Other Lives

Thanks to Claire Trevien for drawing my attention to Angela Topping's review of my Rack Press pamphlet 'Spring Journal' which has now been published online in Sabotage Reviews .

Ok, so you're all Joyced out but I've just remembered this I wrote after I last read 'Ulysses' in 2001 when I was living in the North Laines in Brighton. It's absolute rubbish, I know, and deservedly unpublished, but I like it for the fact that it shows I was willing to experiment a little with the style of poetry I was writing back then, and I share it in the spirit of celebrating all things - high and low - Joycean. Just Nipping Out Rain in the air. Face. Cobbles wet. Who’s that? Hannah? No. Girl at school, left bike in her garage. Brother friends with her brother, listened to ska music together. Three saffron rice for price of two. Poor quality olive oil. Wouldn’t sell their best, would they. Perugina. Perugia. Bought selected William Blake there. Simple in Italian. Closed. That aloof young guy unpacking boxes, putting books out. O well. Bit cloudy for sunglasses. Great rack. Tight T-shirt. Wonder about her boyfriend. ...

The First Taste of Freedom For background there’s unbroken blue sky draped with red, white and blue bunting. A trestle table stretches the length of the cul-de-sac, which is unusual, but somehow fits in with the adults hobbling, legs tied, on the playing field. We’re all suntanned and freckled, except Jeffrey, who’s darker, and whose parents have stayed at home. We haven’t even heard of heavy traffic, but we know the rest of the world is celebrating the Jubilee. He takes a piece of cake out of the flag, chews it, and pretends to be sick. Someone’s mum shouts, Don’t do that! He splurts, It tastes of shit, the Union Jack . From 'Waiting for the Sky to Fall', Waterloo Press, 2010. ©2012 Dan Wyke

The Carol Ann Duffy-led project 'Sixty Years in Poems'  in which poets recall a year in verse, published in yesterday's online Guardian (always with 'the leading poets'), reminded me of this piece of juvenilia written years ago obviously with the help of a history book to commemorate my birth-year. 1973 Vietnam; Cambodia; Paris Peace – premature; Picasso dies; Auden after; Greek Coup; Yom Kippur. Oil Crisis; Cod War; Gary Glitter; The Exorcist; Jimmy Osmond; Roger Moore; Princess Anne weds Cpt. Phillips. Joe Bugner; Watergate; Gulag Archipelago; I.R.A.; Edward Heath; V.A.T.; Allende shot by Pinochet. Ulster Strike; Mainland Bomb; Internment; Dad’s sperm; Daniel – Elton John; Some Mothers Do ‘Ave ‘Em. ©2012 Dan Wyke

Well, it's a start. I'll add others as and when I hear about them. Check back from time to time and please send me the names of any literary/poetry magazines and journals that accept email submissions that you know about. Many magazines still prefer postal submissions and will get pretty pissed off if you email them so check before. Some magazines on the list that accept email contributions also operate submission windows. Ambit Envoi Magma New Walk Magazine New Welsh Review Other Poetry Shearsman The Wolf Agenda (trial period) Weyfarers The Cadaverine (under 30) If you're submitting to U.S. journals, Blogalicious has an extensive list that accepts online submissions.

Here's something I wrote after visiting Dungeness on 8th February last year to mark the Centenary of Elizabeth Bishop's birth. Dungeness I think the people live here because the stone has managed to flower, and the way the land and sea and sky form a continuum vaster than the eye can encompass, must allow them to see themselves and each other more clearly. If one were Elizabeth Bishop, one would probably think of the line ‘awful but cheerful’. Scattered over the treeless pebbly flat are dozens of hammered-together temporary-looking bungalows, shell-coloured, hugging the ground, with washing-lines flapping bright loads, and the odd stoved-in, upturned hull. Perhaps as a gesture of solidarity, there are no walls or fences or boundary marks of any sort: only patches of strange, tenacious flora growing against the odds in shingle stretching from door to door: sea kale and sea cabbage, dwarf broom and dwarf hawthorn, twisted and stunted by the unrelenting wind. Above the steep shore...

Unopened letters on the floor in the hallway all afternoon. . A cold wind is scattering the cherry blossom – young newlyweds. . Black knickers flat in the dirt in the middle of the road. . Fly running all over a pile of dogshit. . Originally: Fly feasting on a pile of dogshit. . Ladybird on our bedroom ceiling all summer. . Unable to remember the word for squid in Italian. . Cold night – the warmth of my wife’s sleeping body. . rain bare branch two crows . Lonely night – enjoying the sound of my own farts. . Glimpsed from a train, an old woman in a blue dressing gown. . Winter sunlight, long shadows in the graveyard. . Keeping me awake at night – haiku. . Low-tide, gulls gather on the shoreline. . Even on my sickbed I am full of gratitude for the way. . Forgetting about the haiku I can’t remember, two more occur. . Old-looking homeless guy having a smoke on a sunny bench. . A young woman looks down at her breasts while talking on the phone. . The puttanesca sauce burns to the bottom o...