Feature Sunday #1

 

Spines shout their yellow prayers from shelves that I tilt my head back to look at. A bright crack in the sky warms behind my ears and burns a hole in the carpet. I cling to the light beam, …

Source: Little Bookshop

First of a new series to highlight some of the work I’ve most enjoyed on WordPress over the last week. There might be one, two, three, four different people I might highlight each week, but for this first one I’m going to mention a new blogger who needs some attention.

 

“Little Bookshop” is a poem you should read out loud. The language is very visceral, almost sticky. Lines like “Ghosts grab and drag/me down stairs, past thick, black seas” fill your mouth completely. Which is fitting, as the whole poem is about language and it’s very physical realisation, brought to life with great imagery.

“Jars of larynges” Can you picture larynges in a jar? The best thing is, I’ve never tried to before. It’s a unique image, and makes a change from a lot of the cliche I see on a regular basis.

“Rods stacked with tongues” Again, if you take a moment to pause on this image, you realise how bizarre and lasting these words become. All slopping up against each other, babbling and slurping. Mmm. Gross, but kind of fascinating.

The poem has an almost Gothic feel, with a very Romantic epiphany to finish on, but if the themes are eternal, the style is very modern, and quite meta. Throughout the poem there are reflections on writing as an art, or as a method of finding your voice. The narrator is pulled down into what appears to be this distorted world of language, with an upside down Tower of Babel. In a ditch effort to escape what seems to be quite dark and ethereal, the narrator pulls out a pen and stabs into the dark.

It rang true, because that sounds like every time I take up a pen, or put my hands onto a keyboard. One lovely stab in the dark.

You can check out more poetry and other writing here, at Bruised Knees.

I’ll be featuring someone next Sunday, so get writing, it might be you.