Dear All,
I recently bought and am now reading 'Other: British and Irish Poetry
since 1970', generally assumed to be the nearest thing to a touchstone for
Contemporary-Experimental poetry in these fair isles. What are everyone's
opinions on 'Other' - love it, loathe it? So far I've found it extremely
mixed.
Also, responding to whoever suggested it, here's four verses from a long
poem I've been sitting on for far too long (there are 20 verses in total,
so far). It's based (very) loosely on the Biblical Book.
Best wishes,
Tom x
EXODUS
XV. I / me / this body, here, yes, now –
look touch feel my skin, taut
like across a drum, or loose from
age – when I touch things they
move, when I screw the bed-
springs shriek, look at all me
three dimensions, when I come
running insects hide, worms
slither into holes and the air flees
from where I stand my ground:
please, God, please don’t shoot.
XVI. His rod like the pen held between
finger and thumb, creation’s tool,
seeking and finding dry land
from the sea’s cold anonymity:
these elemental moans through which
our words, our language, grow and swell
and pick their way among the stones
of stark incomprehension, leaning –
or beginning to – towards an
understanding, which like the well
both gives and takes of us.
XVII. And like the well there
are secrets held in
darkness beneath
the still depth of water
from which we draw
our living and our life,
remembering
its constant touch,
the illusion of warmth:
and pressing on therefore
to newer things, as is our end.
XVIII. Israel crosses the waterway,
into embryonic ecstasy,
each alone with the great
selfish reality that gives
sex its thrill, its urgency:
it would be simpler to be
a single flower beneath a tree,
roots bound in the ground’s soft
embrace – beneath, the dead
have dug in for good, clay
slips, coffins come tumbling.
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