March 2010
1 post
Svelte →
Svelte by Amy De’Ath was originally published as a chapbook, whilst Amy was studying at UEA.
February 2010
2 posts
1 tag
1 tag
5.30 city by Hannah Jane Walker
I take bits of the city into my wrists,
the tattoo across my jugular - necklace names me Norwich.
The wet pavement of my back is all horses running from routine –
the crisis hooves in the attic of my hypothalamus
make districts of memory.
Get me piercings on place names
permanent ink of lamplight,
keep me clean street sweeper,
all across this country its raining –
shout out history –...
November 2009
7 posts
1 tag
Someplace by Susie Showers
Come here a second, I tug
by a tall wall
in front of a gray yard.
We put our faces to the gate,
I’ve seen this spot before -
you’ve not.
This is before parks and walks and food and France -
We squeeze our eyes up to the gate -
someone took time to tattoo
every brick
and window
with words
and after songs and cigarettes and trains and rain
I was told it was called...
Utopia Building →
1 tag
Chester Street II (edit) by Russell J Turner
Standing on a tree stump
Smoking like a giant
Swinging like a dancer
Burning like a drunkard
Tissue paper purple
Cling film for a band aid
A breach of the horizon
Hazardous to aircraft
Watching from a tree stump
Smoking like a titan
Bathing in the thunder
Breathing in the cordite
Bonfires and remembrance
The mundane and the madness
A sickness for the suburbs
A tonic for the...
1 tag
Passageway
An impacted tooth of flint and we are away – across borders, through shadows – failing even to acknowledge what stands now, in its place. Take a hand and rub fingertips across the stone stubble surface – forgetful that this is that location where ghosts still pass. Its significance is nothing more than endurance, and yet it still holds a quantitative power - a healing process. The scars of...
1 tag
Birthday by Adam Warne
The lake is broad and still. It is covered with thin lines of light. They quiver gently on the water’s surface.
Someway beyond the grass is the cacophony of campus, a clattering and chattering across jutting concrete.
The lake is quiet and ringed by trees.
Below one tree wind chimes softly clank a pitter-patter of melody. Burgundy tinsel is wrapped across a branch - a cartoon frog dangles...
curiosahamiltona →
1 tag
Sunday by Nathan Hamilton
The bells now ring in white they ring
a rhyme they chime a ringing bell a
chiming bell the rhyme it rings the
ringing bell it chimes a bell it sings
from churches chimes the brain a bell
in church towers chiming calling
church towers calling.
October 2009
1 post
1 tag
Chapel Loke - by John William Brown
chapel loke ber street end cut between the houses georgian perhaps even older cross overhead tunnel short in between barely noticed passing by onto bracondale lakenham areas as different as some place no place side by side as different as surrey street ber street linking difference to differance linking cut out link in between the difference tunnel cut barely georgian perhaps linking older even...
September 2009
5 posts
1 tag
1 tag
St Gregorys Back Alley
There’s an absent apostrophe in the title – those who choose street-names are anarchists at heart, arbitrary in their decisions. They tend to lean to the historic or poetic, and when forced to describe functionality they have a poor sense of sense of ownership. The street name puns, pulling drunks to pose under the sign. Chortled out, they push on to the next watering hole. There is a funny sense...
1 tag
Grapes Hill
Fishbone, the iron railings framed the curve of the bridge. Traffic grumbled like indigestion underneath. A taught line, set between two church towers – the flow is conducted both in and out of the city. Under the hill a subterranean counterpart offered alternative conduct for those not troubled by images of Styxian detours or low-rate knife crime. Up above signs urged cyclist to dismount – though...
1 tag
Newmarket Street - by Anonymous
The air is clear and crisp, and the quiet streets are bathed in an amber light. As I leave my house I take a deep breath and release it. I click down the road in my heels, and the sound echoes along the tarmac. There are no cars and no people down Newmarket Street at this hour; everyone is tucked up safe in their houses - gates are shut, upstairs windows reveal interiors full of night. I tuck my...
1 tag
Passageway 2#
Staring down tunnel arch and into the courtyard, there is a flash of memory - ghosted sepia’s – Thomas Annan’s sojourns down into the belly. Spectral mapping of the city slums that is about to be swept up– the parish and its population finally become utopia, ‘no-place.’ As Annan worked women and children gathered to watch, caught curious faces in the shadows. He flustered and paid them no mind....
August 2009
3 posts
1 tag
Eaton Cottage
Jocular we tip pints with fatty acrobats,
pool cues and clowning.
West nearly pulls a tv off the wall
before curbing slumped -
resembling a lean-to -
shanty town hiccups
and swears at self,
our boy wonder has had his last.
1 tag
1 tag
Park Lane
The fronts of houses become sculpture parks - horticultural gardens – a tree stump is stripped down into petals of wood shavings – some one has taken the trouble to carve blossoms from the dead mass – I am uncertain I can convey the effect – the solid thing into plumed ribbons - curled fronds - reducing it from one state to another – this contemplation – a church marks the conclusion of this...
May 2009
3 posts
1 tag
Castle Grounds
It is here in the first days of a new year you tiptoed to kiss me on the cheek. It is here in the first days of a new year I went home feeling alone for the first time in three. It is here in the last days of three that I felt a calm that even now recalled is unnerving. It is here in front of walls the colour of shadowed bone I wondered what I was to do. It was here almost three years later that I...
1 tag
Queen Of Hungary Alley
Tucked – it’s a breast pocket between shop fronts; on one side accumulated vegetables are for sale, the other a vacant window full of posters. The queen of Hungary does not reside here, and though gated it does not suggest portcullis or grand sweeping entrance halls. The Queen of Hungary was a long ghosted boozer – the shadow of which doesn’t remain. Taking photographs unnerves passers-by, there...
1 tag
Non-Place 1#
His place of peace selected - mooching round the back of a congregation hall long taken in its façade of disuse, still operational though only in the most spectral of senses. He would walk round - peer through age-fogged glass at the upturned chairs, pink blanket and prayer books piled in a corner. There was always a private hope that someone would disturb the scene; a sudden shadow crossing the...