signalling graham bowers
Everybodyloves the sound ofa train in thedistance Everybodythinks it's true
Paul Simon (from the song Train in the Distance)
The thought that life could be better is woven indelibly into our hearts and our brains ibid.
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©Graham Bowers 2025 All rightsreserved
Published by: BoD · Books on Demand, Östermalmstorg 1, 114 42 Stockholm, Sweden, bod@bod.se
Printed by:Libri Plureos GmbH, Friedensallee 273, 22763 Hamburg, Germany
ISBN: 978-91-8080-012-9
signalling
Signalling
Dash dot dash dot
Limited signage is all we'vegot to code what is, might be, is not, suggest what happened, happened not, to sound the future, guard the past, dot dot dashdash.
Dot dash dot dash
What are these stains Iscratchand splash on the white? Somehope to catch at least the pan if not the flash –of meaning? Time? Asense of what might find its spark in dash and dot?
But dot blank blank dash pen on paper wordsonair like flags strung up from masttomast: signs go awol, fade and tear, meaning slips beyond our grasp, and time defeats us, chip, chip, chop: tockharries tick, dash stalks dot.
Love that starts with blood's free passion slows into moments closely rationed: stop; pass;stop; pass. Hopes that roselose height, aredashed. Adotted line creeps into view: the place wherethings arecut in two.
Dot dot dashdash
There is no flame but preludes ash, no growth that does not presage rot; dot fades to dash, dashblurs to dot. And not even the residue's sure to last as we push our planet towards the crash, aslash and burnleaving no more trace than one more dead rocklost in space, aglobal ex to mark the spot and no-one left to think, to ask what wasachieved by dot dot dash.
Hit and miss, miss or hit here it comes |that wasit not yet... now... not now... past. Dot dot dot
Signalling is thefourth collectionofpoetryfromGraham Bowers.
It is notathematic collectionatall –the book is as eclectic as its predecessors,aswide-ranging in terms of technique, tone and subject; but as thetitle suggests, anumber of thepieces wrestle with various aspectsofcommunication: its possibilities and limitations,the wayitcan reflect and misconnect,its angles and entanglements. Andperhaps in asense all attemptsatsignalling, at givingthings expression (such as poems, or books of poems) find themselves being "about" communication, in some way or another.
Graham's previous collections are athirst • frontiers and fault-lines • what comes out to light
An album of songs, called splash and fall,isavailable as aCDand on streaming platforms.
