Having arrived like a blast of janwar win, Stuart Paterson has departed southwards, my liver waving him a fond farewell at the border. Paterson is a fine poet whose voice has been stilled these last eight or so years. Let's hope we hear it again as he is a rumbustuous and thorny fellow who writes with insight, flair and humour. I'm sure he would not mind me reprinting one of his poems here to show what we're all missing.
Surface
By Rydal Lake we're watching
acrobatic ducks pose dives
for perfect tens.
Cacophanies in cars
chunder wildly near to where we are,
impatient children dashing
mindlessly. Above, no gulls
threaten theft, no ferries sidle
up & nuzzle harbour-side,
but there's a feel of Scottish
west coast madness lurking
just beneath the picture perfect
skin of greens, blues and browns.
Perhaps it isn't where we are
but where we were in certain
conversations while enormous
unseen clocks stopped their roatation
for a moment only, whirring
in my ears like grinding turbines
on a ferry slowly going
ever out of sight, and west.
8 comments:
he looks like a right nutcase!! are you sure he writes poems?
Oh very nicely done, and 'chunder' - what a great word!
Interesting. I've always loved the word "cacophony".
In case you missed it, I politely requested that you add your "Bear" poem back over in my little corner of the world.
Is that you with the woolly hat?
i thought shug was the guy with the glasses???? looks like him in the pics down the side?????
Yes, he is indeed a right nut case, Barman. That very same night he took 17 photos of the same cat on the same armrest over a period of five hours.
Interestingly enough, mere seconds after this fine portrait of the poets was captured, Paterson was unceremoniously hustled off of Bank St. at the fully-extended length of a policeman's telescopic baton. His 'crime'? Attempting to photograph, with one hand, the onrushing pipe band while cradling a pint of bass in the other. Fortunately, no beer was spilled & the two fine poets emerged unscathed to rush north to Penpont & lashings of free haggis & bevy. Huzzah!
frreeeeeeeeeeeeeeddoooooooooooooommmm
There wasn't much freedom in my duvet, I can tell you.
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