Other Englands

A short blog here, as the quotidian is intruding, but it's an idea I hope to come back to.

I've always rejected the idea of consistency in my work, such as it is. I think I've played around in the toy box a bit too much to have anything which could recognisably be considered my voice. Others disagree. But, having been at this for twenty odd years now, I have noticed that there's a few thematic consistencies which bob regularly to the surface.

I blame Roy Fisher, as I have done elsewhere on this blog, for getting me going in this regard, but I always seem to circle round the idea of alternate realities, or histories, or concurrent, different worlds which lie under the surface of this one. L39 was pretty much all about this, and it's an idea I've returned to again and again, I found myself doing it again the other day with this poem (to be continued, when I've a bit more time: 

Hesketh Out Marsh

 

desiring the follow- lines

the nowhere half-stops

the old ghost-walks

 

suggestion of edges

out in the haze

 the shine beneath you

 

a liquid, refractory air

the two dimensional world

rhombuses of daylight

 

the sense of walking

right into a horizon

and asking

 

what do we look for

when we lose ourselves

 in clouds of birds

 

a protective charm

tern-flight as spell

binding the air into knots

 

knitting the world together

stitching the air to the land

 

and

later I realise I’ve

brought something of the

marsh back with me

 

as down streets

elsewhere the gathering dark

bunches and follows

 

the coiled dark circus

rolls over  the cobbles

building and engulfing

 

and the uncertain halo

of marsh light

the memories of curlew cry

of water-spells

of empty skies

hold it back