Monday 27 May 2013

Heather Phillipson's Instant-flex 718 (Bloodaxe, 2013)

Some favourite passages from this delightful first collection:


I had discovered that the earth goes around the sun.
Copernicus pre-discovered it.


last stanza of 'Heliocentric Cosmology'


Enjoy your western wafts of coolth, thwacking in off the broad Pacific. It's not possible to describe the climate here. We lie low like coy carp.


end of 'Dear Johnny Bunny,'
(that title should be struck through)


                                                        Only those
who still have hope can capitalise on sobbing. 


end of 'Darling, You Missed a Revelation'


Remember when I was this tall
a flourishing know-nothing at the height
                         of her drawing pencils!

*

Is this true why did I say it?


from 'Speech to Be Delivered at the First Convenient Occasion'


Bookcases aren't reassuring, love.
Literature is too exciting, enmeshes you in its concerns
and irregular verbs, half-lost in personal sundry items.


from 'An Encounter in the New Language'


Remember the mind has uncharted districts.
Fork up events. Prime them to happen.


from 'Fingers Are Not Ignorable'


                                                                     Touching the dead
marries them to us, us too death marries.


from 'Oh. Is he dead?'


Is there no law against junk thought? Is this modernity?


from 'When the City Centre's at a Standstill, It's Really
Quite a Thrill to Lie in the Road and Read Herman Melville'


Through windows, the road is an extensive misunderstanding
confirmed by an engine. It is panoramic condensation.


opening stanza of 'How Things Haven't Changed'



At time of posting, Instant-flex 718 is 25% off at Foyle's (UK).





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