Other Lives

The summer's a washout so enjoy a day out with my poem 'Summer Fete' which was published in the last issue of New Walk Magazine and was reproduced last month on Declan Ryan's blog daysofroses . And yes, I couldn't find the circumflex key!

This week I am really pleased to bring you an award-winning poem by Patricia Ace. So far Patricia's work is most extensively gathered in her HappenStance pamphlet First Blood , and her poem 'Neighbours' was the stand-out poem for me in the latest issue of Poetry News. Sixteen You weren’t the best-looking boy at school; not the brightest or the funniest or in the First Fifteen. You hated cliques. I’m not sure I even remember your name, though it could have been Alex.. I remember plump lips, long lashes my friends would have killed for; a shock of black hair, gelled and spiked. And I remember that windy September afternoon we bunked off from Games and hid in the woods, smoking and talking beneath the susurrus of turning leaves until conversation lulled and you looked at me. Roughly you pinned me against the trunk of the tree, so close I could smell its sap, its bark biting my back through my thin school blouse, streaking the white with green. The surprise as your flesh spran...

This week I'm really pleased to be able to reproduce Ben Wilkinson's version of Eugenio Montale's short lyric 'Il Balcone'. The poem is a favourite of mine and one which I've tried translating before, though never as well as this. The Balcony after Eugenio Montale Remember those nights I’d linger below as you stood in the stars and we’d talk of leaving, as if auditioning for the part of Romeo and fluffing my lines as usual? Now on the opposite side I lean smoking and think on that handful of chances. The latticework of some distant tower block a chessboard that’s cleared after stalemate. Somewhere beyond a long flight’s expanses you spark a Zippo and light one up. Here it starts raining as I hang in the moment, turn towards this window’s squaring of dark. © Ben Wilkinson, reproduced by permission of the poet Ben Wilkinson was born in Stafford, Staffordshire in 1985. He read English and Philosophy at the University of Sheffield, and was awarded an MA in Writing...

Extranjero Ten years on and perfection's lost its distant lustre. My accent seeps away. Every few minutes I let some vowels tug me back home, back towards the cadence of who I am or was or was and am. 'Inventing Truth' is available from HappenStance Press . Matthew Stewart also blogs at Rogue Strands .