My Family and Other Superheroes E-Book

Jonathan Edwards

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

Seitenzahl: 47

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

My Family and Other Superheroes introduces a vibrant and unique new voice from Wales. The superheroes in question are a motley crew. Evel Knievel, Sophia Loren, Ian Rush, Marty McFly, a bicycling nun and a recalcitrant hippo - all leap from these pages and jostle for position, alongside valleys mams, dads and bamps, described with great warmth. Other poems focus on the crammed terraces and abandoned high streets where a working-class and Welsh nationalist politi is hammered out. This is a post-industrial valleys upbringing re-imagined through the prism of pop culture and surrealism. If the author's subjects have something in common with RS Thomas, or even Terry Street-era Douglas Dunn, his technique and approach owe at least as much to contemporary American poets like James Tate and David Wojahn. "Serious, hilarious and a beautiful event, My Family and Other Superheroes offers the reader enchanting generosity, an alert expansiveness, deep skill, unaffected surprise and pure joy. I have rarely read a poetry collection that captures and transforms the magic of our ordinariness so superbly and honestly." - David Morley

Leseprobe

My Family and Other Superheroes

JONATHAN EDWARDS

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 2014

ISBN: 978-1-78172-162-9

ISBN: kindle: 978-1-78172-164-3

ISBN: e-book: 978-1-78172-163-6

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 painting:‘Cock-a-Hoop’ by James Donovan, http://jamesdonovanart.com/

Printed in Bembo by Bell & Bain Ltd, Glasgow.

Contents

1

My Family in a Human Pyramid

Evel Knievel Jumps Over my Family

Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren in Crumlin for the Filming of Arabesque, June 1965

The Voice in which my Mother Read to Me

The Death of Doc Emmett Brown in Back to the Future

Half-time, Wales vs. Germany, Cardiff Arms Park, 1991

How to Renovate a Morris Minor

Bamp

Building my Grandfather

Lance Corporal Arthur Edwards (1900-1916)

My Uncle Walks to Work, 1962

2

Anatomy

View of Valleys Village from a Hill

View of Valleys High Street through a Café Window

Colliery Row

USA Family Kebab House, Merthyr Tydfil

Owen Jones

Raskolnikov in Ebbw Vale

X16

Chartist Mural, John Frost Square, Newport

Capel Celyn

In John F Kennedy International Airport

FA Cup Winners on Open Top Bus Tour of my Village

3

Girl

Welsh National Costume

Us

The Doll

Decree Nisi

Jack-in-the-Box

The Bloke in the Coffee Shop

Aquafit

4

Bookcase Thrown through Third Floor Window

Restaurant where I am the Maître d’ and the Chef is my Unconscious

Rilke at War

Seal

The Hippo

Flamingos

Cheerleaders

Bouncers

Nun on a Bicycle

The Bloke Selling Talk Talk in the Arcade

Starbucks Name Tag Says Rhian

The Girls on the Make-up Counter

Karaoke

Brothers

The Boy with the Pump-action Water Pistol

The Performance

Holiday

On the Overpass

Acknowledgements

1

My Family in a Human Pyramid

My uncle starts it, kneeling in his garden;

my mother gives a leg up to my gran.

When it’s my turn to climb, I get a grip

of my bamp’s miner’s belt, my cousin’s heels,

say Thank you for her birthday card as I go,

then bounce on my nan’s perm and skip three rows,

land on my father’s shoulders. He grabs my ankles,

half holding me up and half holding me close.

Here he comes, my godson, Samuel Luke,

passed up until he’s standing in his nappy

on my head. And now to why we’re here:

could the Edwardses together reach a height

that the youngest one of us could touch a star?

Sam reaches out. He points towards the night.

Evel Knievel Jumps Over my Family

A floodlit Wembley. Lisa, the producer,

swears into her walkie-talkie. We Edwardses,

four generations, stand in line,

between ramps: Smile for the cameras.

My great-grandparents twiddle their thumbs

in wheelchairs, as Lisa tells us to relax,

Mr Knievel has faced much bigger challenges:

double-deckers, monster trucks, though the giraffe

is urban legend. Evel Knievel enters,

Eye of the Tiger drowned by cheers,

his costume tassels, his costume a slipstream,

his anxious face an act to pump the crowd,

surely. My mother, always a worrier,

asks about the ambulance. Evel Knievel

salutes, accelerates towards the ramps.

I close my eyes, then open them:

is this what heaven feels like,

some motorcycle Liberace overhead,

wheels resting on air? Are these flashes

from 60,000 cameras the blinding light

coma survivors speak of? Before he lands,

there’s just time to glance along the line:

though no one’s said a thing,

all we Edwardses are holding hands.

Gregory Peck and Sophia Loren in Crumlin for the Filming of Arabesque, June 1965

Sunday. The crowd beneath the viaduct

waves banners made from grocery boxes, bedsheets:

Welcome to the valleys Mr Peck!

Wind turns their chapel dresses into floral

parachutes; their perms don’t budge an inch.

The emotion of it’s too much for one girl’s

mascara. We love you Miss Loren! My father

parks away from them, around the corner,

in his brand new car, a ’30s Lanchester,

with stop-start brakes, a battery he shares

with a neighbour. All sideburns and ideas, a roll-up

behind one ear and a flea in the other

from my gran for missing Eucharist,

he coughs and steps down from the running board,

as two Rolls-Royces pull up opposite.

Gregory Peck, three years after being

Atticus Finch, steps from one, says Good morning.

From the other – it isn’t! – it is, wearing her cheekbones.

My father’s breakfast is nervous in his stomach,

but he grabs his Argus, pen, and Yes, they’ll sign.

Her high heels echo away through the whole valley.

That’s how my father tells it. Let’s gloss over

how his filming dates aren’t quite the same as Google’s,

the way Sophia Loren formed her Ss

suspiciously like his. Let’s look instead

at this photo of the crowd gathered that day,

he walked towards to share those autographs,

his fame. There, front and middle, with her sister,

the girl he hasn’t met yet – there. My mother.

The Voice in which my Mother Read to Me

isn’t her good morning, good afternoon, good night voice,

her karaoke as she dusts, make furniture polite voice,

her saved for neighbours’ babies and cooing our dog’s name voice.