Welcome to Bill Griffiths' NOMAD SENSE (Talus Editions, c/o English
Department, King's College, Strand, London WC2R 2LS; four pound fifty or
eight dollars). These are poems of un-rootedness, and of the rejection of
security - they carry on, in some ways, from the poems of "vegetable
passion" in _Rousseau & the Wicked_ (Invisible Books 1996), reflecting,
perhaps, Bill's shifts between the Durham coast at Seaham and his work in
the Eric Mottram Archive in the wicked city. They live under an image:
"The future belongs to those who are mobile" which Bill sources as
"communications advert in Time 22 Nov 1993 opposite a chart showing the
rise from 2 million to 18 million refugees around the world 1976-1992,
according to United Nations figures": the contrasts and oppositions run
through the book: here's a different take on "talk with the animals" from
"More Binaries":
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.V.
bats use speech to determine distance
that's fine
lions by that express pain
and we are boxes gesticulate or did we learn to talk from dolphins -
the aim inter-special communication?
or
the major function language a control
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- and here's the closing bit of "Seed-Time" - a distinctly
non-wordsworthian view of seed packets...:
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[...] in the print
OK it proclaims
you cannot know
words are robbers
the plant-mothers
are sourced lamp-oil
we encounter kicks
the giantipede abune the capsule
it lolls 'n' snicks
engenders ginger knee-tufts with vile zeal
pods open
prime see
the sexual act of butterflies
this label be accorded
asked to suggest
epitomes,
the shop-place
huckster-docks
play-to
orb-jewels
the arena of leaf
it pitters, it spits
am emulant, sustained sense
pride
fract'
neo-growth
slipoclasm
there is no noval spasm apt increase
rows of radiants
into this packet into that
watch what you buy
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RC
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