Matt Bryden's 'Brest Litovsk' from Boxing the Compass (Templar, 2013)

Brest Litovsk

Drop a shroud over a country –

food aid, shelter, nightfall,

enough to forget about it, let

it get by.

You can walk right up to it,

whip off the covers –

an angle-poise lamp under sack,

a starscape.

Silent, contoured, like camouflage

netting pulled over a tank –

there are handholds,

footfalls for the blind.

You like to imagine the conundrum –

an ant crossing a table-top comes upon

a sugar cube 1cm by 1cm by 1cm:

how far is added to its journey? –

that a shirt hung from the nozzle

of a tank might obscure it,

that you could walk across

a country covered in such a fashion –

tottering over plate, doll, bone

and crush them without noticing –

a sprawling landfill, a Milky

Way teeming with animals,

a bee in the hand.

Matt Bryden's first collection, Boxing the Compass, is available directly from the publisher for £8.99, postage free worldwide. 

"In Passing" by Matt Bryden

as read by yours truly on Poetry Radio; it aired a year and a half ago, but I only now came across it.

Great Works' final issue

Peter Philpott's online magazine, Great Works, concludes publication with its current issue, number 16. I'm sorry to see it end, but its continued existence online will provide good reading for some time to come (as I always have catching up to do). Editor Peter Philpott was one of the first people in the UK to show an interest in my work in a poetics of consciousness and to ask to publish some of it, and I've always been grateful for that as well as for his encouragement of many another emerging poet.

So peruse issue 16, which includes interesting new work by Matt Bryden and Sophie Mayer, among numerous others.

Claire Crowther's new pamphlet, Mollicle--first selection

Here's my first selection from Claire's new pamphlet, Mollicle, published by Nine Arches Press. Tomorrow she'll be launching it in London alongside Matt Bryden with his prizewinning pamphlet, Night Porter (Templar, 2010), and me with my US chapbook, Divinations (Punch Press, 2010), now sold out but for the four copies I'm bringing to the event. For details of the reading, please see the Readings & Events page.

Self Portrait as Windscreen

Do you think I'm clear on every issue

just because I'm glass?

Have you heard yourself calling 'Claire,

Claire, Claire, Claire' when you're confused?

A name is lulling

when you aren't clear on every issue.

So your favourite phrase 'Let's be clear

on this one thing'

is the public face of 'Claire, Claire.'

I see you everywhere, using my nature,

hardened from soft,

imagining you're clear. Fired, made

to soften, harden again. We're laminated.

The crack that comes

won't shatter us or your calling.

Claire Crowther

Mollicle (Nine Arches, 2010)

Matt Bryden's Night Porter, first selection

Winner in the 2010 Templar Poetry Pamphlet Competition, Night Porter is the first collection by one of my dearest friends, Matt Bryden. Here's the blurb for the pamphlet (which, I admit, I wrote): "Stemming from the poet's experience working in a Yorkshire hotel, Night Porter portrays life in the small hours among guests and staff, a life that steadily becomes more about witnessing the lives of others than the speaker's own. With each new glimpse into the interrelationships at the hotel, the mood deepens with new emotional tensions and an overriding sense of alienation. In this remarkable debut, Matt Bryden creates a compellingly layered portrait of ordinary lives." To purchase the pamphlet, please visit its page on Templar Poetry.

Here's the first poem I'd like to share:

Practicalities

I shake the box in my lap:

gold and black as, es, is, os, us

and consonants, in sections.

Over time, the ss have cross-pollinated the ws,

the 1s mixed into the Is, 0s interbred with the os,

the Cs, or rather the splintered Os,

jaggedly pressed into the felt of the Arrivals board.

In the hotel supplies catalogue,

alongside lecterns and whiteboards,

shower caps and reception bells,

a small box of numbers and letters: £85.

‘Not at those prices,’ says Anne.

Matt Bryden

Night Porter

Templar, 2010

Congratulations Matt Bryden, winner in this year's Templar pamphlet competition

Congratulations to one of my dearest friends, Matt Bryden, on winning this year's Templar Poetry Pamphlet and Collection Prize. His pamphlet, Night Porter, will be published this autumn, and his first book some time next year. There's a special pleasure when I work with someone closely on their poetry and it comes to fruition; Matt's been working on the poems in this pamphlet for over four years and I can't imagine how many times they've been by me. I'm so excited and proud. Congratulations, Matt. Hard earned, well deserved.

Poetry Radio

Here is a podcast of my reading of Matt Bryden's poem, "In Passing," for WGLT's programme Poetry Radio. Matt Bryden's first book manuscript, Boxing the Compass, has been shortlisted for Salt Publishing's Crashaw Prize.

Matt Bryden's "Miso"

My reading of Matt Bryden's poem "Miso" has now aired on WGLT Poetry Radio and can be heard in this podcast.

Poetry Radio on WGLT

On this visit to the States (I've just a few days left), I completed a new recording for Poetry Radio, a program of NPR affiliate WGLT 89.1. I read eight or nine poems from The Tethers as well as two poems each by Claire Crowther and Matt Bryden. As I'm reading at Illinois Wesleyan University on Tuesday, WGLT decided to air today a recording of my reading one of my own poems, "Late Winter, Early Year," on at both 10 a.m. and 10 p.m. and also available to listen to as a podcast here, for at least a month. There are some fine poems to be heard; I recommend Cecil Giscombe in particular--I've admired his work for years.

I'd like to thank Bruce Bergethon, General Manager at WGLT and founder of Poetry Radio, for his steady support over the years--he's been recording me regularly since 1992, and that, and the presence that gave my poems in my hometown and surrounds, have meant so much to me.

Compensations

On Halloween I received my settlement cheque--connections, anyone?--and since then I've been buying things to improve my day to day life, including a new, powerful eco-radiator for my used-to-be-cold flat, new glasses, membership in the university teachers' union (which I'd been wanting since I began at Bath Spa), a microwave, Circulon 2 saucepans to complete my cookware collection (actually my first settlement purchase--I bet you didn't think I was that domestic), etc., as well as taking out to dinner those who stood by me through the injury itself--Matt (and so I need to treat Claire soon, too)--as well as friends who supported me through the suit &c., such as Alan Summers and Karen Hoy.

I'd still rather have my left jaw normal, but in lieu of that, I'm enjoying a sense of the improved ease and quality of my everyday life. That eco-radiator has, at long last, made it comfortable to be in my bakehouse flat in cold weather, and that truly makes each day better. I also decided for my trip to Berlin this weekend for the Poetry Hearings Festival to forego Easyjet for an airline that would neither try to sell to me throughout the flight nor nickel-and-dime me for such things as hold luggage, etc.

Small pleasures.