Gen E-Book

Jonathan Edwards

• Herausgeber: Seren
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 56

Beschreibung

Gen is the eagerly awaited second collection by Jonathan Edwards, whose debut, My Family and Other Superheroes, won the Costa Prize for Poetry in 2015. This accessible and critically acclaimed young poet has beaten off 'second collection syndrome' with a book of sharp yet beautifully warm and humane poems. The title refers to people of Edwards' generation and his recognition of the preoccupations that he shares of this age-group. There are several terrific love poems and poems of romantic yearning, which reflect this.In addition, Edwards further mines his family for writing which is at once intimate, generous and wry. 'Harry Houdini on Newport Bridge, 1905' relates an anecdote where his grandfather, aged 15, makes mischief in the watching crowd. And 'My Father Crashes a Car, 1965' is a similarly warm and slightly surreal retrieval of a memory from his father. Several of the poems in Gen have already won prizes, and the book must be a contender for more shortlists. Whatever the prize judges think, the poetry reading public will again warm to this poet.Winner of the People's Choice Award, Wales Book of the Year 2019'As always Edwards' writing is at once bold and sweeping whilst also managing to maintain a homely and intimate voice that feels personal​.' – Ben RayThroughout the collection, demotic patter is combined with virtuoso craft. What can you say about a sonnet like 'On Hearing You Have Lost Your New Love', at once bitter, tender and true?  What can you say about a gut punch like the ending of 'Aberfan'?  Or about a title like 'Samuel Taylor Coleridge Walking from The Queen's Head, Gray's Inn, to Honsby's and Co., Cornhill, to Buy an Irish Lottery Ticket, November 1793'? I will say this: Gen is a vibrant, brilliant book, and Edwards is one of my favourite writers. – Joe CaldwellEdwards shows a new breadth of vision, and the ability to encompass tragedy. His poems about Aberfan and Tryweryn have the air of instant classics. – The Lonely Crowd

Leseprobe

Gen

for the Edwardses

Seren is the book imprint of

Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

57 Nolton Street, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 3AE

www.serenbooks.com

facebook.com/SerenBooks

twitter@SerenBooks

The right of Jonathan Edwards to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

© Jonathan Edwards, 2018

ISBN: 978-1-78172-473-6

ebook: 978-1-78172-474-3

Kindle: 978-1-78172-475-0

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Welsh Books Council.

Cover artwork: ‘Hard to Get’, 2011, Oil on Linen by Kevin Sinnott.

Author photograph: Aubrey Edwards.

Printed in Bembo by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow.

Contents

1

Sing Song Spring Song

Gen

Kurt Cobain Proposes to Courtney Love, TJs, Newport, December 1991

Olympic 100m Final, Seoul, 1988

Harry Houdini on Newport Bridge, May 1905

My Mother Cuts Her Arm, 1955

My Father Buying Sweets, 1956

My Father Crashes a Car, 1965

My Uncle Smoking a Pipe, 1986

Teenage Son

Days of 1995

House Party at Tanya’s, 1995

Days of 2005

Runt

2

Writers in the Movies

Samuel Taylor Coleridge Walking from The Queen’s Head, Gray’s Inn, to Hornsby’s and Co., Cornhill, to Buy an Irish Lottery Ticket, November 1793

Servant Minding a Seat for his Master Before a Performance of The Rivals, Covent Garden Theatre, 1775

Welsh Flag on the Wall of Richard Burton’s Dressing Room, Broadway, 1983

Food Tester

The Pianist at The Grand

Crocodile

Giraffe

Lions Asleep

Autumn Song

Song of the Retail Park Tree

3

New Build

Newport Talking

Valleys Village as a Tourist Attraction

One Fine Day

Postman

The Landlord at The Philanthropic

Mad Pete

The Red Lady of Paviland

Cofiwch Dryweryn

Tryweryn

Last Day of School, Capel Celyn, 1963

The Remains

Aberfan

4

Girl

On Hearing You Have Lost Your New Love

Couple Kissing Against the Wall of a Pub

When I’m Gone

The Girl in the Coffee Shop

The Bicycle

Song

Notes & Acknowledgements

1

Sing Song Spring Song

Begin again. The birds are up to what they’re up to always, aren’t they, listen, those persistent little fuckers, and the sun is shining down on courting couples, like a high-watt bulb, say, in a top-floor flat, might shine its little heart out on a room of high-grade hashish plants, and your breath loyally or out of habit, say, goes out, goes in. So what now is is as good a time as any to get up off your arse boy and begin.

Begin again. The love that won’t be yours is somewhere else for good while here, this hair makes the wind real; these heads look bob like blonde lifebuoys. In a café window there, girls jiggle straws look in their early-season iced cappuccinos, look out at the hairy passing men and speak like highly-sexed football commentators. Milky blossom or birdshit falls. Church bells or smartphones ring. So brush off your best threads now, boy. Begin.

Begin again, as men in hi-vis vests who work all day in weather roast the colour of rose tattoos that bloom there on their shoulders, or turn a corner to a sudden breeze and hug themselves. These mirrored imitation Ray-Bans capture pictures of the high street in spitting rain, shops fill with everything that could be yours, a gull opens its beak as if to sing, but dips look for a chip. So wipe dust from your lips now, boy. Begin again, now, as washing on a line impersonates a ship look in full sail, and Mrs Wilson, in her landlocked garden, says goodbye to the harbour with a wave. The trees will soon be fat with leaves like green candyfloss, and daffodils in yellow post-op canine collars turn the faces they don’t have towards the sun, or have their stems, their hearts, look, broken by the wind. Pick up your bloody pen now, boy. Begin.

Gen

So here they come, around the corner, bouncing, flouncing, boho beehives, tattooed, corduroy-looned, sneakered scumbags, skinheads, brogue-shod uni fools, or look, they’re me, they’re you, but slightly cooler, lust- and roll-up-fuelled, artfully spectacled idea junkies, pushing, selling, any one of us could be John Lennon, Jesus, coke and sneezes forced through nostrils that are pinned or pierced. Look, these feather-boa’d vegans or these leopardskinned animals, with their X-rated bodies, their needs never sated by hands-free friends or look, their palm-held search engines, their razor’d heads turned by beauty or a global crisis, these masters of their own devices. For every word they’ve #’d or abbreviated, each god they’ve never worshipped, every song they’ve downloaded, shook their arses to or sung, I say bow down, bow down, the young, the young.

Kurt Cobain Proposes to Courtney Love, TJs, Newport, December 1991

Some young dude staggering from the station, all jeans and grimace, all tufty coat and peep-toe sneakers – that’s nothing new around these parts. He rubs his eyes, approaches this first stranger:Excuse me, do you know the way to a place called TJs? That voice he has. A mile away, Courtney

Love is sound checking, warming up. Rain comes down as he passes the ruined castle, crosses the bridge statistics say more than thirty people will jump from that year. Nevermind has been Billboard #1 for six weeks now. What exactly does a human being do

with that much love? I am four miles away and twelve years old, and Kurt Cobain is walking through Newport, three years too early for me. At the door of TJs, his nose-ringed biggest fan in the world just tells him the price, stamps his hand. Inside,

his eyes accustom and he spots her, at the bar, back to the room. Her mane. Her little girl’s dress. People are brought into being by moments like this: Kurt Cobain is crossing the room in TJs, Newport, is falling to his knees. The cold floor through ripped jeans. The barman leaps across the counter to deal with some punter, and the bouncer, grinning, gets in the way as one girl punches another. Of course, there are those who say all this is folklore, legend, gossiped up by someone with a romantic imagination or a marketing background. I am twelve years old

and dreaming in a room lined with posters of footballers and, on Newport Bridge, a couple are walking hand-in-hand, the man pausing now, perhaps, to light a cigarette. In that sudden spark, someone passing might almost glimpse his face, before he turns away, before he walks again into the dark.

Olympic 100m Final, Seoul, 1988

In the middle of his adolescence, my brother gets up