Showing posts with label Kelvin Corcoran. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Kelvin Corcoran. Show all posts

Sunday, 2 December 2012

Kelvin Corcoran's Lyric Lyric (Reality Street, 1993)

This book is equally divided into two sections, each titled Lyric. Here some favourite passages from the first section:


...the human meaning
out of the dark dream
breathing immediate words.


*

...a door into the river night
the site of deep assent.

*

How can we ever, that carpet,
I shall pin the dumb song moment
familiar shapes inscribe
man, woman, driving home
return me word by word.


And from the second section: 


It's hard enough under this sky
and in all these other places,
lights fixed and moving
an uncertain grid of fields
without a dream, you knew just what,
come out of that open air.

*

That morning cars came out of the sun,
I couldn't measure the speeds,
careering subjects released from rhetoric
smacked up against the white wall.
The birds flip from branch to branch,
their funny watery cries all around
splash and blend in the garden heat.

*

...inside,
the shape of a country moves through us.

*

In blue September between blue blinds
I write and drink, thinking of money,
thinking inside the physical forms of words
for the pleasures of reification.

*

The bright ones learn Japanese and Arabic
running up the walls of banks, shops and palaces,
the rhythm of neglect, step out of it,
through the door, into the house, talking.



You can buy Lyric Lyric from the publisher for a mere £5.

 

Tuesday, 25 September 2012

100,000 Poets for Change in Bath on Saturday, 29 September

Here is the final schedule for Bath's day of readings as part of the international 100,000 Poets for Change, this Saturday, 29 September at the Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute on Queen Square, with all money raised going to support Julian House, Bath's charity for the homeless. We'll be in the large Elwin room. Here's the schedule:

2:30-3 p.m. Bath Poetry Cafe, with readings from David Cohen, Teresa Davey, Rose Flint, Rosie Jackson, Jill Sharp and Sue Sims

3:10-3:40 p.m. A Pamphlet Party, with poets reading from their pamphlets: Seren Adams (Small History, Shearsman), David Hale (The Last Walking Stick Factory, Happenstance), Dikra Ridha (There Are No Americans in Baghdad's Bird Market, Tall Lighthouse), and Robert Walton (Waiting for the Wave, Pighog)

3:50-4:20 p.m. Bath Spa University MA Poets Past and Present: Graham Allison, Daisy Behagg, Matthew Haw, Caroline Heaton, Alan Summers, Natasha Underwood, John Wheway and Andy Wright 

4:30-5 p.m. Swindon Artswords Presents, with readings from William Bedford, Emily Harrison, Cristina Newton, Bethany Pope and Hilda Sheehan

5:10-5:40 p.m. Bath Spa University Undergraduates

Dinner break

7:30-8:05 p.m. David Briggs and Kelvin Corcoran

8:20-8:55 p.m. Claire Crowther and Tim Liardet 



There will be drinks and books tables throughout the event (manned by Bath Spa student volunteers), and donations will be requested for Julian House. There is no entry fee as such. I am most grateful to Bath Spa University for its support--paying for the room, readers' travel expenses, etc.--so that all donations can go directly to Julian House.

Wednesday, 5 September 2012

100,000 Poets for Change day of readings in Bath


As part of the international 100,000 Poets for Change, I've organized a day of readings on Saturday, 29 September at Bath Royal Literary and Scientific Institute on Queen Square, with all money raised going to support Julian House, Bath's charity for the homeless. We'll be in the large Elwin room. Here's the schedule:

2:30-3 p.m. Bath Poetry Cafe, with readings from David Cohen, Teresa Davey, Rose Flint, Rosie Jackson, Jill Sharp and Sue Sims

3:10-3:40 p.m. A Pamphlet Party, with poets reading from their pamphlets: Seren Adams (Small History, Shearsman), David Hale (The Last Walking Stick Factory, Happenstance), Dikra Ridha (There Are No Americans in Baghdad's Bird Market, Tall Lighthouse), and Robert Walton (Waiting for the Wave, Pighog)

3:50-4:20 p.m. Bath Spa University MA Poets Past and Present: Graham Allison, Laura Burns, Matthew Haw, Caroline Heaton, Alan Summers, Natasha Underwood, Andy Wright and several others

4:30-5 p.m. Swindon Artswords Presents, with readings from William Bedford, Emily Harrison, Cristina Newton, Bethany Pope and Hilda Sheehan

5:10-5:40 p.m. Bath Spa University Undergraduates, with readers to be confirmed

Dinner break

7:30-8:15 p.m. Emerging Poets, with readings from David Briggs, Rory Waterman and possibly one other poet to be confirmed

8:30-9:15 p.m. Kelvin Corcoran, Claire Crowther and Tim Liardet 


There will be drinks and books tables throughout the event (manned by Bath Spa student volunteers), and donations will be requested for Julian House. There is no entry fee as such. I am most grateful to Bath Spa University for its support--paying for the room, readers' travel expenses, etc.--so that all donations can go directly to Julian House.

Friday, 6 January 2012

Kelvin Corcoran's Words Through a Hole Where Once There Was a Chimpanzee's Face (Longbarrow Press, 2011)


Kelvin Corcoran's pamphlet explores in poetry and prose his harrowing experience of a stroke and his recovery, divided between the sections "Going Down" and "Coming Back." His reading of the entire piece at the Hay Poetry Jamboree was a delight, taking us through pain, bewilderment, fear, love, laughter and literature. Here are some favourite passages:





Massing for blood honey sweet
the nations of the dead and you
sifting through my hands--a shadow.

end of "Book II"


These trees look designed,
them birds is on fire
in loops and swirls the sky ablaze.

from "He stared at death. Death stared straight back."


The chapter of the raising of the body,
of making the eyes to see, the ears to hear,
setting forth the head, of giving it its powers
coming forth from yesterday, coming forth by day.

end of "1.2"

...the mind making its own patterns
along a low horizon of muted light.

*

...to walk away from the buried life,
the trees designed and the light contrived.

from "1.3"


And if I was looking for that cold cold answer,
in the last brilliant compartment of the sun,
the church bell would ring out its contours on the air
compressing the water to picture a polar sky.

Rolling out the sound condenses over ice,
sea smoke trails the boat, twists of light letter the air,
a language holding low around the edges of the world,
empty and endless for the mind to lodge at zero.

end of "2.2"


Today Nansen you will study the sea running flush under the transparent shelves of vision.

*

You--pathfinder genius, limbs and head full of souls, lead us out on the thin skin of the unthought world, step by step to the oracles of snow; beat it out, beat it out and we'll follow.

*

Ptarmigan, snipe, seal--picture me dark night food; reindeer trot faster faster, sing it magical


from "2.3 Another Eight Things About the Arctic"


...a cantata
on the other side, deep in dark wood rising.

*

...the horizontal wind rolls up the European plain,
smacks the spire from the past into the future
to release a little aria dancing over Saxony.

from "3.1"


...the one word [love] to bring to that moment,
the only thing to hold onto at the dark door.

*

The air's a chamber of bird song and rain....

from "3.3"


Yesterday a girl atop a white bull
went swimming past, Europa, the fool.
What sort of prospect is that?
Oh his sweet breath, his low moan.

the end of "3.4"


Telemetry, telekinesis, Telemachus, holy shit.
Tell me another one, I thought him dead but he's back;
I thought him white bones cast on black sand,
his grin from the photo I inherit--and a world of trouble.

*

He smells of smoke, drops into deep sea silence,
controls his face at sudden sounds, eyes wide.
What does it take to hollow out a man?
Black bones on white sand, his voyage, my voyage.

the first and last stanzas of "4.1"


...when he sailed off,
I poured my heart into a hole in the air.

Every night I talked and talked to an absence....

from "4.3"


...the sea won't stop moving, the land now and then;
but here I am, I hold my nerve, I make it happen.

from "4.4"



You can pick up the pamphlet from publisher Longbarrow Press for a mere five pounds; add the CD of the poet's reading of the work and it's just £6.50.

Thursday, 30 September 2010

A truly pluralist UK event

When one of last year's Eliot Prize judges commented on the breadth of the shortlist, when another poet commented on the impressive range of the Ted Hughes Award shortlist, I laughed, as the breadth of each seemed about the width of my thumbnail.

Now comes an outstanding "colloquy of poets" at the University of Hull this November, where Philip Gross and Tony Lopez have each invited four favourite poets to read with them in a wonderful array of readers and poetries: John Burnside, Kelvin Corcoran, Peter Manson, Daljit Nagra, Denise Riley, Zoe Skoulding, Carol Watts, and Susan Wicks. Unfortunately, the event is the same weekend as the National Association for Writers in Education annual conference, so I'll miss it, but if you'd like to attend (and report back?), you can find further details here--just scroll down to 13-14 November.

Monday, 15 June 2009

Bath Launch of The Tethers, 11 June 2009

I'm unsure whether this picture really conveys how packed it was, perhaps because some people had left for a cigarette, etc. In the foreground, Lee Harwood, Kelvin Corcoran, and I.


At the book table, dutiful MA poet James Evans.
Facing away from him is former MA poet Dikra Ridha.


Lee Harwood