraps of bread

And yapped to earn its keep. I understand
The family prospered though the father drank

And now the second brother follows suit.
I understand as well that love came

Early, bladed, and then went away
And came again in other forms, some foreign,

And took him by the heart away from home.
His father was a baker in Oaxaca

And here I smell the loaves that rose in ovens
Throughout a childhood not yet quite complete

And smell the fragrance of his jet-black hair,
Taste his sweet dialect that is mine too,

Until I understand I am to be a baker,
Up before dawn with trays and trays of dough

To feed him this day, next day and for ever --
Or for a time -- the honey-coloured loaves.

(from 'The Resurrection of the Body')

Other readers on Sunday 14th September:
Helena Nelson
Dorothy Baird
Charlotte Runcie

Introducing the September 2008 Readers - 3. Helena Nelson

Helena Nelson runs HappenStance Press in the small hours and at the weekends. By day she teaches Communication and English at Adam Smith College, Fife. She is both poet and critic. Her book-length collection is Starlight on Water, Rialto, 2003 and her more frivolous pamphlet is Unsuitable Poems, 2005, HappenStance.

Work

Born in the dark
shimmering, pure,
it wakes you at dawn.
Everything else is dirty beside it—
the swings, the play-park, the shoddy gardens.

Cold in its beauty, its calculation,
work shines clean.
Driven honour, harder than love.
Begin, begin.


The other September readers are:
Michael Schmidt
Dorothy Baird
Charlotte Runcie

Introducing the September 2008 Readers - 2. Charlotte Runcie

Charlotte Runcie has been writing poems for almost three years now, after having won the Foyle Young Poets of the Year Award in 2006. She went on to win first prize in the Oxford University Christopher Tower Poetry Awards, and has since had her work published in several magazines across Scotland and England. She co-founded and now edits an online poetry magazine, Pomegranate, for young writers, and her first poetry chapbook will be published by tall-lighthouse in 2009. She is 19 years old and lives in Edinburgh.

Squirrels

We gather acorns from the grass,
each seed as round as hours, discuss the time
and how it moves; we head for trees

and lope along the ridged nut rivulets of bark
which creak and twist, mechanical; and hardwood cogs
are whirring backwards, shedding laughter lines.

We cling to all these days like frost,
our tails curled around the time
and necks of trees, coiled and weightless –

you say you sense the winter, smell the cold.
This stream will split by evening; minnows
breathe again. This air would break our lungs

so I sleep along the length of you, dreaming sundials,
our bodies hushed. We weave a downy helix. Then,
at dawn – November chimes with harder light – you stir

once, again, again. We slot
into the seasons every year,
unconscious, soft as clockwork.

(first published in Read This magazine)

Other readers for September 2008:
Michael Schmidt
Helena Nelson
Dorothy Baird

Introducing the September 2008 Readers - 1. Dorothy Baird

Dorothy Baird was born in Edinburgh but, after travelling and living abroad and in England for many years, came home to the city 19 years ago when the first of her three children was born. Her work has been widely published in magazines and anthologies and her first collection, Leaving the Nest, was published by Two Ravens Press last year. 4 of her poems were published in Two Ravens Press’s recent anthology, Cleave , which was Borders book of the month in June. She leads writing groups for adults and children, was Craigmillar's Writer in Residency this year and is also a Human Givens therapist.

Badger Watch

It wasn't so much the badgers
I'll remember, though their shadowy
forms caught my breath
as they rustled in the earth mounds

and nosed in twigs and bluebells - no,
it was rather the waiting,
the five of us, faithful
to the silence we'd agreed on,

crouched downwind, while night
eased itself among the trees
and sheep coughed in distant fields,
when we learned the language

of each other's face; how
in the sweeping dark
we dwindle to a beating heart,
and how in the long emptiness,

the sliver of hope still rises.

[published originally in Acumen and then in Leaving the Nest (Two Ravens Press)]

Other readers in September:

Michael Schmidt
Helena Nelson
Charlotte Runcie

September Poetry

Summer is over, as the rain-soaked streets of Edinburgh have testified for the past month but, on the bright side, it means that Poetry at the Great Grog will shortly begin a new session.

I’ll post a full programme for the next year soon. There are still a few (very few) spaces to fill, but I hope to sort that out this weekend.

The next reading is on Sunday September 14th from 8pm, and it’s a terrific line-up. The Great Grog is at 43 Rose Street, Edinburgh. Click on the names to find out more.

Michael Schmidt
Helena Nelson
Dorothy Baird
Charlotte Runcie