The Other Room Anthology 4

The splendid poetry reading series in Manchester, The Other Room, publishes an annual anthology of its readers. I read there in April last year in the good company of Ken Edwards, Alec Finlay and by video link Derek Henderson, and with the year of readers in the anthology, the company increases to include Tim Allen, Andrea Brady, Alan Halsey, Colin Herd, Karen Mac Cormack, Steve McCaffery, Geraldine Monk, and Philip Terry, among others. Visit this page at The Other Room's website to purchase your own copy. 


Thanks to series curators James Davies, Tom Jenks, and Scott Thurston both for the invitation to the original reading and the impressive anthology. 

Geraldine Monk's Lobe Scarps & Finials (Leafe Press, 2011)

I've just finished reading the latest collection from Geraldine Monk, Lobe Scarps & Finials, and warmly recommend it. While some of the poems worked more for me than others, on the whole I relished its playfulness and good humour, its chattiness and range of register, and concur with David Wheatley's thoughtful review in The Guardian. Here are just a few choice passages:

Rock runs to slurry.

Earthquakes cakewalk the

globe and back.

dunder. earth. death. dearth. abide.

*

O.K. lamb--

meek it out...

from "March"

...everything was elsewhere and

being England it was cloudy.

*

Colder. Wetter.

Perseids a proper shower

hurtling a best-in-years

outta-sight and

being England it was cloudy.

from "August"

Vegetables must be

peeled eyes removed

hearts recovered. Fruit flesh

parted with gravity.

from "November"

In a late summer night courtyard illuminated

shafts of wet creaked a simmering up-deep.

*

How greener is the other side of the

body incorruptible?

*

Moderation didn't make the

universe burst into pentameters.

Extremes teem. Petals and

thorns. Throne of frowns.

from "Poppyheads"

I'd quote more if I could replicate the spacing. You can buy the book directly from the publisher here.