Popular Song E-Book

Harry Man

• Herausgeber: Nine Arches Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 55

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2024

Beschreibung

Popular Song, the eagerly awaited debut from Harry Man, is an electric adventure into science, science fiction, poetry and pop culture. Here we encounter the Invisible Man's search for meaning, traverse time and space through the music of David Bowie, find Wordsworth water-skiing with a clownfish, Ed Sheeran's superabundant love of typography, and find a new connection with our past by re-watching The Empire Strikes Back in reverse. This collection captures both the unearthly beauty of supermarket night shifts and the peculiar dreamscapes of birds of the British Isles – as well as how the term 'popular' has the potential to both unite and divide, to move from current obsession to obsolescence and nostalgia. These poems connect with a wonder-filled verbal and melodic energy, considering both the fragility of our position on Earth as well as the hold of our intimacy while we are still bound by its gravity. Playful and cosmic, Popular Song is a jukebox filled with new favourites, beckoning readers out onto the dancefloor of the literary, the unexpected, and the joyful.

Leseprobe

Popular Song

Popular Song

Harry Man

ISBN: 978-1-913437-90-9

eISBN: 978-1-913437-91-6

Copyright © Harry Man, 2024.

Cover artwork: ‘Comfort Zone’ © Lerson Pannawit, 2023.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Harry Man has asserted his right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published in April 2024 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14, Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,

Great Central Way, Rugby.

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Printed on recycled paper in the United Kingdom by:

Imprint Digital.

Nine Arches Press is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

Contents

The Invisible Man Makes a Start

The Gists

Reading Tennyson During the Midnight 30 Break of the Night Shift

At the Only Takeaway in Town

Naked as a Pork Loin Steak in a Poppy Field, I Consider a Horse from the Future

Broadleaf

Ground Truthing

Things to Consider in the Design of Your First Space Suit

Astronauts on a Seven Month Flight to Mars Offer Reasons to Feel Optimistic Despite the Concerns of Certain Experts

The Moon Is a CD of Bowie’s Greatest Hits

Love Letter

Sorry I Reached for The Empire Strikes Back in Reverse When Almost Any Other Analogy Would Have Been Easier to Understand and Significantly More Sensitive Given the Circumstances

The Airborne Gooseberry Boy Hovers in the Shadows Cast by the Feathers of a Broken Pillow

The Last Words of a Love-Sick Time Machine Pilot

Now Available on Cassette

If Xanadu Did Future Calm

Who Dares Challenge Me? The President and CEO of the Company that Emits More CO2 than Any Other in the World’s Statement on Third Quarterly Earnings Translated Using the Language of 90s Cult Boardgame The Legend of Zagor

That Chapter on Tree-Spotting

Alphabets of the Human Heart in Languages of the World

A Short Glossary to Russian Code Words Found in Ukraine

The Gekkering

#1984

Arnie’s Poetica

“I water-skied lonely as a clownfish”

Pressing On

Keep Going

Almost There

Pitching

Nightbreak

Night Meditation for Sleepless Birds of the British Isles

Then

Notes

Acknowledgements

About the author and this book

“Insanity is the ability to do the impossible.

Magic is the will to.”

– Inger Christensen

The Invisible Man Makes a Start

Having turned an old cushion cover into a cape

I took Nicholas, my cousin’s kid, and flew him

like Superman all the way to the newsagents

where he moved a Dime bar, some AA batteries

and a copy of The Observer with his mind.

For years now I’ve spent much of my time

on what is and what isn’t and played

the odd hand at a Grosvenor Casino where

my uncle who’d been recently widowed bet

the month’s mortgage on red and arguably

won. I put pressure on myself to read

the classics, to come up with answers

in graveyards to impossible questions. But

the last time I slipped into a pew unseen,

I sneezed. And following a round of denials

I found myself having to explain

how I became invisible – which understandably

nobody believed. But a few months later

the archbishop visited to smile flatly

at the cameras and kiss

where I’d stood in my trainers.

Accidents happen as they say

but I was glad this one brought everybody together.

Once too quick to find a seat in first class

I’d forgotten how transparent I’d become.

Working for a magician was short-lived:

I was smacked in the eye when I couldn’t

catch in the stage lights the twist of an aluminium

hoop. So here I am now, out of sorts,

photobombing tourists, pretending

I am the wind or the voice of inner thoughts.

Sometimes I think of myself as a kind of luck

and from time to time a dog will sniff then lick

the air of my hands, or a jogger will find uncanny

a chorus to their hum and will leave us both

to wonder how this song came to mind.

The Gists

I don’t know how to make the sense climb

across the words to you: first light or its feeling

as the 5:32am final pause of the night comes, when

I’m tucking away my plastic-wrap cutter, trying

not to crush the stay-at-home exemption letter that if

pulled over I’ll have to give to the Cleveland Police.

The whole country signed on behalf of all of us by the Prime

Minister’s photocopier and the wrens’ voices ricochet across

yellow hashed ‘No Stopping’ spaces and in my gloves

there’s a sting and semi-dry blood flakes into the inter-

digital valleys of my fingers, as it did this past hour,

shelving the red Fanta, the Relentless, the orange

profiteroles, finding my own yoghurt-stained brand

of insomniac’s euphoria. This is the one remaining hour

when the automated floodlights lose their bright alert

and the duty manager sucking on his vape could just

as easily be on the carrier deck in Top Gun, the sun-shocked

cherry clouds of kerosene. 6:00 I’ve learned lasts as long

as twelve boxes in a cage of unsmoked bacon and lardons

until 7:00, when I get to swipe out, come home, make

breakfast-supper, sit with you on the bed, you with your

porridge and fruit, me with my reheated cauliflower,

wanting to know – learning you’ve had no dreams during

my shift, while Darwin was trying to tell me forever how

to stack sausages as his box of needlessly more expensive own-

brand chipolatas split open, forming an exhausted conga line

by the thirty minute meals, ripped boxes

and black puddings. The pity of it, the beauty.

I missed you all night, I hear myself say and it’s true.

I fold my arms into my hair, lean into your voice resonating

through your chest, my head

and fall asleep to a new drama about to hit

our screens on BBC Breakfast, Let’stake a look at this clip...

Reading Tennyson During the Midnight 30 Break of the Night Shift

On top of the hill in the Grindon rain,

the past year and the new year came

and met, exchanged blows, and I

could feel them wetten my skin,

burn through my ezcema’d hands. 2020

and ’21 both subduct and cling

to each other’s work-from-home.

Prevention’s deeper than the paper’s fold,

the labs, the cases, the parties, control.

Science enough and exploring,

Matter enough for deploring,