Truffle Hound E-Book

Luke Kennard

• Herausgeber: Verve Poetry Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2019

Seitenzahl: 44

Beschreibung

LUKE KENNARD's first pamphlet in six years – Truffle Hound – kicked off our experimental pamphlet series with a bang in 2018. More resolutely prose than any of his previous books of poetry (although not his novel) here Luke allows his childhood (imagined or otherwise) to flood into the foreground, while his present (factual or fake news) distorts and fractures as if his life were being directed by David Lynch and Terry Gilliam and neither could agree whether horror or comedy should dominate. Dogs, cigarettes, children and pills shouldn't really be permitted to mix should they? Here they are a heady mixture indeed! With that nonchalant way that Luke has of seeming to toss words as if they were his hair, Truffle Hound piles neuroses on top of neuroses (not necessarily Luke's) as it tackles subjects as wildly varying and yet somehow connected as over the counter pain-killers, the domestic struggles of humans on other planets, scathing criticism (both literary and personal), transistor radios and shops – an inordinate amount of shops. (The shops are where you can buy the pills and cigarettes and food for the dogs.) We found out today that in some colleges across the land, a certain kind of poetic output is sometimes described as being Kennardian. We don't know if Truffle Hound is Kennardian or not. (Perhaps it is Neo-Kennardian?) But we are hoping that one day soon, something, somewhere, of very little interest if needs be, will be referred to as Vervian. We are hoping this a lot. Luke Kennard is a poet and novelist. His books have been shortlisted for the Forward Prize, the Desmond Elliott Prize and the International Dylan Thomas Prize. He lectures in the School of English at the University of Birmingham.

Leseprobe

PUBLISHED BY VERVE POETRY PRESS

Birmingham, West Midlands, UK

www.vervepoetrypress.com

[email protected]

All rights reserved

© 2018 Luke Kennard

The right of Luke Kennard to be identified as author of this work has been asserted in accordance with section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

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.

FIRST PUBLISHED SEP 2018

REPRINTED MAY 2019

Printed in Birmingham by Positive Print

ISBN: 978-1-912565-07-8

ePub ISBN: 978-1-912565-73-3

CONTENTS

Ibuprofen Song

A.I.

Some People Are Special But Then They Immediately Ruin It

Ghost Story

Filter

“‘Nova Satus’: Nova Satus (Nova Satus)”

Benediction

Parallel

Migraine

Review

Children’s Party Meal

The Plagiarism Officer

If You Were Truly Awake It Would Be Unbearable

Accountability

Italicise This

Acknowledgments

Ibruprofen Song

You can always find someone far more intelligent and someone way stupider than you so whether you’re feeling really bad about yourself or, contrariwise, you’re worried you might be getting conceited, it’s very easy to recalibrate - you only have to wander around for a bit and talk to some people. It works with anything: virtuous/evil; beautiful/ugly; pedantic/permissive; disillusioned/ idealistic.

Take me: I was writing a song about 39p ibuprofen - the kind you can get from a newsagents behind the counter. The song was set in a newsagent, a badly lit one and it was partly about how it’s weird newsagents still exist, and partly about how cheap ibuprofen is, like maybe one of the cheapest substances on earth and they should build pink and white houses with it.

But then I started thinking about a music critic and the music critic wrote Most people write songs about serious and momentous subject matters but Kennard can make poetry out of a packet of off-brand ibuprofen. And I felt 1. that wasn’t fair on most people and 2. it wasn’t even true, really, and I felt so annoyed I wanted to scream. I thought momentarily of cramming so many ibuprofen into my mouth - there are always plenty of boxes in my house, only two pills missing, hungover newsagent mornings - and crunching through their sugar shells, washing it down with a cold cup of steeped, leftover coffee so that if it didn’t kill me it would likely do permanent damage to my stomach; you can always find someone with a more permanently damaged stomach than you and, conversely, someone who has taken great care over their diet.

You can find someone who will say I love you, because you are a rucksack, and someone who will say I love you because you are a necklace made of unshelled nuts, a string threaded with brazil nuts, hazelnuts, almonds and walnuts you have drilled a hole in. The nuts inside the shells are, of course, desiccated, mummified, inedible. You cannot blow a nut like an egg, that is absolutely certain, so the only alternative, if you are to make a necklace of nuts, is to leave the nut inside.

But me, I love you because you are a necklace of pink ibuprofen tablets, the technical part of a sunset, statement heels, ironic lip-gloss, P45 pink, a tiny hole drilled in the middle with a very fine drill and then varnished and then a tinier hole drilled through the set varnish before they are threaded and attached to a clasp from an online jewellery supplier. We will always help one another fasten our ibuprofen necklaces, singing my ibuprofen song like mosquitoes before they mate, driven by frequency alone.

You can always find a month which is July and a month which is March. You can always find someone who seeks to find more significance in the month than you and someone who dismisses not just that, but other things as well, someone who doesn’t believe in any of the things. And we can call them embattled ghosts frying in butter during a power cut, frying slowly, in butter, during a power cut, during the best power cut, during the great power cut between you and me and everything we wanted. You can always find someone who will say, there, just there, and stop your giant mosquito heart like a door.

AI

It is very easy to create an AI indistinguishable from a human being because all any of us really cares about is how we come across. The algorithm required to replicate this is embarrassingly simple, more Magic 8 Ball than Deep Blue. Me, for example: all I ever do is agree with people and hope that they’ll leave me alone. An AI version of me would be a nodding dog on the parcel shelf of a 1980s hatchback. You are better than me, but the AI version of you would just be the same nodding dog with a small tape recorder attached playing a loop of Really? Is that really what happened? Is that really what you think? And people would say, they are made for each other because they are so different. Nodding Dog 1 is sweet but subservient, while Nodding Dog 2 doesn’t suffer fools gladly and somehow it works because opposites attract. Do you, nodding dog, take this other nodding dog, forsaking all others...