Road Trip E-Book

Marvin Thompson

• Herausgeber: Peepal Tree Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Seitenzahl: 36

Beschreibung

Road Trip is a striking first collection by a poet with illuminating and entertaining stories to tell, and an accomplished craft in using traditional and contemporary forms. As a poet of Jamaican heritage, born and raised in north London and now working as a teacher, father of mixed race children, living in south Wales, Marvin Thompson brings together all those passages of place and time in fresh and revealing ways. He explores the underbelly of race and empire in uncovering and inventing stories of his father's time in the British army. He writes with feeling of the post-industrial landscape of Wales and wonders whether this is a place he can bring up his children - though one should never assume that Thompson's poems are factually true. He uses sonnet, adapted villanelle and sestina sequences to tell utterly contemporary stories. Thompson has a refreshing, curious and honest eye that transforms and illuminates the everyday into something special and unique, but also a convincing vision of possibility.

Leseprobe

MARVIN THOMPSON

ROAD TRIP

CONTENTS

Part 1

The Many Reincarnations of Gerald Oswald Archibald Thompson

1. Break a Leg

2. Dresden

3. Dosage

4. Eat Your Heart Out

Part 2

The one in which…

1. … my children discuss jazz…

2. … I drive through Crumlin, wondering…

3. … we travel 30m above the Sirhowy River…

4. … I recall standing in the cinema’s cream-coloured foyer

Whilst Searching for Anansi with my Mixed Race Children in the Blaen Bran Community Woodland

Cwmcarn

Part 3

Rochelle

1. Reading Services

2. Monument

3. A Beech-Lined Street

4. Road Block

5. Archway

6. The Lounge

The Weight of the Night

1. After the Stag Do

2. Pendine Beach

Part 4

An Interview with Comedy Genius Olivier Welsh

1. When did you first know you wanted to be a stand-up comic?

2. Was it difficult to turn your back on all the drugs?

3. What’s the truth about how Tommy Mann was born?

4. What are your thoughts on comedians using the N-word?

5. Which British comedians do you admire?

6. But isn’t it true that you’ve been influenced artistically by a host of White comedians?

7. Tell us about the controversy surrounding your hosting of the Oscars

The Baboon Chronicles

Stephen

Sally

Suzi

To

Rose Marie ThompsonandLouis Olivier Thompson

PART 1

THE MANY REINCARNATIONS OF GERALD OSWALD ARCHIBALD THOMPSON

1. Break a Leg

On the eleventh Christmas Eveafter my dad’s death,

I lay awakereading Midnight’s Children –

while my son and daughtersnored in their bedroom

(stockings stuffed with chocolate oranges hanging

from their bunks) –

I saw,

from the corner of my eye,my dead dad’s

bearded face.

Dressed in his maroon

electrician’s overallswith a leather satchel

slung over his broad shoulders,

he gazed at mefrom my wardrobe’s

full-length mirror.

Then, he stepped

out of the glass.

In three strides

he was sitting by my cold,unused pillow.

Slowly, I sat up,my shaking

calmed as he traced his rough palm

across my cheek.

Outside,

a helicopter cutthrough the dark

as my dad began to talkabout his strange past.

Later, in that night’s dream,

I was a mare

galloping too fastdown Ally Pally:

I’ve never felt more scaredthan during that

tumbling.

Sitting on my bed,

my dad lookedoddly relaxed

as he told me,

‘My first memory

of serving kingand country

was on a sunny Mondayin Manchester, 1819,

when I charged with my sabreand slit

three throats.

That manoeuvre

was marred,’ he sighed,

‘by my horse’s

fracturedfibula.’

From his leather bag,he handed me

two newspaper clippingsas evidence

of his antiquity.

‘I’ve been re-born,’

he told me,

‘over and over

as an English soldier.’

As the night marched

into early morning, my Black dad explained

how he followed the British military’s

bloodiest orderswith a stiff mouth.

2. Dresden

That New Year’s Eve,

I sat in front of my TV

trying not to sobfor a father

who was gone when I woketo drizzle

on Christmas day.

As I tapped my feet

to Dawn Penn

(‘No, no, no…’)

on Jools Holland’s

Hootenanny,

I tried to square my dad’s reincarnations

with my Christian beliefs.

By midnight,

my mind was a hazeof spiced rum

and nostalgia:childhood oaks

in Ally Pally’s woodsformed a den,

their branches reachingfor the light.

One August,the den became

a pretend air-raid shelterwhere I munched

bourbon creamswith my bestie Dean.

We imagined blackbirdswere Munich women

praying for the Red Armyto run home

and liberate their gulags

(both Dean and I loved

The World at Warand Sunday servings

of rice and peas).

I’d piss by the birch trees

then clamber into the cockpitof our Lancaster bomber

(Dean was the gunner).

Sometimes we’d play

at being Danes, rowing longboats to Iceland

with Irish slaves.

But my memories

have contorted: the blackbirds sing the din

of Boer children crammed into the white tents

of concentration camps.

My dad said,

‘In that incarnation,

I cleaned the barrel

of my rifleevery night

while children slepthugging their mother’s

jutting ribs.’

His equanimity

seemed like honest madnessuntil he said:

‘I stopped telling God,

Enough’s enough

after my thousandth kill.

Now I’m numb

to exit woundsand limbs

left on beaches.’

Each dawn,

lice and measles spread in the piss-stinking camps:

a city of scratching