Description
Featuring 25 poems which break the rules – starting with the no-more-than-40-lines rule. If you’ve ever considered putting a poem in for a competition or an anthology, you know what we are talking about.
These poems are long.
They take their time.
They tell a story, sometimes in a straightforward purposeful way, sometimes in a roundabout oblique way, but somewhere there is a thread of narrative woven through.
Long, narrative, but by no means traditional poems, by contemporary voices.
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A narrative invasion of your brain like thistleseed across northern borders or bees through sleep . A strong freshening wind trembling out of long forgotten valleys and across the face of anyone sitting outside their cave, crosslegged, paying attention. They are fables made flesh, a barrage of artistic light that breaks surface with an oily sheen. Have faith, reader. Enter this book. It is a garden gate swung wide open.
George Wallace
Writer in Residence 2011-12, Walt Whitman Birthplace
Reviews
Perhaps the best way to read this anthology is as an exercise in what makes longer poems effective – control of detail, variety in language, shifts in tone. Even in long poems less is more. Jennifer A. McGowan’s ‘Troy: Seven Voices’ varies tone and form for its first-person angles on the effects of war. Andrew McCallum’s Hamnavoe’ (a homage to George Mackay Brown) has the most effective opening – ‘listen/ I want to tell you something ordinary’. In ‘Lir’ Angela France succeeds with the sonnet corona, fourteen sonnets where the last line of each sonnet is reinvented as the first of the succeeding sonnet, returning finally to the opening line. Brian Johnstone’s sequence ‘Robinson’ is outstanding in every way, running to eighteen pages and never a word too long. (South 51)
The Other Side of Sleep is titled for the Long Poem category winner in Second Light’s 2014 competition. The poet is Kate Foley, whose more recent collections are narratives. The poem tells the story of “Certified Dream Walker: / Death Coach”, Tracy, who is “shrewd as a cat in a bush / full of birds” and her client Basil, who is sceptical but has, nevertheless, sought her out. “Truculence” says Foley, was “a word coined for him.” Basil is within months of dying. Tracy is to mentor him through the process. The characters are well-drawn and their interaction lively. Dream sequences are packed with imagery and walk that (familiar to edgy dreamers) line between strangeness and sense. Most of the poems in the selection are utterly engaging and well-wrought. Jill Sharp’s On the Hunt with Mr Actaeon has us shadowing Actaeon and his dog, Percy (“I can’t have Percy bothering the corgis / so I tie him up outside”) in a very modern update to the myth – and very nicely done “She’s responding to my gaze of wild desire / with such Olympian disdain and cruelty / I gasp and flee”. Bernie Howley – one of several new names to me in the selection – handles her ‘statement and response’ poem I Have No Feet expertly, keeping the two distinct voices (aloof, teacherly, for statements and galvanised, personal for responses) and styles (line break stanzas for the statements and unbroken stanzas for responses) consistent and convincing: “One really should stand poised. // But I grip the cliff wall wishing with fervour that my fingers ended in suction pads”. Brian Johnstone’s Robinson, with 6 titled poems and numbered sections within each, is a joy. p a morbid’s The Black Light Engineer has us lost with the speaker in the vast and empty darkness of (whether literally or metaphorically) space. (ArtemisPoetry)
Author Biography
The Poets, from award winning and regularly published, to first timers: Adrienne Silcock, Alwyn Marriage, Andrew McCallum, Angela France, Anne Macaulay, Bernie Howley, Brian Johnstone, Carl Griffin, Cathy Bryant, Elinor Brooks, Emma Lee, Geraldine Green, Inua Ellams, J.lewis, Jennifer A. McGowan, Jeremy Dixon, Jill SharpJudi Sutherland, Kate Foley, Math Jones, P.A. Morbid, Robin Winckel-Mellish, Sam Small, Sarah Lawson, Simon Brod.
Bibliographic Information
- Publisher Arachne Press
- Publication Date September 2014
- Orginal LanguageEnglish
- ISBN/Identifier 9781909208186
- Publication Country or regionUnited Kingdom
- FormatPaperback
- Primary Price 9.99 GBP
- Pages160
- ReadershipGeneral
- Publish StatusPublished
- Dimensions198x129 mm
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