scarecrow poetics/essays
Monday, March 21, 2005
Adrian Slatcher - 2004.
Adrian Slatcher is co-editor of a poetry and fiction magazine, Lamport Court, and has published a number of poems and short stories in various magazines over the last few years. He is based in Manchester, where he studied on the MA in Novel Writing at the University of Manchester. He was born in Walsall in 1967. A previous "e-book" of his poetry, "The Market is Second Hand Poems" was published in 2002.
A sample from Adrian's collection "2004" can be found below.
Purchase Details:
Copies of "2004" can be obtained for "£3.00" payable to Adrian Slatcher, from 1 Victoria Grove, Fallowfield, Manchester, M14 6BF.
or email adrian.slatcher@gmail.com for further details.
The Late Turners at the City Gallery
The late Turners at the City gallery
with you.
Art is both an intimate thing
On Poetry
Rag-red eyes from a night before.
But now I am down. The lids of my rag-red eyes
The sound of the gun was like a car backfiring;
Sanity
Beyond the built-up roads cleaving the city apart
what impression was there left? Footprints in dust.
We crossed underneath the low hang of the motorway,
conscious of earthquakes: how everything we know
(that is...our own life) could be swept away.
It rained - and the headlights of cars wept with the rain
and it was dark, and our hooded forms dissolved into darkness.
Somewhere up ahead there was a destination;
but it is just another night, just another callout.
The city grows around us like brickdust in a lung.
Come along with me now, for I have clearer arteries.
The sentient life is beating fully. *Heart* Heart and blood
Hardened through under use; yet better built to stand
The swaying breaths. Numbness an overture,
Lips frozen in supplication; mouthing platitudes.
A cull happened. I saw it. Thirty or forty of them
sent out to the suburbs; made to wear new clothes;
resplendent in their greyness driving brand new cars.
And we revelled in our insolvency, clearer than glass,
knowing that: Nothing happens in this world for good reason.
Adrian Slatcher 2005.
A sample from Adrian's collection "2004" can be found below.
Purchase Details:
Copies of "2004" can be obtained for "£3.00" payable to Adrian Slatcher, from 1 Victoria Grove, Fallowfield, Manchester, M14 6BF.
or email adrian.slatcher@gmail.com for further details.
The Late Turners at the City Gallery
The late Turners at the City gallery
with you.
Art is both an intimate thing
and where nothing is shared but the looking.
We brushed against each other standing back from "Whalers" -
Did we acknowledge the turbulent waters -
Or stand as did Melville, admiring his subject?
We pick up on such things, without even saying,
Our sensibilities like waves, meeting then parting.
The late Turners were filled with a luminous glow;
blinding white sky-scapes crash into the ocean
and outside, our eyes quite hooded, the sky glowing yellow
in Manchester, that inland city; somehow so close to the sea.
On Poetry
I wish I was a poet with a poet's air - not just their swagger,
their insouciance - but the air that surrounds them, bigger, somehow,
like a ring of confidence, an aura - but my air is the standard kind,
it lingers for a while, but dissipates in company.
I wish I had those big brash words that can elevate the smallest thought
to something quite invincible, an orator's way with flourish,
or even mere bravery enough to look straight upon the life I have,
and fillet in the words, dish it up with the precision of a die-cutter.
It takes a least a bottle, and I'm cheap with them, the four pound bottle,
the two-for-one, even in this I value myself short.
I could be rich in words, either a banker, storing them away,
making them work to build up their value, or a playboy gambler,
risking adjectives on the spin of chance, heady throws of verbs.
Or poor enough to pawn my pronouns, give away my "I" and "me"
on a promise of some better luck next week. It takes at most a bottle
to loosen this one's tongue, pouring out the worthless vowels.
The optimistic part of me knows that had I but the time and love
and hope that my life should merit, I'd be as mute as the sands,
enveloped by the sea. That this passive time and love for words
and hopeful skill is all that separates me from one who never writes.
I have thought it through enough, how much it takes just to fashion
the simplest of instruments, one that makes a noise, let alone a tune.
A mask is all I have, a mask that barely covers,
yet when worn with some belief, may make of me a hero.
Bullfighting
Rag-red eyes from a night before.
I was celebrating! First of all the night.
(Oh, to be free - free in a city far from my work!)
But second, the decanted wine, the veal rib-eye.
I am a lover of good things and have too long lacked
The steep pleasures that money and status might give me.
I cannot puchase a perfect life, but an adequate night?
Of course! The rag-red eyes will be a small price.
But now I am down. The lids of my rag-red eyes
And the tread of my feet, and the burn in my stomach,
All down - as is the wilt of my lips,
Like a moustache in the rain. I would lie down
But the day is programmed - I have work to do!
The beauty I found in the convivial night
Is smoke-smelling clothes and pimpled-nose,
Hair like coarse rope and my rag-red eyes.
Ventriloquism
The sound of the gun was like a car backfiring;
But then again it may have been an imitation gun.
All they could agree on was the colour of the sky
Which was green and grey on a bed of lime.
For no-one present could possibly remember.
It seems that the vortex had already immersed them.
The real adventure was happening off camera
Leaving only an impression where once a lie had been.
Some said it smelt like, walked like, quacked like a duck,
But I always looked beyond the neck feathers;
Aware of the darkness of the ventriloquist's art,
It could be that things were just as they seemed,
And that a trick, indeed, had taken place
Where at first it appeared there was no trick.
Sanity
Beyond the built-up roads cleaving the city apart
what impression was there left? Footprints in dust.
We crossed underneath the low hang of the motorway,
conscious of earthquakes: how everything we know
(that is...our own life) could be swept away.
It rained - and the headlights of cars wept with the rain
and it was dark, and our hooded forms dissolved into darkness.
Somewhere up ahead there was a destination;
but it is just another night, just another callout.
The city grows around us like brickdust in a lung.
Come along with me now, for I have clearer arteries.
The sentient life is beating fully. *Heart* Heart and blood
Hardened through under use; yet better built to stand
The swaying breaths. Numbness an overture,
Lips frozen in supplication; mouthing platitudes.
A cull happened. I saw it. Thirty or forty of them
sent out to the suburbs; made to wear new clothes;
resplendent in their greyness driving brand new cars.
And we revelled in our insolvency, clearer than glass,
knowing that: Nothing happens in this world for good reason.
Adrian Slatcher 2005.
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posted by scarecrow # 1:53 AM 
