Introducing the March 2009 Readers - 2. Paula Jennings

Paula Jennings’s poems have been published in literary magazines, national newspapers, and anthologies. They have been carved in stone by Gillian Forbes (Ingleby Gallery, Edinburgh, 2004), translated into Polish as part of a poetry exchange with Krakow libraries, and broadcast on Radio Scotland.

Paula received Scottish Arts Council Writers' Bursaries in 1999 and 2002, a Hawthornden Writing Fellowship in 2003, and was a featured poet at StAnza Poetry Festival in 2005.

She promotes poetry writing in groups and as an individual mentor. She also works creatively with people who have dementia, sometimes making collaborative poems.

Poetry collections:
Singing Lucifer, Onlywomen Press (2002/2007)
From the Body of the Green Girl, HappenStance Press (2008)


Easter in Acharn

A winter hare wrong-footed
on the piebald hill, white fur shrill
in the shadow of the buzzard’s cross.
the bird tenses on air,
gathers grace for the steep fall.

Darkness is still tight inside
the paired black buds of ash
but all along this path
flickers of quartz signal resurrection.
Down beside the waterfall, a cave
screams open and Christ knows
this is harder than Gethsemane,

this programmed stumble
into light, these rainbows
hung like bunting on the tired hills.

Introducing the March 2009 Readers - 1. Nalini Paul

Nalini Paul’s poetry and fiction have been published widely in the UK, and in the US. She was born in India, grew up in Vancouver and has been living in Scotland since 1994. She is currently working on a collection of poetry inspired by nature and migration, and is writing a novel based on her family history, for which she received a Scottish Arts Council grant. Nalini has worked collaboratively with artists in Glasgow and Biggar, where she was writer-in-residence at the Ruby Orange Gallery (2005-6). Her collaborative book, Leaf Fall, Seeing by Touch, was published by Grimalkin Press in 2006.

Bird Dreaming

The poor cormorant, limping, can’t sing.
Anyway, its wings weren’t made for water.

Who would have thought
that a black bird without grace
could stir the river’s pity?

When it dreams it lets the breeze in,
wings opened loosely like a limp toy
on a draw string.

Then it skirts the surface:
flap
slap
clap
of legs, claws and wings.

Darkness echoes in near-flight
as it hides its guttural croaking call.

When it lands, silence replies,
returning nothing.

But a bird dream is a word dream
when a cormorant fails to sing.

Introducing the February 2009 Readers - 4. Tim Turnbull

Tim Turnbull is equally well known as a poet on the page and in performance.
Here’s his biography.

And here’s a poem, Stranded in Sub-Atomica, from his collection of the same name, which was nominated for the Forward Prize for Best First Collection 2006.

URGENT - Change of Venue for 8th February

I've had to move the readings on Sunday 8th February from the Great Grog Bar to a café-style hall in St Cuthbert's Church. It's at 5 Lothian Road, just behind the big St John's Episcopal Church on the corner of Princes Street and Lothian Road.

It's a 'Bring Your Own Bottle' venue (I've been told that alcoholic drinks are fine). I'll bring along plastic glasses, a corkscrew and a bottle-opener.

The reason is because Scotland are playing Wales at rugby on Sunday and every bar in Rose Street will be packed with drunk, noisy rugby fans. I don't follow rugby and only found out when the manager of the Great grog phoned me to let me know. Trying to hold a poetry reading in a bar with competition from hundreds of rugby fans through a thin wall would be a fruitless exercise. The hall in St Cuthbert's looks good and I'm sure it's the best solution.

To say the last few hours have been stressful is an understatement. I am normally calm under pressure, but I now feel exhausted from the stress! However, at least things now seem to have been resolved and I'm looking forward to some great readings on Sunday evening.

Date Swap

Those of you with sharp eyes will have noted that Andrew Philip and Julia Rampen have swapped reading dates. Julia is now on in May and Andy will read in June. Incidentally, the order the names come in these lists doesn't necessarily bear any relationship to the order people will read on the night. Sometimes, that decision is easy. There's a obvious order that makes sense. However, on other occasions, it can be difficult and I have to think quite hard about it.

Introducing the February 2009 Readers - 3. Alan Gay

Alan Gay studied Political Science and was formerly an Educational Advisor. He now lectures in Navigation and Meteorology and spends his summers with his wife Jancis sailing their yacht. His poetry is well placed in competitions, magazines and anthologies. His most recent poetry pamphlet is The Boy Who Came Ashore (Dreadful Night Press, 2006). He has twice been runner-up in the National Galleries of Scotland poetry competition. He lives with his family in East Lothian.

Gale Warning

Each oar-thrust spread arrowheads
that kept Gunsgreen House in line
with a crowd of gulls over the town cowp.

Behind the grunt of timbers,
bump of oars, we used the dying drum-roll
of combers on sand to judge distance off

then paused to drop our lines
poised on a copper dome made molten
by ripples thrown by the boat’s yaw.

All round the fleet swung metronome masts
in a calm that floated bird down.
Gulls swirled above our heads

leaking amber through corona-edged wings
feathers fine as lashes.
Again and again they dived across the sun,

shadows criss-crossing the deck
urgent, as if to warn us
to heed the signs:

the heel of a hand on the horizon
fingers reaching out
to crush the sun.

from The Boy Who Came Ashore, Dreadful Night Press, 2006

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.