Arc E-Book

David Clarke

• Herausgeber: Nine Arches Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2015

Seitenzahl: 42

Beschreibung

David Clarke's first full collection follows on from an acclaimed and award-winning pamphlet Gaud (winner of the 2013 Michael Marks Pamphlet Prize). Follow the trail of these fleet-footed poems, and you'll be swept along from sonnets for Scott Walker to Orpheus as white van man, via 'epic fails' and sword-swallowing for beginners. It's a memorable trip you'll want to start afresh as soon as you finish reading. By turns subtle, bittersweet and wickedly sharp, this is a debut collection of poems to be savoured, which you will find yourself returning to revisit again and again.

Leseprobe

Arc

Arc

David Clarke

ISBN: 978-0-9931201-5-2

Copyright © David Clarke

Cover artwork © Eleanor Bennett

www.eleanorleonnebennett.com

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

David Clarke has asserted his right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published September 2015 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14, Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,

Great Central Way, Rugby.

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Printed in Britain by:

The Russell Press Ltd.

This book is for Malcolm

Contents

Throw

Epic Fail

The Messengers

Lyre

Dear Superman,

Epic Fail

Votive

Philosophy of Cake

Queer

Why I Moved to London

Scott Walker Sonnet

At  Kirkgate Market

A Harmony for Spring

A Provincial Recital

Permanent Emergency

Sword-Swallowing for Beginners

The Psychiatrist Addresses His Patient, a Soldier

Asklepieion of Epidauros

Permanent Emergency

Reading Habits

Lenin at the Music Hall

Elaborate Moustache

Notes Towards a Definition of the Revolution

Patrick J Hinds

October 1962

You Explain to Me Your Plans for Surviving the End of Civilization as We Know It

How It Was

A Journey

Arcadia

Song of His Sooterkin Brother

Murder Ballad

To the Harvesters of Ambergris

The End of a Film with Jimmy Stewart

Driving Back to Lincolnshire for a Funeral

Paysage marin

Ode to Achilles

In Hangzhou

Exodus

Substance

Candy

1/8

Gran Reserva

Halfzware Shag

Powder

Boats

From Here

A Family Romance

From Here

On Assembling and Disassembling a Greenhouse

See England by Train

News from Home

To The Gloucestershire Echo

Domestic Gods

Shed

than you expected

For Hanna on Her 50th Birthday

About the Ocean

House of the Artist

Author Photograph

Notes & Acknowledgements

Throw

I am the boy who threw the ball

into summer’s empty mouth

then saw there was no void at all –

as at the zenith of my lob

the sun’s hot lozenge stuck like tar

and held my missile’s arc aloft

for seconds, minutes, hours it seemed.

Dark jewel set in a golden ring,

black pupil stitched with molten seam,

agate globe in quartz’s kiss,

iron plunged in an ember pit –

little eclipse and apocalypse.

I squinted to see where it would land,

running forward with empty hands.

Epic Fail

The Messengers

Hark!, the angels are crying. We do not hear.

Even while they pace the lime-washed halls

brandishing bold lilies, as if to direct

our spiritual traffic – we are nonplussed.

We turn the pages of magazines, inspect

the sorry heel of our own dangled shoe.

Hark! and Hark! again. The rain is dashing

redbrick walls, cars illuminate

the prosey night, while ministers of all

religions bob home to a book or spouse –

and every one just out of earshot

for seraphim, Hark!-ing themselves hoarse.

Not even poets attend to that hailing,

haloed in their screen-bright fug.

Such barren shores they choose to call to,

those heralds. Such blasted shores.

Lyre

Orpheus wants two Americanos.

His mate is impatient on double yellows

in the van where they keep the harp,

rapping the roof with his knuckles.

Our godly axeman flashes a victory V,

thus drives home the point

of the goth girl’s pen

tracing cutely bulbous capitals

on her yellow pad, endlessly redrafting

a PERSONAL STATEMENT

as she chews on a hank of purple hair

that curtains the puffy eyes

of the barista. He slouches,

hung-over, to the steam machine

with a face full of shrapnel,

stomach turning at that burnt

milk smell of hot babies

screaming in 4x4s. Half-bald pigeons,

cyclists in eye-watering Lycra,

the whole ragged street tensed

beyond the café windows

waiting for Orpheus to swing

back into his van and strike

the morning’s opening chord.

Dear Superman,

I know, sometimes we have to take our chances.

But even now I feel like every shiver

in the air could be you passing. Asses

still need whipping and you’re such a giver –

giving them hell, I mean. Those freaks who slither

in every gutter spell plenty of printer’s ink.

Pictures of you turning a swollen river,

zapping the chains of captives, link by link.

Such meek-seeming schoolboy manners. You flush so pink

at the world’s praise. Looking back, I cringe to think

how I’d lie awake to watch for a chink

of light beneath our bedroom door, the mirror

showing a failed sidekick, tired of the stink

of battle on your cape. Not thinking bigger

than the two of us, I’d never linger

on news of disaster. You’d scoot to salvage NASA’s

latest screw-up. I’d long to see you dither,

shyly reach for your alter ego’s glasses.

Epic Fail

The pelicans in St James’ Park are preening

on their artificial rock, presenting

pieces of themselves for inspection –

their wings like clattering plates of armour.

They rattle sabre bills against their chests,

sprinkle white and grey confetti of feathers

onto the island’s setting of luminous algae.