From a new anthology of contemporary Turkish women poets, first selection

This is my first selection from the new anthology, From This Bridge: Contemporary Turkish Women Poets, edited and translated by George Messo. Thanks to the publisher for bringing this book to my attention and allowing me to reprint poems here.

The New Bremen Harmonica Players

Why does the streetlamp lighting wet asphalt

Bring to mind a far off city

Gothic cities

Weighed down by winter and foreignness

And hotel rooms

Growing narrower in the middle of the night

A language that cracks like a whip

A thousand assorted things

And festive lights that estrange you

--Am I so far away from my home

If I fall will someone pick me up

Or will they first ask my identity--

Cold droplets on your brow

And the calling card getting wet in your hand

You seek a familiar word in the hoardings

Walk on keep your strangeness unsensed

Your residence papers will do you no good

You’re in the city of your birth

Sennur Sezer

Trans. George Messo

From This Bridge: Contemporary Turkish Women Poets

Conversation Paperpress, 2010

Saxtead Green Windmill, Suffolk, 25 October 2010

Click on an image to enlarge it. For some of the history of Saxtead Green Windmill, here's the Wikipedia entry.

Current Issues

I've a quirky dramatic monologue, "The Apprentice," in the new issue of The Rialto, and an altogether different poem, touching on the erotic, in the new Tears in the Fence, "Two, Post-Pastoral." Poems are also forthcoming in two new UK magazines, New Walk and Tellus, in addition to Court Green (US) and Poetry Ireland Review.

Framlingham Castle, Suffolk, 25 October 2010

Click on any image to see it enlarged. To learn about its history, read the Wikipedia entry here.

within the walls

from the outside

the view from the castle

A most appreciative review of Infinite Difference

has been written by Ian Seed and appears online in his magazine, Shadowtrain.

"Something Moved" by Ruth Larbey

I was captivated by this poem in a new Nine Arches pamphlet and thought (having gained permission from the publisher and the author) to share it here.

Something Moved

He smiled from inside the metal door.

I’ll see you at home he said, and

didn’t kiss me.

Listening carefully one day

something moved

and I felt hot with the first surge of what

it felt like to live branchlessly.

Now, whenever the day brightens

suddenly, like a tin-foil-flash,

I know the world is dark elsewhere.

Ruth Larbey

Funglish

Nine Arches, 2010

Tony Williams' The Corner of Arundel Lane and Charles Street (Salt, 2009)

I've enjoyed and appreciated this first collection by Tony Williams--so much precision and vigor! It's just been shortlisted for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize.

There are more grains of sand than there are

windows in the offices of hell.

from "Sand"

my county town, my botched Eden

from "The Matlock Elegies"

Over the river, up on the hill,

up past the circular house of the witch,

through the thin street to the top of the road,

where the track runs down, and the old house is.

first stanza of "Gawain and the Green Shade"

the dusty hope

that all large buildings squash and cherish

from "The Town of K., in the Province of M."

chandeliers in the halls of Hades

from "Pressure"

Their sparse dramas flee the rain and sicken

for lack of motile air amid the cooking smells and easy chairs,

surrounded by miles

and miles of friendless arable.

Everyone ends up on their own, prowling the concrete town

in their shapeless sweaters, rehearsing reasons for failure and for

hope.

Liberal but desperate, they pair off

with their reduced ambitions.

from "A Lowland Palsy"

The dark hides

in its own shadow, shoots its mouth, the dad

of a young family, breeds, and will not be told.

last sentence of "Reproductive Behaviour of the Dark"

Angel's-wing or fly's-head orchid; name

and name and name. But still the sense of doom.

from "Variations on a Form

by Gottfriend Benn and Babette Deutsch"

dreamscape hovering in a mind

of wet streets familiar but unwalkable.

from "The Triumph of Orthodoxy"

The water pools, deepens, and clears its dulcet throat.

from "Izaak Walton's Flight"

The green and rose casts of the glass,

the house and the singing flowers--

their songs, grandparents and their gloom

muddled among the folk you bring in, your lot,

and other, half-familiar powers--they sing to you

of age and agelessness, and dare you to repeat their song.

It will die in your throat.

from "The Flowers Singing"

Buy The Corner of Arundel Lane and Charles Street direct from Salt Publishing.

Best American Poetry blog

Today Todd Swift mentions me as one of three "unexpected figures" in British poetry in his post on the Best American Poetry blog.

Richard Caddel's Magpie Words: Selected Poems 1970-2000 (West House Books, 2002), second selection

As noted before, Blogger cannot replicate the original spacing of these poems, so for such detail please see the book itself.

What of memory, a

film not

wound on properly, cold

daylight.

first stanza of "From Wreay Churchyard"

cursd critics . rubbed the stone clean .

weeds are dressing murmur .

absent in movement

from "Rigmarole: A Struck Bell"

A speech

at odds with itself, as

likely to

soak you as save you.

from "Rigmarole: Uncertain Time"

heart

in its silence.

Light gone

from the dales

and stars

lock in.

from "Sweet Cicely"

The night is

calm, still--

the song of the moon

to the feet

from "Two Movements Which Begin

at the Head and End at the Feet"

blocked morning--I bite

my day and swing out

over sound, over

the past

***

Come

buy your stars anyway

here gripping the stone of winter

***

And glibly on common way

over stubble the scarf the

waymark unstill

over sleepingsickness

over turf of the law hear

heartsong down morning

***

the blood root aloft there

in wind light--iridescent earth

warm and lime washed

***

an apple house in song

mother or summer or clear

blue edged with blood all

softened in winter wood mind

coldsilver

wandering each day of

esoteric signs--sound

gesture into the dirt lands.

***

salt caked robed in its rime

the paint the plaster the ship

the hope ever silent

***

light in showers foundered

our sound singing in

fruitless ache. Memory

***

all sound starmantles

all the half might

all that wasn't lost falling

from "Underwriter"

Young girls laugh in the lane, a word

like that giggle doesn't exist.

Out of a lexicon of reedy days

release this pavement of colour.

***

Here's a flower

we'd all forgotten, from a pot

marked nightmare. When we're

finally tired, we sleep like children. So

breathing it reaches at last

to an argued form of blessedness, a

silvered road deep to stars.

***

Then we wash down

those strange stars, and gardens

everywhere lose their quiet.

***

By starlight on a clear night

insects sing, a music apart

on margins we thrill to.

from "Writing in the Dark"

You can purchase Richard Caddel's Magpie Words directly from publisher West House Books.

"Istanbul," a first draft of a new poem

draft taken down after a couple days, as usual

Richard Caddel's Magpie Words: Selected Poems 1970-2000 (West House Books, 2002), first selection

I'm afraid Blogger can't replicate the spacing of many of these passages, so I hope those who enjoy them will take a look at the book itself to see how the words are enhanced by their arrangement on the page.

...not the thing itself but the sense

of other and contrary things is real.

from "Against Numerology"

amber! amber and charred

sticks on that shore

whose seas have lost their clarity

for ever

final and second stanza of

"Baltic Coast Coda: Children Dancing"

Living out on contrary margins

you tell them everything, a

boundary of your resistance, a

song, like an old charm

simply a pattern on air

***

stars--

their great

mercy

stillness

***

completely to hills and water

out of a grace I counter

from "Counter"

moving (lunchtime)

out of the realm of

false, muddled argument

into that contact

with the world in which

(for which)

I live--

to point towards--

because there is no 'away'

to sling things to

and to live here

is not to escape

***

it is raining very hard

it is warm

the birds are (plainly)

loving it

whatever it is

***

dealing with a cow blink pushing up the darkened room a car moist

trying to grow the birds lifting the tarmac as the clouds in islamic

patterns hearing my anger scud across the stars the flowers the

century roosted late a friend defoliated in the cool evening in the

darkened room hearing the earth blink the grass still moist from

hate dealing with a friends cow a car anger blink in the moist

evening trying to help the flowers in the darkened room

***

to recall

those who are expert on apple trees

the trick being

to love

anything

(a bonfire, a bird's tail

in flight)

to start with

a point

to correlate with

it's important

to make mistakes

in a way, once

in a way

parsley

reaching for the measure

the song wavered recalling

evening

smell of parsley

thinned in late may after rain

turning

over and over

air shifting over ground

violin, skylarks wilder

reaching out

by the stone house

trees bent under wind

standing out

years above a river

of years (memory)

in which there is no rest

song lapping

its banks at night

when the owls call

drift down like clouds

like rock

and we to each other calling

our wary friendship

from "Fantasia in the English Choral Tradition"

in

of

shift

under

light

fleet on

blue

worked gold

shall not be

between

shall

song

field

than

quicker

than

friend was

wrong

in what land

son

part 2 of "For the Fallen:

A Reading of Y Gododdin"

You can purchase Richard Caddel's Magpie Words directly from publisher West House Books.

"Ode to Death," a draft

Taken down after a few days, per usual

i.m. Katelyn Etter, 1998-

My niece Katelyn Etter is being adopted, and those adopting her have cut off all contact with her family but written letters--a most unnatural form of communication for her as she saw her grandparents, aunts, brothers, and cousins all the time. We're that sort of nourishing family, and I wish Katie's potential parents could see that.

I miss her so much.