
• Christopher Major is a regular contributor to IS&T and this latest piece will have strong resonances for anyone traveling around the UK during the summer holiday period.
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Saturday, May 31
by
Charles Christian
on Sat 31 May 2008 09:36 AM BST
![]() • Christopher Major is a regular contributor to IS&T and this latest piece will have strong resonances for anyone traveling around the UK during the summer holiday period. Friday, May 30
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 30 May 2008 05:54 PM BST
West End
People huddle in doorways, sharing cigarettes and stories, hugging themselves against the frost, the city and the evening light. Alone as they find that they share the same favourites. Alone as they struggle to find the right laugh to wear. A few hours later, with a lump in his throat, while rattling home at the back of a night-smothered train; Remembering her in the glare of the window, he wondered if she had listened to a word he said. • Simon Freedman lives in the UK, and when he's not scribbling, he's usually strumming. His poetry has been published in The Recusant and The Beat. Visit his website at www.myspace.com/simonfreedman Thursday, May 29
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 29 May 2008 06:53 PM BST
Man With Bread
The face of labour on the street Some days, bread warm from the oven makes it easier to forget I’ve nothing else to eat. But not today. Not after being told to wait while the baker’s wife helped those women in expensive coats who were in a hurry to choose pastries for their tea, as if making a fuss is the same as working hard. I could feel them looking down their noses at my boots and overalls, noticing how dirty they were, which is true this close to the weekend. Probably reckoned I smell bad, too. I could tell from their faces they were asking themselves how someone like me has the brass neck to use the same bakery they do and wondering if they should haggle a discount or threaten to take their custom somewhere else. When I see myself the way people like them see me, grubby from work and needing the shave I can’t have before I go on shift because there’s no hot water till the fire’s alight and I leave home too early for that, it rubs in how hard it is for people who don’t have money to keep their self-respect. It’s every day and all of life This’ll sound ridiculous, it does to me really, but what hurt most wasn’t queue-jumpers making me wait – I know how hard the baker and his missus work, how they need their better-off customers more than the likes of me – it was seeing those women stare at the safety pin I use when it’s cold to keep my jacket closed where there isn’t a button. People like that, they can’t imagine not having the proper clothes for every kind of weather. How did I deal with it? The best way I could. I had enough money for a bread roll, so I jingled the coins as if I had a pocketful while they stood pointing like greedy kids at what they’d decided to buy and I looked straight through them. Not much else I could do, was there? No point mouthing off, it would’ve ended up turning nasty. Anyway, my break’s only half an hour and working outside all day, I needed a piss more than a row, so I let it go. You have to, don’t you? You just have to. People become what they become • Ken Head's poetry weblog is at www.listeningforlight.blogspot.com and he'll appreciate your dropping in to browse and maybe leave a comment if you're passing. Wednesday, May 28
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 28 May 2008 05:15 PM BST
We don't often cover news stories but in the light of my recent departure from a creative writing course, I thought these comments made by the novelist, screenwriter and playwright Hanif Kureishi during an interview at the Hay (Book) Festival, which runs until Sunday...
Kureishi, a research associate on the creative writing course at Kingston University, said: "One of the things you notice is that when you switch on the television and a student has gone mad with a machine gun on a campus in America, it's always a writing student. The writing courses, particularly when they have the word 'creative' in them, are the new mental hospitals. But the people are very nice. "When I teach them, they are always better at the end – and more unhappy." He added that creative writing courses set up false expectations that a literary career would inevitably follow. "The fantasy is that all the students will become successful writers - and no one will disabuse them of that. When you use the word creative and the word course there is something deceptive about it." "I always give people the same mark – 71% – and then you write these reports. I always say they were well-behaved, well-dressed ... But how can you mark creative writing?" Tuesday, May 27
by
Charles Christian
on Tue 27 May 2008 12:13 PM BST
red hair of my wife
flickering in the hot wind, glowing bed of fire ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ crinkly gray strands in the black brush of bristles approaching heir time • Daniel Wilcox, a former activist, teacher, and wanderer, is leaving a vapor trail of poetic debris, see http://seaquaker.com/poetry Monday, May 26
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 26 May 2008 09:49 AM BST
a quiet devastation
Disassociated from life, for a while. The day to day hum of home has been stilled, its equilibrium tilted. A silent deconstruction of routine, just for today, as we patiently wait for time to move us along, from this closeted pause. • Clare Phillips-Barton is a mother of two, living and writing in the Northamptonshire countryside. Sunday, May 25
by
Charles Christian
on Sun 25 May 2008 11:24 PM BST
by
Charles Christian
on Sun 25 May 2008 11:19 PM BST
I'm sad to report that I've become the oldest art school drop out on the planet ...probably. Actually I was doing a creative writing MA at an art school and I decided to sling my hook because I felt the classes were at best a distraction from the work I want to do – I still have a day job, so it's not as if I need to attend courses to occupy my time.
However once I mentioned my thinking, I heard similar comments from other people (including a couple of IS&T contributors) to the effect that they were despairing of their creative writing courses, feeling 'short-changed' in terms of what they were getting back in return for their fees etc etc. So has the creative writing bubble burst? Are there too many schools, colleges and universities running creative writing courses with not enough resources to go around. Three common complaints are: • not enough tutorials • not enough workshopping and/or not enough willing participants for workshopping • and a depressing feeling of lack of resources – the one I've just left felt so underfunded as to be threadbare. One final item of home news – our internet server has been down all day but we hope to resume normal postings from Monday. Friday, May 23
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 23 May 2008 02:25 PM BST
ACCEPTANCE
She holds a rose to her throat, the leaves tickle her thoughts, her face like a painter's palette, her legs like easels. She was once the beauty stepping across the red carpet, gracing coffee houses: in an age of grace. Now wrinkle-eyed, she sits and sews and darns her grandson's socks: sitting in a wicker chair. She sees her once dark and lustrous hair, and hears sweet music. Maybe, it is just the trees the summer trees and roses. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ EMAILS FROM U.S.A. If you thought I wanted to cling around your neck? (that was in another dimension). A fine catch? No, with your hands slippery like mackerel, your feet flatter than dabs. And what was in-between? Eels and mussels and little rock pools for catching shrimps. Now silence is your word. The sham? No message on-line again today? So where are the waves I once shivered down your spine? Filleted perhaps? • Maureen Wheldon is currently working on her sixth chapbook, which will be published by Martin Holroyd's Poetry Monthly Press. Thursday, May 22
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 22 May 2008 03:56 PM BST
PUTTING YOU BACK TOGETHER FOR MY SAKE
I want to make you whole again so where are the parts. Haven't the Chinese the pieces? Or was that the open sea? Your lips are intact sure but your tenderness is feeling up slabs of meat at the Stop and Shop butcher counter. And do you really want to be intact anyhow? You've given your heart to the dead, the starving, other people's dogs and babies. That's your throat down there I'm sure of it but the words it broadcasts are from books and newspapers. I still have the glue with me. And I can ace a jigsaw puzzle any time. But there's bits of you scrambling up trees in New Hampshire forests. There's more on your fancy European tour. What if I almost have one section locked into place but some tanager's stole the spirit? Sure I recognize the skull but the thoughts are Michelangelo or squirrels. My blueprints begin and end with me. You've got those pretty sea shell ears but the hearing's off to the races, to Arabia. And pert nose can't smell the scent of me when the wind's blowing from yesterday. But I'm a resourceful carpenter. What I can't find, I'll just use shadow. You can't help casting one. And I can't help being one. ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ TAXI DRIVER'S BURDENS There's a woman in a mirror, pecking at her beauty with tweezers, or arguing with gravity. And an older man conning over his bald spot to gift-wrap his face, and a teenager with raw heart beating in his hands, and three girls tottering between high hair and lipstick. Here's someone so hollow she almost floats in the back seat, a man who mutters "I am not dead, I sleep," then dies. Whoever they are, he drives them all past everyone they are not, by all the places they are not going to. It.'s the one monologue that different ones contribute to, the servant speech of one night shift master. One day, a woman gives birth in his rear view. The baby cries like it already knows no mother's driving this baby. • John Grey lives in Providence, Rhode Isand, and has been published recently in Agni, Worcester Review, South Carolina Review and The Pedestal, with work upcoming in Poetry East and Cape Rock. Wednesday, May 21
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 21 May 2008 10:07 AM BST
White Feathers
White feathers drift gently in a downward spiral, The wheel of life spins out of control, Years push us forwards, As the earth coughs and splutters, Pain and fear, Before the candle burns down, Will angels walk among us once more? • Elaine Rigby is from Liverpool and says the inspiration for the poem was a white feather that mysteriously appeared on her window-sill Sunday, May 18
by
Charles Christian
on Sun 18 May 2008 07:35 PM BST
This Is the Story of My Story
It’s 1936. And Teddy Rosen has a date with some girl named Jane Stein who spends her summers in Michiana, Michigan, which owes its rather picaresque name to the fact that it lies on the border of Michigan and Indiana. Teddy summers in Michigan City, Michigan, which isn’t exactly a hop, skip and a jump from Michiana. Teddy has decided he wants to break his date with Jane. Only Teddy doesn’t have the thirty-five cents to make the long-distance call and let her know he isn’t going to show. One of Teddy’s friends in Michigan City hears he’s planning to blow this girl off without so much as a phone call. Mostly because he’s flat broke. Also because he’s just not that into her. Jane is all of 13. Teddy and his friend, Lenny, are both 16. “Jesus, that’s terrible,” Lenny thinks. Like Teddy, Lenny also summers in Michigan City. Lenny doesn’t have much to do on that lazy afternoon in Michigan City. Also like Teddy, he doesn’t have the thirty-five cents required to call up this girl and move in on his pal. But he’s thinking, Jane Stein, huh, what the heck? So he rounds up a few of his friends who are in the mood for an adventure. Including one guy who owns a Model A Ford Roadster—which is a helluva lot more impressive than thirty-five cents in your pocket—and they take a ride out to Michiana. Sans Teddy Rosen. Cut to: “Hey, Jane?” Pause. “Jane Stein?” Lenny calls out, as the Model A pulls up in front of her parents’ summer home in Michiana. She comes out the front door and into the yard to see who’s calling her. Yeah, she’s cute. Worth the trip. “Yeah, who is it?” the 13 year-old future Miss Hillel of the University of Illinois asks the car full of 16 year-old boys. “We’re friends of Teddy Rosen’s,” Lenny explains. Adding, “He’s not coming tonight. But you want to go to a beach party with us instead?” “Okay,” Jane replies. Down for whatever. “Hold on, let me get my cap and my suit.” “No problem,” the driver of the car tells her, “We’ll wait.” Jane goes inside and comes back out a few minutes later, just like she promised she would. That’s the story of my grandparents’ first date. Cut to: 2008. They’ve been married 67 years. There’s a bit more to the story. But it doesn’t get any better. Sorry, Teddy. • Greg Oguss teaches media studies at USC. He's been published in Babble and Beat, Off Beat Pulp, Gloom Cupboard and on Green Panda Press, among other places. Friday, May 16
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 16 May 2008 05:49 AM BST
Eat a Peach
Tom and Shirley were in love and in debt. He was an aspiring actor and she, a moon-eyed wannabe ballerina. They lived in a small apartment on Bleecker. He loved the way he could make her laugh or cry. They threw parties. They had plenty of friends. Sometimes at these parties, he wore a cape and mask from an off-off Broadway play he presently co-starred in, a surreal version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer's Night Dream. She served guests exotic parfaits with French names. She bought embroidered doilies from the discount community store in Noho. He did recreational drugs but never before a rehearsal. She was insanely jealous of women with slim hips and feet like feathers. She wanted to know who among the faces in the street could perform a perfect pirouette and not complain of heel spurs. At night, after they made love, their bellies hummed like two hungry cats. When will we ever strike it rich, she said, sitting up, her arms wrapped around her girlish knees. He lit a joint and said, someday, someday, we'll look back on ourselves and think, love was the greatest booty we hid under our bed. Too many people, he said, make detours and remain impotent savages with civilized smiles. She was now training for her role in The Flamethrowers, a dance by The Martha Graham Company. She was prone to fainting spells precipitated by periods of anxiety. If I land this role, she told him, the world will know me. And it was always late at night, when she woke and said she had a strange craving for a peach. A ripe juicy peach, like the kind they sold a few blocks down at the Korean deli. Groaning, he wiped his eyes and complied. He felt like an idiot paying the man behind the counter for a paper bag of peaches. Imagine what he thought. Who at this hour eats peaches? Some months later, she never returned home from a dance practice. He waited and fidgeted, glanced at his watch and paced the room. He called the dance studio; he called their friends. Then he found the note taped to the kitchenette refrigerator: I'm sorry, honey. This isn't working out. Good bye and I hope you find your dreams as mine have changed. He couldn't sleep at night. He lost interest in shaving and grooming. Weeks passed; he showed up late at rehearsals. He was fired from the off-off Broadway play. At night, he busied himself drawing pictures, pictures that he called her. They were his impressions of her, but not in the sense of Impressionism – Monet and the like. Tom did not use color. During the day, he wandered the side streets, approached strangers in bistros and cafes sipping on a cafe latte, showed them his drawings. Have you seen her, he asked. They studied the drawings, looked up at him in a long curious gaze. They shook their heads and returned to their mocha coffees with whipped cream. Years passed. He met her one night at a party given by a co-worker. He was now a successful broker, seducing men with junk bonds and women in the night classes he taught part time on personal finance. When she first spotted him, she feigned an air of surprise. In fact, for a moment or two, she pretended not to remember him. She told him that now she was married to an accountant, the one talking to a salesman in the corner, a rotund man with a nerdish smile. Sustaining a nervous smile, she kept looking back at him. She had given up dancing long ago, she said. He noticed she had developed a twitch that he never had seen before. So what ever happened he asked. That time you walked out on me. Couldn't you have least talked things over? A blush spread across her face, and she looked to the floor. Excuse me, she said, my husband wants to ask me something. He noticed her glittering evening gown, and the way her pyramid earrings shone in the light. My God, he thought, how things change for the better. He walked up to her, smiled at her husband, introduced himself as an old friend of her family's. Then, he slid his hand into his suit pocket, and handed her what he called a drawing he once made of her. Then, he left, not looking anyone in the face. She opened the folded piece of paper. It was a drawing, a pencil sketch, of a peach. Two round nubs for the big sad eyes, a curvy cut marking the lips. Underneath, it read: Shirley. • Kyle Hemmings holds an MFA in creative writing and loves to cook, bake, and often burns whatever he cooks or bakes. He also loves to listen to The Beach Boys sing of an endless summer. He lives and works in New Jersey. Thursday, May 15
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 15 May 2008 05:15 PM BST
Singapore side-street
They spray the hanging duck with hot water in this restaurant a converted British shop house no. 9 was once an opium den now a whorehouse with a peking duck restaurant fowl between chopsticks what's she saying? Shit, I can't understand Cantonese. the converted British shop house is painted all red after eating the duck, a little beer in my system, cigarettes down the pipe I saunter in there's more Cantonese and a lot of looks like I'm not supposed to be there I hate this about the Chinese here they don't tell you you're embarrassing yourself they only look at you like you are I can still taste the peking duck a man peers over his newspaper hang me up and spray me with hot water. some older woman in an apron should steam me, she's now cutting garlic on a table with a beer ad on it. if I were photoshop I'd get really posterized maybe even go a bit cartoon or neon the lights would dim I'd be surrounded by beautiful, exotic young girl who want to share a bed with me. I walk out, silently. Anything but to get embarrassed. • Ralph-Michael Chiaia is an experimental poet. More about him at formonksonly.blogspot.com Wednesday, May 14
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 14 May 2008 03:53 PM BST
Brother of the Sea
Lake Erie – blue water and sky become one. I sit in the sand not far from the place along the channel where my father and I used to fish. The beach is smaller now, cluttered with garbage cans and signs. The driftwood too, scattered along the edge, entangled with leaves and plastic bottles. The gulls return again and again to the edge of the pier as they did when we cast our lines. My father would tell the same story every time I was bored. The Iroquois, a confederation of five nations – Seneca, Cayuga, Onodaga, Oneida, Mohawk – defeat the Eries… I remember our bobbers rocking back and forth in these waters – the only legacy that bears their name. receding tide another feather stranded • Tish Davis lives and writes in Ohio and is a regular contributor to IS&T Tuesday, May 13
by
Charles Christian
on Tue 13 May 2008 04:36 PM BST
This is for all of you who have struggled with poetry forms...
I’ll write a sonnet... I’ll write a sonnet about a haiku (ironic that, if I say so myself) or maybe I’ll pen an apt senryu and leave the cinquain to rot on the shelf. I’m not really sure which type I should write, so many species of sonnet there are... but as they say she’ll be right on the night, no doubt my brain will be up to full power by the time the soup and wedges are done. Haiku are more than a clever wee verse, a gift from the Land of the Rising Sun, a haiku must always be rather terse. This pith of a moment, no more or less, has taken me fourteen lines, I confess. • IS&T regular John Irvine describes himself as "an Old Aged Pensioner in New Zealand with delusions of immortal failure, a cynical view of life and a mole under his left arm." Monday, May 12
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 12 May 2008 11:53 AM BST
Once again our favourite concrete poet Chris Major has a pertinent comment to make about current affairs...
![]() Saturday, May 10
by
Charles Christian
on Sat 10 May 2008 10:28 AM BST
• My old friend Alexis Byter has just launched a prose and photography blog called, appropriately enough, Words & Vision. It is only just starting to carry content but if you are interested in prose poetry and 'street photography' check it out – or even better bookmark it. www.wordsandvision.com
• Next up, regular IS&T contributor P A Levy says he has "been working hard on getting a new web site up and running – the clueless collective’s magazine of poetica is a spoof of some of the more, shall we say arty and pretentious, literary magazines. I have to confess that it’s all me; I’m the guilty one. I wrote all the rubbish. Anyway, if you get the time please pop by and have a browse at www.cluelesscollective.co.uk and I shall try and entertain you." I've checked it out – it definitely does entertain – Dick & Tom's guide to poetry should be included in every creative writing course. • Finally, long-time stalwart of the UK haiku and haibun scene Stanley Pelter has a new collection of haibun out. Called insideoutside (published by George Mann Publications, ISBN 9780955241574) and featuring an introduction by Diana Noel, this really should be called something like The Dangerous Book of Haibun for Boys (and Girls) as the contents, aided and abetted by Stanley's pen & ink illustrations, push the form into a far more edgy zone than you normally see with haibun. I liked this collection (tho I can imagine some people being frightened by) not least because it makes you think, whereas all to often haibun just lull you off to sleep. You can order insideout direct from Stanley for £8.00 + £1.50 p&p (contact him direct for euro & US dollar rates) by emailing spelter23@aol.com Friday, May 9
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 09 May 2008 07:57 AM BST
Soft Angular
It is a familiar journey, three hours there, if I’m lucky, the same back. The traffic is heavy, lorries throw up dirty spray. I pass the house. * Clink, clink. The fork taps the glass bowl. Egg whites gradually frothing to soft triangular peaks. Mummy has her pretty apron on; it has sprigs of flowers on it. Her arm is tired and I offer to take a turn, but I am too small and I have to be lifted onto the chair. Four years old and strong, my arm won’t get tired, or so I believe. Within minutes I am returned to the floor. Meringues. Someone special is coming for tea, I don’t ask who. * She is folding and refolding. The handkerchief is labeled with her name. They have spelt it wrong, added an S. ‘They lose everything here, you know’. She is lost. ‘Did you expect daddy to die?’ It was a year ago, I explain gently. ‘No?’ She says shocked. The hands work the small cotton square into an oblong. ‘Someone is living in our house, a woman.’ ‘Yes, they have a little boy. It’s a family home again, which is best.’ ‘But where will daddy go when he comes out of hospital’. ‘He isn’t with us anymore. We lost daddy a year ago. He was very ill’. The handkerchief is now the smallest square. ‘No? Oh yes, I remember, was it a year…no. Weeks, a month at most.’ The handkerchief is spread wide and the creases smoothed out. She pauses, sighs. ‘Did you expect daddy to die?’ It is the fourteenth such question. She folds the handkerchief in half and in half again. The rope-blue veins stand proud of her skin. The small cotton square becomes a soft angular peak. The traffic is lighter. I pass the house and turn up the music in the car, muffling the clink, clink. • Patricia Mullin lives in Norfolk is an artist and author of Gene Genie and a graduate of Norwich Art School's Writing the Visual MA. Thursday, May 8
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 08 May 2008 09:07 AM BST
It's the start of the fly-away holiday season, and I think we've all been here...
Please Read the Safety Instruction Manual He donned a yellow jacket, pretend blew down a red whistle. Then he pointed in front Of himself and to either of his sides. As he did so a woman’s voice spoke in flat monotone. Cramped on and around a uniform row of blue seats with seatback videos and built-in drink trays, was his section of almost nine hundred passengers. Three or four rose to switch places during his pre-flight performance. It was his first flight, so airborne colleagues placed peanuts in his replica seatbelt; they fell to the floor as he held it up and opened it but no-one laughed or even saw. Some were attending to crying children. A lot were fumbling in their hand-luggage. At his estimate over half of them had drank alcohol in the lounge before boarding. In the portion he would be tasked with the evacuation of in case of emergency nine were occupied by literature. Seven of those the overpriced in-flight duty-free catalogue. • Will Collins is studying creative writing at Winchester University Wednesday, May 7
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 07 May 2008 10:49 AM BST
the 100 minute bible
a new short bible’s in the shops, like god’s highlights for part-time belief. it has the good bits like genesis with the snake and special effects. not much begatting. i think i will wait and buy the director’s cut with the sodomy and the selling of daughters in a two-disc set. • Roddy Williams lives and works in London. A radical atheist, his Haiku Diary of Common Sense can be found at http://hairybloke.blogspot.com/ Tuesday, May 6
by
Charles Christian
on Tue 06 May 2008 09:35 AM BST
25
along West 23rd is the Hotel Chelsea a place people go to talk to ghosts in the damp walls feet and carapace scratch turn crisp loose wallpaper into a sounding board the sound of beds thumping against partition walls moans and cries tears and shouting time hangs in the lamplight suspended in dust at breakfast artists writers would be artists would be writers take a communion pancake slop syrup just like Hemmingway Ok they say it’s not like it should be but it sure is close 26 the tarmac footpath serpentines alongside the church wall now in summer the surface bubbles and the edge like a mountain range full of tiny volcanoes of tar waits to erupt children with magnifying glasses focus sun spots on ants that wither and die in flames and smoke as the deadly beam finds them around the children crowds push close watch the tiny pyres while they wait one last time for Elvis • These are extracts from 56: a life in pieces – you can read a copy of the full version of 56 for free by visiting www.poetrykit.org/56.pdf For more information about Jim Bennett visit - www.poetrykit.org/jim/index.htm or www.myspace.com/merseypoet Monday, May 5
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 05 May 2008 09:52 AM BST
THE DECIMALISATION OF EMILY Emily is 36.48 years old she's 1.65 metres tall and measures 36.38 27.2 and 36.33 recurring She weighs in at 128.54 pounds as her weight hasn't got used to kilograms yet She has regular habits 0.84 of the time goes to bingo 1.6 times a week and watches 14.7 hours of telly 14.6 hours of it bad telly She goes to bed at 23.2 hours and gets up at 6.8 a.m. to 0.75 of a bowl of muesli and 3.6 fluid ounces of skimmed milk Emily has sex 1.9 times a week 0.97 of the time with her regular boyfriend and achieves orgasm .03 of the time with the other guy She has 2.5 children which confuses the family allowance people but saves on one pair of trousers Emily records all these details of her life accurately 0.86 of the time in her diary Emily thinks she has at least .95 of her finger on the button but in fact she only knows 0.4 of it all | |||