UEA Writers #5 - Andy Spragg w/illustration by Natalie Orme

lois scélérates


The first to be heard
is scattering coins
before the pipes and plaster
give way.


Our braves are caught in the foundry gaze,
an irradiated fat quench of things -
as foot-notes go it's all
prepped papers,
and faultline economics
and an absence of trust.


Beleaguering, the yelp does not get tied
down in specifics – the day doubles,
then stretches beyond remand.


In the past a mistake was made,
there are over a hundred
ways to clarify butter.


Running down on under-privilege


an ill judge of statues, he stands to one side and tries to measure
the space by sight alone. Where would alabaster best serve his
composing eye? In the alcove there is a leaden shade, brush it
out - a fill of scraps, an acquirement of novel depths, the sum of
his diagram. Meanwhile, a chorus is shrinking from the foreground,
a few muffled expressions, musical tongues forward to find a
mooring in amongst the clutter.

Taking in edges

The shape is an uproar of angles – there
is a spit-shine rise in its proportions
alleviating one acoustic shape after
another. Ducking monuments and
a matter – those shades in granite
are strict or serious relief.
--

Andrew Spragg is a poet, performer and critic. He has a blog at http://www.brokenloop.blogspot.com/ He is a founding member of the Norwich Poetry Choir and writes regularly for Rhythm Circus and Bonafide Magazine. In recent months he has completed the script for SHOEBOX, a performance piece staged by The Effort in 2010. He was Literature Coordinator for this year’s Norwich Fringe Festival.


He is currently working with flautist Julie Groves as performance group 'Between Soundings'.

He studied at UEA and obtained a BA in American Literature and Creative Writing. He remembers Norwich fondly.




UEA Writers #3: Todd Swift w/illustration by Natalie Orme

Etcetera is flattered to be featuring three poems by Todd Swift. Todd, for those who don't know, is a major figure in the world of UK poetry. His blog, Eyewear, is full of good things, and Todd is continually championing new writers, as well as helping bring British poetry to others around the world. So it is with great pleasure that we offer you three of his poems, alongside illustrations by the excellent Natalie Orme.

Essay Number One

What is different is the availability
Of information regarding disease
And financial options, in relation to
The globalization process, enhanced

By internet-driven technologies. Or

Does technology drive the net? This

Chicken-egg dilemma may prove
Insoluble. In practice I am quite sad.

Alienation theory would once have
Been a useful indicator of the climate.
It seems rather simplistic, though,
Post-Iraq (and so on), to claim any

Unique relationship to ennui or despair.
Nearly two-thirds of the world’s people are
Without clean drinking water, and some
Of us are born with conditions

Which mean that their skin sloughs off
Like tissue paper at the slightest touch.
In the context of new forms of super-bug
Which know no treatment or prevention,

And increasing destabilization due to
The rise of small groups sworn to destroy
The “Western” hegemonic system; not to
Mention proliferation of a number of

Equally disturbing trends relating to
Genetic and nano as well as bio tech issues;
Better to leave it unsaid. The increase
In poetic dissemination of material suggests

Not a triumph of content over discontent,
But instead the lack of demand triggering
An anxiety of production – a terrible
Struggle to produce something worthy.

"These women, dreams"

These women, dreams:
How they come to me,
Remain. Dragged
From the wreck of sea,

In chainmesh, to wake,
And a puritan challenge.
The small church (my body)
Rolls on the hill beneath

A sky purpling with fire
And will not break, but does
Reflect a faith’s quake.
The heart’s encased in fluid,

Palpates like immersion
In her, in the modern flood.
Little thieves, they steal sleep,
Desecrate the pews.

I walk down the aisle of them,
Bereft by the booklets
They’ve torn into figurines
Of paper and torment.

I wake in the glean, lament
The fuzz and brisk of you
And she and her and then
All is parchment and ancient

And the hull of the earth
Breaks on stone and dries
And the sea-swung girls
Turn like tides.


On The Sublime


Green is the widest colour other than black which extends
Like an ocean, as far as the mind’s hand; it is edible, lush,

Can be found in the iris, on scissor handles, ballpoint pens.
To leap your horse across the test, from Orion to Point X

Without felling steeples is a minor miracle, a major turn,
And suggests godlike prowess, the sinews of the angelic

Or years of practice in the heavens with atomic jodhpurs
Made of gold peeled from Midas as he slept cold dreams.

 
Todd Swift is a lecturer at Kingston University in English Literature and Creative Writing and a tutor for The Poetry School. His most recent collections are Seaway: New and Selected Poems (Salmon, 2008) and Mainstream Love Hotel (Tall-lighthouse, 2009), and a free-to-download ebook from Argotist, Experimental Sex Hospital. Todd has edited or co-edited many international anthologies, including Poetry Nation, 100 Poets Against The War, and (with Evan Jones) Modern Canadian Poets (Carcanet, 2010). Todd recently blogged on The Young British Poets for The Best American Poetry blog. His poems have appeared widely, in places such as Poetry London, Poetry Review. He has been Oxfam GB Poet-in-residence, and runs the London-based Oxfam Poetry Series. He has an MA in Creative Writing from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and is currently conducting doctoral research. He lives in London. He blogs at Eyewear.


Natalie Orme is a freelance illustrator and graphic designer. She co-edits Etcetera, and blogs here. Her work has been exhibited in Norwich and London, and she would like to collaborate with you.

UEA Writers #2: Charlotte Hoare, w/illustration by Natalie Orme

A History of Piracy* in the Park


the pirate cut his throat
and from that deep sea of 1930s romance
she arose headlong with sleepiness
with the gentle filmy wonder of a wife
Mrs. Irene Gosse
in sincere dedication to -
all this myriad adventure -
the park empty
she gathered her shoes
stretched her arms like oars
stood up from the trunk
the dry long-wrecked hull
she had rested against
and turned with all the silent reverence
of a sail

the man with the baseball cap
with the black dragon
the black sword on his t-shirt
held his penis
looked at her
a thin smile curling like pages

*A History of Piracy, Phillip Gosse


Livingstone St.


‘it is time the stone grew accustomed to blooming’ - Paul Celan, Corona

No word from the neighbours. One house
Gutted, the other audible at ear-height through the mirror.
Children scream in the morning, nothing wakes me.

At an acute distance, birds can be seen flocking -
Gathered to a solitary leader at their apex.

Love, I opened the box in my dream.
Gold rushed from me like Midas cashing his cheque
In the river: it’s over, the world has begun.

A great breath of glass at daybreak,
The sky half-shaken to wine.
The window weeping at the boundary of warmth.


I


Faith

beams down,
one bright shaft, softens
what is struck or breaking
in a slip of wine, given―

O Lord wash our tongues
with snow water

II

Faithfulness:

when you
come home with a strange rawness, ashamed
but not sorry, body quivering
from the hot darkness that took it,
and look at me blankly
as if I should blame instead
something dwindling in the sky.


The Visit


The black gate tolerates the key.
The light grows frail and wild.

Softly, like a fountain,
the only words: I don’t know, I don’t know,
                           I don’t know

You leave, the curtains part clumsily
and will not close again.

No great path: daylight, a window.

Charlotte Hoare grew up in the small village of Potterne in Wiltshire.  Not much happened there apart from words, and they didn’t happen that often.  There was a nice context of silence.  She moved to Norwich in 2007 to study Literature with Creative Writing, with the idea that she was the only person in the world that wrote poetry.   Luckily this insular world fell apart quite quickly.  She has recently qualified as an English Language teacher and will hopefully start work in Prague soon.  She plans to keep creating worlds that fall apart. She has a poem coming out in the S/S/Y/K (4) anthology soon.

Natalie Orme is a freelance illustrator, co-editor of Etcetera and recent NUCA graduate. Her work has been exhibited in various places in Norwich and London, and includes drawing, printmaking and lots of other non-digital design. She is currently working on expanding her portfolio, highlights of which you can see on her blog. Most recently she designed covers for Joshua Jones's debut collection, Thought Disorder, and King Laconic's first EP, Muddy Snow.

Three Poems - Nancy Devine w/illustration by Natalie Orme

Less of this


Cold crawls my back while I drive home
January night. No darkness like this,
except on prairie where I have
invested most of my time.
Cars wait along streets’ edges,
some on peninsulas of ice
rutted from melt and freeze,
others on their chassis’ shadows,
countless black pixels of night’s edge.

I am too stupid to wear my gloves,
maybe too interested
in touching zero,
at least resting on its curve,
that bubble where water is solid,
more solid than I am---
something I’ll try to forget, leave
on the stiff upholstery of bucket seats
after I pull into our driveway again.


Gurgling


Wine we’ve drunk still skunk-crazy,
bathwater to a crayfish collection
or something dying in a pot.
But we’re 17, been living
to live like this since middle school
when the halls smelled like cumin was roasting in every locker and
in each arm’s pit.

Now: prairie sky, an over-turned bowl of dark Red River soil;
the flap of the truck’s box down, a metal tongue
where we sip and say stories
we’ll tell 20 years from now:
Remember when or back..

I suspect nothing can ever be like this
not even this;
and because there’s no harm in being young,
we take another swig
of just about anything that’s bottled up inside.

We Do


Hip to hip, we floss;
the chaff of our meals
splatters the mirror
like the beginning of a Pollack painting.
Mascara streaks border
the country of my cheek;
around my eyes,
skin’s puffed like yeasted dough.
Age has softened my husband’s face
to some beauty before liquid,
before this night’s rest.
--

Nancy Devine teaches high school English in Grand Forks, North Dakota where she lives. She co-directs the Red River Valley Writing Project, a local site of the National Writing Project. Her poetry, short fiction and essays have appeared in online and print journals.

Natalie Orme is a freelance illustrator, co-editor of Etcetera and recent graduate. Her work has been exhibited in various places in Norwich and London, and includes drawing, printmaking and lots of other non-digital design. She is currently working on expanding her portfolio, highlights of which you can see on her blog.

The Editors

Joshua Jones published his debut collection, Thought Disorder, in 2010 with Knives Forks and Spoons Press. A bunch of people said nice things about it and no-one has publicly slated it yet. He is currently in his final year at UEA and is trying to sleep and drink less -- whether this makes him any more or less real is anyone's guess. You can stalk his life here.

Natalie Orme is a freelance illustrator, recently graduated from NUCA. Her work includes drawing, printmaking and lots of other non-digital design. She is currently working on expanding her portfolio, highlights of which you can read about on her blog.