Two new books from me this September (1)

That’s right. The first is a pamphlet of approximately 15 poems, coming in a limited edition cardboard box (genuine cardboard) with a series of snazzy postcards. This is part of a new series of pamphlets published by Penned in the Margins, the first of which (Bonjour Tetris by Simon Barraclough) is released today.

The title is still a bit up in the air, and I’m hard at work getting the content polished-off too. I’ll have more to say in a couple of weeks, but I can 100% definitely confirm  that this poem might be in it.

Nude III

Our architect is famed for identical buildings:
The School of Broken Necks in Toronto,
The Yahtzee Institute in Bethlehem,
One bleached white, the other grey,
Ours famously fluctuating between the two,
With Hockey teams slamming their ochre girlfriends against its dim corridors,
Its basements humming with password-protected short stories.
Young minds so deep inside the library that the very act of standing up
would be like unplugging the lake.

But if legend is correct
and the higher functions of a university
are built around an ancient reptilian brain
Then surely this is it— a closed burger van,
chronicling the evening’s takings.
The last member of an improv group
Selecting Iron Maiden for the journey home.
Trainee nurses, swinging their arms
under the sepia of the streetlights;
the hold music of the sky.