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    Cusp
    Cusp
    Cusp
    Ebook112 pages1 hour

    Cusp

    By Graham Mort

    ()

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    About this ebook

    Cusp’ this new collection from Graham Mort, features many of the qualities readers have come to admire: keen observation, a feeling for the natural world that echoes and enhances the human interactions in his poems, the sense of the individual as part of a larger society of which we are all implicitly responsible. New here is a different sort of line, which alternates short and longer lines in a step-like formation, a terracing which propels the narratives along. Also included is the remarkable, ambitious long poem, Electricity’, fizzing with rifts on its theme. Mort’s formal rigour, instinctive compassion, and warm humanity shine through in this new book, the first since his acclaimed: Visibility: New and Selected Poems.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSeren
    Release dateFeb 1, 2012
    ISBN9781854116161
    Cusp
    Author

    Graham Mort

    Graham Mort, poet and short fiction writer, is Professor of Creative Writing and Transcultural Literature at Lancaster University. He specialises in literature development work and recent projects have taken him to South Africa, Kurdistan, Vietnam and China. His first book of stories, Touch (Seren), won the Edge Hill Prize in 2011 and his latest book of stories, Terroir (Seren), is currently long-listed for the same prize. A new book of poems, Black Shiver Moss, will appear from Seren in 2017.

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      Book preview

      Cusp - Graham Mort

      Seren is the book imprint of

      Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

      57 Nolton Street, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 3AE

      www.serenbooks.com

      The right of Graham Mort to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

      © Graham Mort 2011.

      ISBN: 978-1-85411-616-1 (EPUB edition)

      A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

      The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Welsh Books Council.

      Cover photograph by Helen Brock.

      Ebook conversion by Caleb Woodbridge.

      for Maggie

      Graham Mort

      Cusp

      Metalwork

      Water’s gleam is pewter

           the woods’ alchemical copper

      bronze and gold stripped

           from the trees’ base-metal

      that iron-old assertion

           showing through as frost scrapes

      back what is rich, trivial

           and new to some lost, deeper

      trope. Everything becoming

           something else: lamentation

      hope, the river falling into

           its own brass throat. Sea trout

      and salmon – lashing silver

           tongues that tease the weir all

      night – wait unpronounced

           in the lacquered pool where

      drab trees reach and meld

           across the straits below and

      days of tainted foam go by

           their dappled flux always unstill.

      Now it’s seen me, the heron

           will unweld: all elbows and knee

      joints it ratchets the uncouth

           contraption of itself into a

      nickel-plated sky. Flight

           seems a doubtful art, each

      wing-beat provisionally

           inventing height; everything

      tentative, untested, proto-

           typical, unreal – except its bright

      steel dart, acetylene eye.

      Dowser

      In his gawky teens he was the butt

           of wit: cack-handed, ginger, skenning

      aflame with acne and a half-fledged Billy

           Fury quiff. What marked him was the lore

      of hidden depths, a wire swan dipping

           on his palms, doing it for Woodbines or

       Park Drive. Then full grown, runt-arsed

           a hazel fork rearing in his fists; he could

      dowse anything from lost drains to

           old foundations’ buried lines of stone.

      Too wayward for mill work or regiment

           he never had a job, paid tax or pension;

      he loved the ferret smell of cash. On

           wet days they found him in taprooms

      hunched over cadged pints, talking

           elvers, ways to bait nightlines, trap moles

      kill rats, lure eels with a drowned cat;

           or he’d be darting it with lads from the

      cattle mart, moleskin jacket adrift, one

           eye closed to find treble six. He fished the

      Greta for sea trout, poached salmon

           from the Lune, kept a sawn-off 4-10 for

      snaffling grouse, started a feud over a

           man’s wife at Mallerstang, divined a Roman

      well at Wray and when they dug it out

           spat sour black water at his own face.

      Once he found a dead girl for the police

           face-down in a foot of peat that had the

      dogs thrown. It got him into bother when

           they found the gun and pheasants in his

      van, when his Jack Russell bitch went

           nuts and bit a copper’s hand to knuckle

      bone. They let him be in the end seeing

           as he could neither read nor write nor

      hardly think ahead of himself; not more

           than the next step, or the next, what with

      all that was underfoot and unsaid.

      Drought

      It seemed a double vision: the

           natural order split along a focal

      plane, those white clouds piled

           at Dunsop Bridge, May blossom

      lush below, boiling from trees

           occluding them, even shrouding

      that fractured half-dead thorn

           with life.

           I drove through aisles of

      cream mantilla lace; a deer

           ran from its murder of young trees

      a kestrel turned above a stricken

           spire of ash, hedgerows babbled

      foam – burst hydrants dousing

           green fires in the bough – until

      the car whined clear, revving

           climbing, stalling, froth-specked

      where the moor’s drift of khaki

           grass began.

           Then sunset’s welding torch

      at the screen showing a

           new elevation: ridges and rivers

      roughcast in pollen-dusted

           bronze where insect corpses pock

       the glass like stammered rain

           that fails us.

           And below, ducking under

      blossom that soaps each

           slender branch’s arms, Lonsdale’s

      wide groove pulls this tributary

           down, draws out this moment the

      way all things are instantly lived

           and past and lie as unremembered

      futures. Then we die, and they are

           tides of a parched mind flooding

      with old prophecies: those gulls

           stacked above an empty farm, its

      churns

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