Davey Dreamnation

A few months ago I was asked to be part of a renga with Keiji Minato (a Kyoto-based poet whom I had the great pleasure to meet last year) and another Japanese poet named Hiroshi. We wrote ku in turns, with Keiji translating between Hiroshi and myself. Here’s what we wrote. The letters in brackets [...]

Well they said we’d never make it. This, the nineteenth issue of Cordite Poetry Review, has turned out to be our biggest and most varied so far for 2004. With nineteen poems (appropriately enough) plus a collection of Slivers by Ian McBryde, Anti/Heroes is packed with more poetic moments than a tin of sonnets.
Speaking of [...]

& if on reaching Hiroshima Station
You step off a bullet & wander out
Into the aftermath: a diorama for
Which you have no name yet here
At the beginning of your tranquil
21st century journey by tram these
Tracks that hold you upright squeak
& scream with sixty years of shame
Like destiny still wooden carrying
That horsey scent rattles somehow
They survived beneath [...]

Things move quickly in the world of publishing, let me tell you. Not one week since my poems “kyoto crow(s)” and “tonkatsu zen” appeared in nthposition but blow me down, they’ve decided to include “kyoto crow(s)” in an anthology, called ‘In the criminal’s cabinet’. It’ll be a book, and it’ll be out in October. Jeepers! [...]

Today two of my poems, kyoto crow(s) & tonkatsu zen, have been published in the very kewl online magazine, nthposition. The site is not just about poetry: there’s articles, rants and a downloadable Axis of Evil Cookbook, containing recipes from Iran, Iraq and North Korea (though as the editors point out, there are fewer North [...]