GASPN ewnor thpoe ts
JasmineChatfieldMicha elBrownElizabethGibso nMariaIsakovaBennettR osaWalling−Wefelmeyer
CAMPUS PAMPHLETS Gasp — The New North Poets The 2017-18 New North Poets are: MICHAEL BROWN JASMINE CHATFIELD ELIZABETH GIBSON MARIA ISAKOVA BENNETT ROSA WALLING-WEFELMEYER
The New North Poets are the recipients of Northern Writers’ Awards from New Writing North, and have received a programme of development delivered by the Poetry School and lead tutor Clare Pollard. Published by the Poetry School The Dock Offices, Surrey Quays Road, Canada Water, London, SW9 7HW Copyright of poems belongs to their respective authors. Introduction by Clare Pollard. Typeset by Ali Lewis.
CONTENTS 4 7 8 9 10 11 13 14 15 16 18 20 21 23 24 25 27 28 29 31 32 34 35 36 38 40
INTRODUCTION MICHAEL BROWN Binary The Unspeakable The Line Woken JASMINE CHATFIELD a universe explodes somewhere left of my hipbone Licker Synthetic cannabinoids Saltfoot ELIZABETH GIBSON Blood ghazal Leรณn Pilot Missing Leo MARIA ISAKOVA BENNETT Morning Room In her mind Matter of Life Poppies ROSA WALLING-WEFELMEYER Mnemonic Paradox like convalescence at the coast. notes. NOTES
INTRODUCTION Mentoring for the New North Poets has always been one of my favourite poetry jobs. What could be lovelier than watching five talented poets as, over a year, they gain in craft and confidence? And New Writing North and The Poetry School put together such a varied programme. This year we have been in Highgreen in Northumberland on crisp autumn days, the orchard full of vivid pink apples, watching red squirrels climb the trees by the drive; reading favourite poems to each-other curled in front of the fire with a bottle of wine. We have had masterclasses from Antony Dunn and Neil Astley, read at the Poetry Society with Caroline Bird, attended the T.S. Eliot Awards, and chatted online about everything from reviewing to rhyme, before returning to Highgreen in the Spring for one-to-ones (and some cute prancing lambs). It has been a pleasure hanging out with these five poets, who in many ways couldn’t be more different. In just these few pages you’ll experience Jasmine Chatfield’s visceral modern nightmares, Rosa Walling-Wefelmeyer’s exuberant experiments, Michael Brown’s spare meditations on body and language, Maria Isakova Bennett’s artful ekphrasis, Elizabeth Gibson’s conjuring of place. It’s always hard to come up with a title, and with five poets as distinct as this it was almost impossible. But I like Gasp. It reminds us that, as Michael Brown puts it in ‘The Line’: poetry is ‘a syncopation / of inhaled breath’. That these are poets playing with shush and space and [ ]. It suggests a
first, hopeful, gasp, but also the last gasps of elegy. Is it a cheeky imperative – an order to gasp at the talent of these audacious new poets? Poetr y as something to shock you out of complacency. Poetry as a kind of coming up for air.
Take a deep breath and enjoy.
Clare Po!ard
MICHAEL BROWN Michael’s work has been published widely in magazines including The Rialto, Southword, The North and many others. He was shortlisted for the Bare Fiction Collection prize judged by Andrew McMillan in 2015 and was placed third in the York Poetry Prize, 2015. He has twice been shortlisted in the Basil Bunting Award, won the Wirral Firsts Poetry Competition in 2018 and was also recently commended in the Mclellan Prize. His pamphlet, Undersong (2014) is available from Eyewear Publishing. His most recent pamphlet, Locations for a Soul, appeared in 2016 from Templar Publishing.
Binary When it enters us we sit in the dark with the breath. Our bodies have left the building to this breath. I can’t make out where I end or the borders of you begin. I’m not here but possessed by the breath. And close to the machine of the heart I am. I am a metronome of breath. Go back. Go back to each fall and rise and catch, the rhyme, a syntax of just one breath. Go back. Go back to find the start of this where we are shades of black and shades of breath. All we do is sit in the dark room of ourselves and we are gone and we are breath.
The Unspeakable The Oxford Junior Dictionary has cut a number of words "om its pages and replaced them with more up-to-date terms.
We do not care for what we do not know and we do not know catkin, buttercup, chestnut. We can’t name what we never thought but, even so, you list the old words: magpie, wren, lark fall out of the dark sky of your mouth like dead stones. We try to imagine that wild outside our heads. Common nouns spill from our lips: syllables sounded-out like a spell of notes: hazel, crocus, gorse But we don’t want to go. It’s safer here to stay inside ourselves, to cut and paste those parts of speech material to our hidden lives. And how the taste of marzipan or mint might be defined, if not felt, by each strange letter spoken out from print, well, none of this has any part to play in what we voice, in what we think to say, this dialect of grey citizenship
The Line Your friend, the poet, has written a line. It will end the stanza dead in its tracks. It’s going to be the final line — a clatter of metre, a syncopation of inhaled breath. It will comprise so much of him, his life. No trite climax, this line — you hear it read. It’s the sort of thing you would say is incontestable grace. It’s something you too might have said, the line, but it has the ring of truth to it. You know you’ve uttered it in prayer before — liquid in some other lifetime or bar. True — anyone could have said it, but when it comes down to it, this line has never been more alive and now it’s his. It sets rare once he says it again as if for the first time, one-off, like no-one had ever noticed it.
Woken The impression of not sleeping. Not sleeping. The fetch of a wave held inside the head. The thin black turning itself in, becoming sky. A taste of lack. The ghost of your last thought. Fibres found on your green toothbrush. What shifts in the tissue of body. Of mind. The pebble of a word at the back of your throat. The tip of your tongue. The bones of the house. What you let enter you, what possessed you. What you let out. The thing you were thinking before you knew you were thinking. The thing itself. What you see in yourself. Each stroke of the heart. The stuff, the trace. What gets under your skin. What stays.
JASMINE CHATFIELD Jasmine Chatfield is a Manchester-based writer, theatre-maker and comedian. They produce and co-host Arts Council funded experimental interdisciplinary performance series FLIM NITE in Manchester, SheďŹƒeld, Newcastle and beyond. Jasmine cocreated Clonely, a sci-fi two-hander which toured and ran at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival 2017, as one half of Me Me Me, and makes clown-poetry performances as one half of duo Dead Lads. Their writing has been published in various places. Their sequence of micro-poems, throat thing, was published as a micro chapbook with Rinky Dink Press. In 2017 Jasmine became a New North Poet at the Northern Writers Awards.
a universe explodes somewhere left of my hipbone and wow I don’t know why Judas did it, his universe collapsing, why bring on the Pharisees! who did cometh thither the Hellraiser guy too cometh around and around in his frame and moving my arm around feels like screaming in my sleep clutching a stressball the colour of the Earth, Peter screaming the Earth is wrong, Jesus’ hand on his skin is like waves and two mugs clinking together wrong is angels singing when the cock goes the disciples around my bed, singing I get knocked down, and I get up around the pizza boxes and not sweet Peter of denial but Barrabas gone free gets up by the sweet grey light of morning I clean the mirror and Pinhead still grey Judas feeling slick guilt of neck feeling grapefruit and judgement thou asketh no more
Licker Inside the crypt of pelvises they swing. I will invade the house that’s filled with juice, the genderless bones or unwelcome thing in kitchens. Jaws submerged in liquids wring you out, and while your teeth are plunging loose inside the crypt of pelvises they swing. You asked. I could not answer anything: the limbs have made me come obtuse, the genderless bones or unwelcome thing. I’m sorry when I hear you cannot sing but parts of me have an uneasy truce. Inside the crypt of pelvises they swing and up tile walls the cervical spines cling to touch my hips and yours they will produce the genderless bones. Or, unwelcome thing, that watches from the sink’s edge taking wing. The ribs you always wanted to reduce. Inside the crypt of pelvises they swing, the genderless bones, or unwelcome thing.
Synthetic cannabinoids I am in the breakfast cafe. I order the sleeping pills, think about what he said: that dying would be like floating above all your favourite buildings looking down. To enact my mother’s dreams I was supposed to imagine pulling myself out of my body with a nylon warp. I can understand this desire, the one in which I pull my chest apart with an anchor. The cruel beast shadow noble across the walls. Next to me an elderly lady requests medicinal herbs, her voice thin, I am woozy, the noises are hollow, bouncing. A throbbing through the air, like the one in my neck, where a band of flesh like a chain pulls close. The rhythm of my bones, my forearms still, a living tree beneath dead wood. I don’t know what it would be like
to sleep forever. I am on the wagon. The carriage chucking me out through the countryside. The train barks out a full flat moan into the valley, then croons long for a response. The clamouring things are silent between the trees. A testing thump against the ground, the carping of a worm-hunting wren. The scenery shudders and leaves. The little gasp of my soulless voice pulsing out into its new darkness. It is winter. The door of the ca is open. On the streets outside they collapse on the edges of roads, epidemically. Out here, a man crouched centre-pavement, cigarette still lit, lighter in hand, kneels with one leg only, praying to a god he even half believes, the light gone flat with my eyes half-spent, our eyelids fluttering in an ecstasy of uselessness.
Saltfoot I’ve heated the house with hate so it feels like summer cold weight must touch my jaw to sleep the feet are on the oozing tiles near the bin they’ve come in through the crack of the door a narrow gap through which the outside seeps sometimes I look down in the afternoon and see the sticky trails now it is night I’ve seen only a trace intent lunge for the boiler move one foot four toes go down the wetness there beside the bin it curls away wounding to my clawfoot hunched foot shook up I, bolting strip by the grungy pools of toothpastes used up tap running recently they bleached away most of the mould I think of slugs swimming down a river like eels I do not know what happens when salt goes on them like holy water on a demon Violet Beauregarde blimping round or sunlight on a vampire’s skin it is the opposite of how salt bloats human bellies as if the air itself can swell fat hard against its skin to shrink its flesh away until it is fizzy and crisp
ELIZABETH GIBSON Elizabeth Gibson’s writing has appeared in Antiphon, Cake, The Cardiff Review, The Compass, Creative Review, Far Off Places, Gigantic Sequins, Ink, Sweat & Tears, Litro and The Poetry Shed and she was featured in Introduction X: The Poetry Business Book of New Poets. Elizabeth came second in the Poetry Society’s 2016 Timothy Corsellis Prize and was shortlisted for the Poetry Business’s 2018 New Poets Prize. She has performed her poetry at Manchester Central Library, The LGBT Foundation and The Poetry Café. She edits Foxglove Journal and the Word Life section of Now Then Manchester, tweets @Grizonne and blogs at elizabethgibsonwriter.blogspot.co.uk
Blood ghazal When I first moved to France, pride and hope in my blood, I swore I would pluck up the courage to give blood. But born at the end of the mad-cow disease years I have been blacklisted – France does not want my blood. I regret that I might have backed out anyway: as my friends will tell you, I am not good with blood. The last time that a nurse drew my blood out of me for testing, I fainted. Oh, that tube of my blood. From me it had just come, in me it had just been: I knew in a moment why some baulk at their blood. It was different each month; it was meant to flow then, I was told, and I would be intrigued by my blood. When it crept from a wound, from a fault, my mistake, was when I felt guilty, mocked and blamed by my blood. I never discovered my blood type – I want to; it would calm me to know that bit more of my blood. I have to remember, my blood is no stranger: in my own bone garden blossomed flowers of blood. The thing is that mainly, they grow inside only and I lose my technique catching petals of blood.
I should learn to picture not a wild mess of red but the neat little discs and the orbs in my blood. Feeling my pulse in my wrist makes me nauseous; I find fear in the force and the throb of my blood. But imagine how hard the heart and brain battle to safeguard from silence the bass-drum beat of blood. The waves go on crashing, the world goes on spinning and I wish I could give you that gift – give my blood.
León Pink flower cauldrons bubble outside the cathedral with its windows of crimson and blue, like glitter thrown down and up. The stone is grey here, not gold like I have in Salamanca. You walk me down the hill, past the fragile circles of snow domes, past clocks with curly numerals. You lead me to the basilica, to the low dark room where they store the treasures. You show me the fat chalice with its hunks of gem: topaz like cinder toffee, creamy mint jade. You say, this is my city. Come to it and live in it. I go. You reappear as I sit between more bowls of flowers, mauve and white. The sky is grey, the stone grey. I live in Salamanca, I say. You laugh. I wait for you to say it, tell me to do it in love for you. I would. You are silent.
Pilot For a pilot whale that died in 2018 a$er swa!owing more than eighty plastic bags You are such a long way from the first episode, but a pilot you are, and I hope you were proud as you whistled through waves, navigated kelp clouds, studied all of the charts we will never decode. And now you are broken, lie still and dissected as bags by the dozen are pulled out of your midst: you mistook the plastic for the warm glow of squid, as your landing strip lights, new fuel you detected. We humans are grounded, we disdain the other, we forgot just how close you are to our own blood: our genes not so different, you felt pain as we would as our mess swelled in you and your organs collapsed. Your beautiful journey abandoned, you hover above us and tell us that we should change our path.
Missing Leo Lying awake on a hot, itchy Spanish night, the sky light and teasing, I toss and turn and hear somewhere in the soundscape a noise, quiet, insistent: a baby crying. It is here, in Salamanca, and it is not here. The shifting and motion and kerfuffle of a hospital, comings and goings. It is you, I know. It is home. I sit up and listen, then fall back asleep. I can see it, feel it so sharply, as if it happened to me once – but I have never been pregnant. The moments waiting, waiting, are so real, a gust of wind from another world, yours; from another country, ours. Sweet northern England, with its dark nights and stars. Leo would be so clear right now. It is clear, with you. The world goes on turning while I’m not there. I have to remember that. Tomorrow I will hear your baby girl hasn’t arrived yet and a loud child lives near me. But I know it was you and her really.
MARIA ISAKOVA BENNETT Maria, from Liverpool, founded and creates the limited-edition hand-stitched journal Coast to Coast to Coast (co-edited by Michael Brown). She has won, been placed and been shortlisted in several international poetry competitions including the Ver, Bridport, Keats-Shelley, Wigtown, Mslexia, and Plough. Maria works as a teacher, poet and artist for charities including Mersey Care, regularly writes reviews for magazines including Orbis, and conducts interviews for The Honest Ulsterman. In November this year she will be Artist and Poet-in-Residence at Poetry in Aldeburgh. Maria’s pamphlet, All of the Spaces, was published in December 2017 by Eyewear.
Morning Room Seven-thirty, September divided between sunshine and shadow. Through the window: the constancy of holly; beyond: mossed brick, a quibble of buildings. You’re drawn back to the tick of the clock though you never see the jolt of its hands, back to the scent of a fire asleep after last night’s mad blaze, and back to the objects that move only once or twice a year: Grandma’s bone china; a row of cups that say Rutland Fa!s, Oban, and Normandy cider; the table, its third decade, scrubbed, no shine, variously naked, or covered in paper or linen for birthdays, Christmas, for dozens of Welcome Home meals, and for one last meal before you leave.
In her mind she scoops water to search for him a full moon lights lilies on the lake dunes are laced with salt – like scrim minutes pass, and time laps by too soon a full moon lights lilies on the lake on a table under the half-light of a failing sun minutes pass, and time laps by too soon a bowl of olives and a glass of wine are warm on a table under the half-light of a failing sun they catch hold of sea holly and bleed into marram a bowl of olives and a glass of wine are warm lost painting she slathers paint on canvas they catch hold of sea holly and bleed into marram lie and slip to sleep on a red-green bed lost painting she slathers paint on canvas lost singing he squanders notes over the sea they lie and slip to sleep on a red-green bed the sun has fallen and she puts out her hand for him lost singing he squanders notes over the sea she hurries to pocket fistfuls of minutes
the sun has failed and she puts out her hand for him she wakes and he is near and far she hurries to pocket fistfuls of minutes he lives and breathes deep in her she wakes and he is near and far dunes are laced with salt – like scrim he lives and breathes deep in her she scoops water to search for him
Matter of Life I’m priming linen with white acrylic – the fabric stiffens and while it dries the girl in the space beside me skewers two lambs’ hearts together. She leaves. Blood crusts around the tender fists, arteries and veins lie empty now. I hum Joni Mitchell, I’ve looked at love, but how to prepare hearts mocks the tune. Hearts should be cooked quickly over a high heat, or slowly with moist stuffing. I thread needles with shades of ivory, bone and porcelain, long-stitch white on white, tighten french knots, and smooth sorbello. I am sewing while the hearts’ flesh falls away, want to grab my stitches and run – but my threads tangle…
Poppies i.m Mary Hyland 1922-1992
She smells of Yardley pressed powder, Californian Poppies hang about her while she kohls her eyes in a mirror over a fire of sighs and hisses. Her lips are painted coral and she waves a Maybelline wand. To cover greys and make reds dance, she spirals hair in Kirby grips. Daily she eats cold food alone, while on a polished piano, a shrine of photographs remind her of no tomorrow.
ROSA WALLING-WEFELMEYER
Rosa Walling-Wefelmeyer’s poetry has appeared in, amongst other things, The American Aesthetic and The Minnesota Review and has been performed and commended at, for example, Durham Book Festival, Leeds University and the UK’s Young Poets’ Network. Rosa lives in the North East of England and is currently undertaking a PhD in Sociology, which uses scrapbooking to explore experiences of sexual violence.
Mnemonic Paradox The woodpigeon tells me to take two cows. The song thrush asks did I do it? The yellowhammer wants bread but no cheese. The song thrush asks did I do it? To identify is
to identify with and I have made myself so loud with bread and cows and cheese from cows that I can’t listen any more. But without that with would I first hear at all?
like
cow eyes and he doesn’t speak just looks like like simile will only last
until the hedge runs out ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||| |||||||| ||||||| |||||| ||||| |||| ||| || || | | | | | | |
|
and then
he’ll turn to talk for food I can just feel it now. Stampeding behind his eyes. Some word coming ever closer. And only when the fences break, might he say he loves me like its milk I forced from him and churned, when all he wanted was to go back some ten thousand years of breeding and be a beast as heavy and in heat as this silence.*
…………………………………………………………………………………………………………………………. ‘The girl … does not know if the man desires or despises her, because it is also difficult to accept what is sometimes the reality: being desired and despised both together, and being chosen precisely because you can be despised’ (Romito, 2008: 151).
*did
that
I’d
maybe
like
you really think I’d allow that coherent style?
possibly
finish
erm
without like
using
theory
as
a
hedge
perhaps
convalescence at the coast. notes. Fed up and hungry and so, as an alternative to speaking, I’ll bite the apple that you do not offer but intimate by being you enough to anchor fantasy near some real shore. Distant lights supply fairy-tales to cabin boys longing for [ ]. How tasty this your gift is out here where salt preserves but cannot [ ]. How filling this your gift is out here where salt seasons but cannot [ ]. Cannot
idealisation & devaluation to burn a log in a cold barn and watch wind put it out is to imagine first, that it is cold and second, that there is a barn
what then is the primary harm, little one? shush now, put all your eggs in every basket and break and break
Follows Loud Noise They say he spent too long looking out to sea – How long is too long? One stone’s throw, one crow’s stone – Stone the crows – too long, too long. They say that after he spent too long looking out to sea Villagers called to him but he was gone – How gone is gone? One stone falls, one crow calls And in the stoned silence which only follows loud noise You know – too long, too gone. I have been here every day since then – Has it been days? I wouldn’t know – There’s no stones, no crows To mark the passage of anything long, Of anything gone.
the beach at night is much like the snow in day, much like, as in nothing like, as in how else might sense be made of the
[insensible]
NOTES Quote taken from Patrizia Romito’s book ‘A Deafening Silence: Hidden Violence Against Women and Children’ (2008)