Preview: "Loosely"

The last two years, I've collated recent poems in small pamphlets, "2004" and "The Question." This year I wasn't sure whether the poetry I'd written was finished enough for this treatment - yet two sequences I'd written earlier in the year, along with a smattering of individual poems - mean that I'm just putting the finishing touches to a 3rd pamphlet, "Loosely." I guess the poems are "loosely" connected in style and subject, and besides, I like the word. You can download the previous collections here, as a PDF, and I'll make the new collection available in the same way. However, if anyone would like a hardcopy - it should be available by the first week of January - then just email (adrian dot slatcher at gmail dot com) your name & address, and I'll put one in the post.

The contents page, subject to minor change, is here....

CONTENTS

Part 1: Last Lines

To thaw the freezing in our hearts
Twenty Years Left in the Rain
Changing Colours Over Time
The Fear of Sight to the Long Since Blind
We Were Never Good in Water
Of Love and Death in the American Novel
Making out I am grateful after all
In Any Garden But Eden
As the day, so the night
Drinking and Eating All on My Own
Tending the garden for your return
When Every Photograph is Packed Away
But Something Isn’t Loving

Part 2: October

1: “Clusters of birds are making their way south – “
2: “Damn life continues in some unholy way – “
3: “Could I have done things better?”
4: “Where I was when the mood struck – “
5: “Did the tragedy happen offstage?”

Part 3: Other Poems

Stay Here
I, Conservationist
Dog Clouds
The Dream with the Butterflies
The Decemberists
The Ordinary is not Necessary
The End of the Story

...and the most recent poem, "The Decemberists" is below. Happy Christmas

The Decemberists

The year has been the warmest yet
    and we notice the signs -:
It is December, yet half the trees are dressed;
    late autumnal browns amongst the evergreens –
And the late afternoon red sky
    acts as a banding of lights
Blinking through the impatient leaves,
    lighting a runway for birds.

Last week, I woke to find
    a carrion crow -:
Strutting with a Salford air,
    its bright eyes and tongue-beak
Daring the world to approach.
    The city is returning to nature,
And nature returns to the streets –
    gaunt foxes out looking for twilight rucks.