Our good chums over at Days of Roses have brought out their first anthology and are launching it TONIGHT at the 3 Blind Mice in Shoreditch! Check the Facebook here.
Cover image by Ross McNicol and Amelia Newton Whitelaw
The launch will feature readings from contributors: Jo Shapcott, Christopher Horton, Declan Ryan, Gareth Jones, Liz Berry, Malene Engelund, to name but a few, and music from Fiona Bevan and Mr Dupret Factory.
There'll be a more cohesive review to come later, but first here are a few poems from the book to whet your appetite:
SARAH WESTCOTT
Faith Song
Faith in the fern’s uncurling fronds,
the specificity of cuticles
radial spokes of Scots pine
and the axial neurons of a lamb,
the anemone closing over a finger,
the multiplicity and dazzle of a rock pool.
Faith in shifting sheets of sea,
the depth and drag, the tonnage,
in flickering skeins of starling
breaking over roofs,
in songs and shapes of promise,
light as cloud, precious as shanty.
Faith in our heavy, beautiful hands,
their matter and their freight.
MALENE ENGELUND
Black Form No. 5
Mark Rothko (1903–1970)
First you see only the welled black,
thick like night on the other side
of a window. The absent image
is bound to his canvas by egg whites,
resin, phenol formaldehyde,
and locked into his quick brush stroke
is a horse hair. Sinking into the oil
you will remember the cold kiss
of the glass on your forehead, when
as a child, you examined the dark
for faces; how you painted figures
in your breath’s condensation,
and how, as your eyes lost
the darkness, there, looking back
at you, was your reflection.
GARETH JONES
Hide and Seek
A voice from the future, my eight-year old self,
lost in your counting, eyes squeezed shut,
friends stilled quiet in their hiding places:
tea-chest, cubbyhole, attic and closet…
Each found themselves new places in time:
Clare corporate climbing; Bill tarts and trinkets;
paul his sham of a marriage, his children;
and Dan who tipped himself over the brink
the day he turned thirty. You fared little better.
While, one by one, they grew bored and left you,
cycling home to curfews and dinners,
you counted on past sunset, past bedtime,
and never stopped. You’re still counting now.
If you hear me, lad, open your eyes.