Manson/Mendoza in para·text magazine

There are some extracts from the sequence WINDSUCKERS & ONSETTERS: SONNOTS for Griffiths, by Peter Manson and Mendoza, in the new issue 5 of para·text magazine, edited by Laura Elliott an Angus Sinclair.  Other contributors include Rowan Evans, Laura Elliott, Jeremy Allan Hawkins, Sarah Hayden, Steven Hitchins, nick-e melville, Drew Milne, Jessa Mockridge and Richard Skelton. £6.50 + postage.  Many thanks to the editors.  The complete WINDSUCKERS & ONSETTERS sequence is due soon as a book from MATERIALS.

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Poems in Causeway / Cabhsair

I have two poems, “1/ still life in the yolk” and “14.5.17 (for John Hall)” in volume 9, issue 1 of Causeway / Cabhsair, a magazine edited from the University of Aberdeen by Oliver Tong and Lily Greenall.  The issue also includes work by David Wheatley, Sheena Blackhall, Helen McClory, Kenneth Steven, Deborah Moffatt and many others.  Thanks to the editors.

After Moreau

Free Poetry Scotland Anthology

I’ve edited a pamphlet anthology of current Scottish poetry for Martin Corless-Smith’s FREE POETRY imprint in Boise, Idaho.  The poets included are Dorothy Alexander, Christina Chalmers, Calum Gardner, Katy Hastie, Colin Herd, MacGillivray, nick-e melville, Iain Morrison, Nisha Ramayya and Kathrine Sowerby.  The publisher encourages the reproduction of this chapbook and its free distribution, ad infinitum.

Here are electronic copies of the anthology files:

Free Poetry Scotland Anthology (458k pdf) [edited 26 March: some formatting improved]

Free Poetry Scotland Cover (52k pdf)  [edited 15 March: the cover link should work now!]

Thanks to Martin, and to Colin Johnson and Tessy Ward for their work on the anthology.

 

In the storm (from Théophile Gautier)

In the storm

from Théophile Gautier

The barque is small and the sea immense,
the wave throws us up to the sky in anger,
the sky, in madness, sends us back to the flood:
let us pray on our knees, next to the broken mast!

Between us and the tomb there is only a single plank:
perhaps this evening, in a bitter bed,
under a cold shroud, made of white foam,
we will go to sleep, our vigil kept by the lightning!

Flower of paradise, Our sainted Lady,
so good to sailors in peril of dying,
becalm the wind, make the waves go quiet,
and push with a finger our skiff towards the port.

We will give you, if you save us,
a beautiful dress made of silver paper,
a painted altar-candle weighing four pounds,
and, for your Jesus, a little Saint John.

Untitled (from Mallarmé)

from Mallarmé

Stroked by success
and in the narrowest of gloves,
Édouard Dujardin requests
that around nine o’clock, the third

of March, not even your shadow endorsed
by a coat of diverse spitballs!
you visit, eleven, Chausée
D’Antin, his poetry bookshop:

THE REVIEW which is bruited
INDEPENDENT, Sir, is holding
a housewarming golden as
the gas in its elegant premises.

(1888)

For a baptism (from Mallarmé)

For a baptism

from Mallarmé

If, subtle one, the little nose
dazzling, drowned in such
candour of guessed-at laughter
as this lace half-opens upon,

the filial instinct grabbed you,
prideful, but the second one
to resemble in her low-key
wit your blonde grandmother,

keep safe, from baptismal fonts,
that it might volatilise
miraculously into words
native and clear as a breeze,

mademoiselle Mirabel,
the grain of salt on your tongue.