Infinite Difference, sampler no. 6: Claire Crowther's "Young Woman with Scythe"

Young Woman with Scythe

As if soil was noise, the legal notice

shivered on the barrow. Louise tore off

her scything gloves. High on a pine, wild

parakeets, harbingers of change

in our climate, stared from their margin, chattered

about apocalypse. Carefully, eking

out a holiday, I watered plants.

That's my dialect of territory

against the elocution of possession.

I looked for so long at Louise's face,

that, in the bedroom mirror, it smoothed mine.

Claire Crowther

The anthology can be pre-ordered from the publisher, Shearsman Books, and The Book Depository in the UK and from The Book Depository or Small Press Distribution in the US.

Infinite Difference, sampler no. 5: Frances Presley, from "Alphabet for Alina"

from "Alphabet for Alina"

a

apple a pull a tree a lina
leans her aap pull an apple an
ape sun ap rise across a cross be
tween cox and box her sunset keep
her kept such red to last such red to read

a tart start heart wood this year
the sun gone set or unripe apples
for supermarkets not my favourite
checks to come and live in caravans
pays less than factory work leaf eaters

whose apples who eats this
apple do not snow white do not
white out my reading burst let her
breathe let her choose between apple
and mirror of the apple her s/own character

Frances Presley

The anthology can be pre-ordered from the publisher, Shearsman Books, and The Book Depository in the UK and from The Book Depository or Small Press Distribution in the US.

Infinite Difference, sampler no. 4: Sophie Robinson's "Glisten, Glisten, glisten, glisten"

"Glisten, Glisten, glisten, glisten"

after John Keats & Adrienne Rich

Thump me restlessly against the darkling

Drum of your disquiet, pulse-rattle and

Wheeze a werewolf-hungry eye a

Stormy pounding chromosomal ache a

Scratch of needy charm neglected, named &

Filed away waiting, charring itself to ruin

To spoil in the zombie-fleckered dankness,

Wanting, chagrin grimace betraying urge,

Loosened hips to buck & smoothen,

Iron-down frottage, eiderdown merging,

Feathered to resurgent skin-scansion--

Read and comb the yearning emergency

To crest & crash, to splurge trembling the whole

World across the pane, to glitter patent &

Pattern itself as strings from gurning lips

To spell its listless etude toward the sky.

Sophie Robinson

The anthology can be pre-ordered from the publisher, Shearsman Books, and The Book Depository in the UK and from The Book Depository or Small Press Distribution in the US.

Infinite Difference, sampler no. 3: Lucy Sheerman's "Mine"

Mine

The heart honeycombed; its collected spread

of prospects accrued in court precincts. Late

afternoon. Windows blazing. Walls gilded.

Sudden Suburban stillness. Sunbury.

Gold seams thread the fabric of the in thing

necklace boxed unthreading thirty years from

hand to throat spun into strands. Locketed.

The ache worn threadbare. Later years alter.

Settling. Sedimentary. Paint coats

over paint work. The lustre lost. Wake a

while. Blanket folds under fingers unfurled.

Feathers, leaves, stones, square the edges. Weighted

Down. Memories sink sleep deeper unmazed.

A king's picture--as I had dreamt of him--

chest covered in blood; heart on the outside.

Don't worry. Sound carries meaning intact.

Lucy Sheerman

The anthology can be pre-ordered from the publisher, Shearsman Books, or The Book Depository in the UK and from The Book Depository or Small Press Distribution in the US.

Infinite Difference, sampler no. 2: Harriet Tarlo's "A Spoon for Stein"

A Spoon for Stein

a curve is a centre if you turn it a round over which

you don't let in substance or do using it using

it in a baby mess throw a curve out of which came

came substance steal a spoon steel it feeling

filling the curve is an ending end the handle and

mush the baby out of a stainless mess a stain

is not an object out of a spoon it curves round

around its filling is a centre throw it a spoon

is a missile hit and miss a spoon a mush onto and

of banana rice pear chicken potato apple

again spoon spoony tune let it go throw

Harriet Tarlo

The anthology can be pre-ordered from The Book Depository in the UK and from The Book Depository or Small Press Distribution in the US. And The Book Depository's offering a pre-order special of 25% off!

Infinite Difference, sampler no. 1: Anna Reckin's "Lone Thorn"

With the authors' permission, I am going to publish a small selection of works from the anthology here to promote it. I have had to select from poems that can be easily reproduced in Blogger, which eliminates over half the anthology immediately.

Lone Thorn

Flicker of folklore, mazy as a March weather-vane. Barbed wire, tangles; how quickly sex smells like decay. It's that fining to a point I have a problem with--splitting the thread, draggling the tension. Sparks and crackles, dissipated power. Durst not gather, nor gather round, nor deck with rags

Poor shall, poor may, poor Martha Ray

Anna Reckin

The anthology can be pre-ordered from The Book Depository in the UK and from The Book Depository or Small Press Distribution in the US. And The Book Depository's offering a pre-order special of 25% off!

i.m. Lucille Clifton

I am sorry to record that American poet Lucille Clifton has died at the age of 73. If you are unfamiliar with her work, you can become acquainted with it at her Academy of American poets entry here.

The continued need for pay phones

When I see that a pay phone has been removed from a place I was used to seeing it, I feel uneasy. The assumption that we've all got mobile phones and so no longer need pay phones forgets those who can't afford one, those whose mobile has run out of credit or power, those who simply don't want to own one. This intelligent article in today's New York Times focuses on a pay phone outside a Queens courthouse and so appears only to argue that there is an underclass who needs such access, but the need is greater than that, extending to the many who have lost their jobs and homes over the last couple years as well as those who can't use their mobile for one reason or another. Something to keep in mind.

Swojskie Jadlo, Raciborz, Poland, 1 February 2010

On Monday the first of February, I travelled to Raciborz to spend an evening with my friend Kasia and her husband Bartek, and Agata joined us for dinner.

Bartek obtained his black eye a couple days before, essentially from playing in the snow. Agata's hardly convincing, anyway.

Kasia and I

Out and About in Krakow, 31 January 2010

Simply click on a photo to enlarge it.

The Church of Saints Peter and Paul. The sculptures on the pillars are life-size.

Wawel Castle

St. Florian's Gate

The Basilica of St. Mary's, Krakow, 31 January 2010

Simply click on a photo to enlarge it.

This life-size sculpture is part of the altarpiece.

The famous altar of The Basilica of St. Mary's

Krakow's Market Square (Rynek Glowny), 31 January 2010

Simply click on any photo to enlarge it.

Krakow, Saturday January 30th

Simply click to enlarge any photograph.

Interior of the medieval Gothic Church of Corpus Christi

A night out with friends at Alchemia in the Kazimierz district.

Here's Grzegorz Rabczuk, sitting across the table from me.

And sitting next to me is his smart and beautiful girlfriend and my friend Agata Kozakiewicz, who organized the evening.

At the next table, some friends of Agata and Grzegorz.

The Tethers reviewed in today's TLS

"Figurative, metaphysical, rich in classical allusion, the poems in Carrie Etter's distinctive debut collection (many of which first appeared in the TLS) are highly lyrical, but unlike some of her contemporaries, she avoids the anecdotal in favour of the abstract, often adopting philosophical modes of inquiry. The 'tethers' of the title are those we forge between our minds and physical matter, particularly the body: from the heart in 'Biopsy' 'standing aside like a child in the zoo' to Fanny Brawne's engagement ring from Keats which she wore until her death: 'a promise/ unfulfilled' figured as 'the past's persisting bruise'. But the inventive image making that suffuses Etter's writing is nonetheless accompanied by a perceptive clarity of thought, threaded through a concise, fluid style capable of addressing a range of subjects while still sounding wholly individual."

That's the opening paragraph, written by poet-critic Ben Wilkinson. For the rest, see the journal; in two weeks it should be in TLS's online archives.

Infinite Difference's second and final blurb--from Rosmarie Waldrop!

Go to the Infinite Difference page to read her enthusiastic comment.