scarecrow poetics/essays

‘One of my old jobs was working as a locksmith.
I had to break into cars and houses, all that stuff,
and change the locks when people couldn’t afford rent.
So I would go along with the landlord and the cops
while the bailiffs got all heavy,
chucking people down the stairs,
and I said to the cops, aren’t you gonna step in?
And they said, fuck ’em.
Once, they chucked this mum
and her two little kids into the street,
and the landlord said,
you can swap the locks now mate.
And I couldn’t.
I was really shaking.’

Merrick Palmer © 2006

Merrick Palmer graduated from Bath Spa University College in 2002 with a first class degree in Creative Writing under the tutelage of Philip Gross and Tim Liardet. His poetry considers how the transience of the surrounding world shapes the inner landscape of daily living. It examines a number of voices and personas, both child and adult, and not always his own, moving within a terrain where experiences conjure significance beyond the banal.