Jonathan Davidson: Selected Poems E-Book

Jonathan Davidson

• Herausgeber: The Poetry Business
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 48

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

Jonathan Davidson has a loving, observant and wry regard for the frailties of the human condition. He makes fresh something we thought we knew; writing of the everyday the way Vermeer might be said to paint it.' — Maura Dooley

Leseprobe

This ebook original Selected Poemspublished 2014 bysmith|doorstop BooksThe Poetry BusinessBank Street Arts32-40 Bank StreetSheffield S1 2DS

www.poetrybusiness.co.ukCopyright © Jonathan Davidson 2014ISBN 978-1-910367-21-6

Jonathan Davidson hereby asserts his moral right to be identified as the author of this book.British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Cover design and ebook generated by alancoopercreative.co.uk

smith|doorstop Books is a member of Inpress,www.inpressbooks.co.uk. Distributed by Central Books Ltd., 99 Wallis Road, London E9 5LN.

The Poetry Business is an Arts Council National Portfolio Organisation

Acknowledgements

Poems are largely drawn from the collections The Living Room (Arc Publications, 1994) and Early Train (Smith / Doorstop, 2011) and from the pamphlets Moving the Stereo (Jackson’s Arm Press, 1993) and A Horse Called House (Smith / Doorstop, 1997). Thanks are due to the following publications in which some of these poems first appeared: And Other Poems, Antiphon, Foolscap, The Gregory Poems 1987 - 1990, The Lancaster Literature Festival Poetry Competition Anthology 1988 & 1990, The New Statesman and Society, The North, Other Poetry, La Otra (Mexico, in translations by Víctor Rodriguez Núñez and Katherine M. Hedeen), Poetry & Audience, Risk Behaviour (Poetry Business 1992 Pamphlet Competition Anthology), Scratch, Seam, Smiths Knoll, Staple, Sunk Island Review. ‘Steven’s Divorce’ won First Prize in the 1988 Staple Open Poetry Competition; ‘Early Train’ won Second Prize in the Tabla Poetry Competition; ‘Driving the Children’ was long-listed for the Bridport Prize (Poetry) 2009; ‘The Sudden Shower’ won Third Prize in the Bridport Prize (Poetry) 1997; ‘Food’ was selected and published by the 2010 Ver Poetry Competition under the title ‘Custard’. ‘The Silence’ won First Prize in the BBC Radio Three Proms Poetry Competition and was broadcast by BBC Radio Three.

Contents

fromMoving the Stereo

Six Venetian Glasses

The Cows

A Lady Learns to Cycle

The Garden

fromThe Living Room

To the Coal Field

Now We Are Married

Map References

The Train Spotter

Into the Loft

Our New Home

Steven’s Divorce

Two Cyclists

A Manager Writes

The Dead-A-Gram

The Forest

How It Works

The Water Diviners

Going Home

Just How Short Do I Want It?

The Road

Mid-Gold

Miss Balcombe’s Orchard

The Old Film

The Living Room

fromA Horse Called House

Seasonal Work

The Lake

The Students’ Room

Summer, 1976

The Wedding

When I Was A Kid

Crockett’s Summer Season

Happy Together

The First Holiday

A Horse Called House

For A Travelling Altar

Geomorphology

fromEarly Train

Poem

The Boy

The Cul de Sac

Pastoral

Sketch of my Father

Dead to the World

Are You Off To Sleep?

The Drinking Boy

Early Train

Family Traits: An Explanation

Fight in a Chip Shop

Food

Goodbye

Hetchins, Rotrax, Mercian

In Praise of Apples

Jennings and Darbishire

Lane

Margaret in the Garden

On Learning a Poem by Peter Didsbury

Photograph: Apple Pickers, 1981

A Short Piece of Choral Music

Song

Song and Dance

The Sudden Shower

Tenor Recorder

Tony

Train Watching

Previously unpublished in book form

The Silence

Apple Picking

Atrocity

Brick-Life

Without Venice

Cutting Back

fromMoving the Stereo

Six Venetian Glasses

We were forced to do Country Dancing,

Tuesday afternoons at Primary.

I hated dancing but once I’d liked it.

At home we played this record of Greek

folk music; blue cover, warped black vinyl.

I’d dance in front of the gas fire to it,

hair in my eyes, shorts slipping down my waist,

simply running up and down the lounge,

running in circles, falling over, Dad clapping,

getting faster, the glass panelled cabinet

rattling with the six Venetian glasses

my Parents brought back from their honeymoon.

The record became worn. We blunted needles

urging sound from it. But I wouldn’t stop.

At five I was a credible extremist,

studying my Father’s sudden tempers.

I’d end up breaking something, later.

The Cows

They are moving across the high shires.

In two or threes? No, in their hundreds,

and they wear no bells. Hoof by cloven

hoof they are stepping out along once

abandoned bridleways, fording

rivers out of sight of bridges.

They grace the rich pastures, the while

content to chew the cud, to ruminate,

to ferment the radical consciousness

of bovine-kind, to hang a long look

on the passer-by, innocent as clouds.

They are waiting.

A Lady Learns to Cycle

(England, 1917)

They led it round the yard and garden

on a long rein.

They fed it oil.

It was black as her jet black boots,

heavy as a gate.

It ticked, shone.

Climbing on it, she felt it shy,

lunge beneath her,

clatter to earth.

They held her up, old men, serious,

shouldered her round,

gentlemanly.

The guns of Passchendaele bellowed.

They held her, still,

then let her go,

and when they let go she advanced

unaided, unattached,

let out a shout.

The Garden

I stalk the raspberries, feeding myself.

My sister is in the blackcurrants.

In fifteen minutes time she will be sick,

violently sick in the coal bunker.

The coal bunker has lost its coal

to ‘gas central heating throughout’

and we hide in it, it’s our pit,

our mine shaft, it descends deep

beneath the dandelion scrub

of the lawn, beneath the fence

enclosing our small-holding.

It travels to a depth at which

we cannot smell the stink of vomit

or see the legendary blue sky

or feel our grubby hunters’ hands

across our eyes, or hear our tongues

babbling the numbers for the hide and seek.

We only know the sudden shadow-cold,

the wood lice squashed by our sandals,

the red eggs of the spiders bursting,

the red bricks spiralling, black with coal,

and the long tunnel of afternoons

pelting into the future like stones

lobbed by bullies.

from