Copyright © Etta Dunn 2010
The right of Etta Dunn to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
Copyright of poems resides with the individual poets.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying or otherwise without permission in writing from the publisher.
ISBN:978-0-9556507-2-7
Illustrations and cover design
by
Etta Dunn
Published by
Fleming
Publications
Glasgow
Quill
to
Quark
Passionate Poets
Provocative Poems
Edited
by
Etta Dunn
Introduction
Quill to Quark is an anthology of poetry by Glasgow University MLitt students. The submissions chosen are the best of the wide range of styles suggested by the title, i.e. everything from Shakespearean Sonnets to poems formatted using computer software such as QuarkXPress.
The word ‘quark’ is a bridge between science and literature. The physicist Murray Gell-Mann decided to call the sub-atomic particles he had discovered ‘quarks’ after reading James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake.
‘In 1963, when I assigned the name "quark" to the fundamental constituents of the nucleon, I had the sound first, without the spelling, which could have been "kwork." Then, in one of my occasional perusals of Finnegans Wake, by James Joyce, I came across the word "quark" in the phrase "Three quarks for Muster Mark." Since "quark" (meaning, for one thing, the cry of a gull) was clearly intended to rhyme with "Mark," as well as "bark" and other such words, I had to find an excuse to pronounce it as "kwork." But the book represents the dreams of a publican named Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker. Words in the text are typically drawn from several sources at once, like the "portmanteau words" in Through the Looking Glass. From time to time, phrases occur in the book that are partially determined by calls for drinks at the bar. I argued, therefore, that perhaps one of the multiple sources of the cry "Three quarks for Muster Mark" might be "Three quarts for Mister Mark," in which case the pronunciation "kwork" would not be totally unjustified. In any case, the number three fitted perfectly the way quarks occur in nature.’
Murray Gell-Mann (The Quark and the Jaguar:
Adventures in the Simple and the Complex).
In this anthology I have attempted to bring together the disciplines of poetry, science and art. It is my belief that there is poetry in science, and science in poetry, and that there is art in both.
Etta Dunn
Foreword
When a poet writes a poem, it lies dormant until a reader reads it. That's when the magic occurs. In that moment the poem lives. Which is why it's my pleasure to invite you, the reader, to connect with this eclectic and delightful mix of poems from the students of the MLitt at Glasgow University.
In these pages you will find playful poems, gritty poems, imaginative poems. But one thing all the poets have in common is that they take their craft seriously. They understand their responsibility to you, the reader.
As I can't in this short foreword mention all the poets, I feel it would be invidious to single out any for particular comment. I have my favourites, of course, and I'm sure that you will too.
But I will give special mention to one of the poets, because she has worked to make this anthology a pleasure to the eye as well as the mind. So on behalf of all its readers I would like to thank the editor, Etta Dunn.
Magi Gibson
Glasgow
July 2010
Seeing Saturn by Karen Ashe
We might see Saturn.
I don’t think so.
We did.
It was surprising
Ice on fire.
Its rings were near-vertical, tilted
rakishly, like a wide-brimmed sun hat.
The sky was a vast sea, endless
as an expert’s ego.
It’s because, he told us
stroking his sun-burned beard,
Jesus-feet tracing circles
in the silvery dust,
of our position, relatively speaking.
We’re beneath it; the earth
has moved.
I tried to decipher
the alphabet of the stars
but it was all Portuguese to me.
The constellations speak
ancient Greek.
Finally star blind
and cross-eyed I tracked
the arc of a passing satellite.
I lay down, felt
the sun on my back.
Persephone by Elinor Brown
a tumbled stone
lodged in a skin of water
sees white noise
parched with liquid
you touch speaking sounds and
taste silt
if as you drifted
a deep sea diver placed a tiny hand
in yours
would you rise
to see him into light?
Springtime up the Nolly by Frances Corr
Springtime up the Nolly
two bottles of Strongbow
and a fishing rod
they greet me every day —
Two regulars by some burning wood
who do their drinking
outdoors
The other day I barely recognised
as one jogged out of context
in running gear
The dark and the light of it
*
In the distance
another procession
snaked up to Lambhill cemetery —
another star burnt out
He’d get mashed
and jump about to Funky town
This time it killed him
The pain and the filth of it
*
Springtime up the Nolly
and the daisies are out
A broken bottle burst my tyre
On foot and pushing
I pass the two regulars
who tell me that I’ll get home
sooner or later
The reluctant breath by Nikki Cameron
A death mask does not come at the end
It starts to form days before
The eyes never open
The skin becomes thin and milky
But moments linger in its shape.
When she laughed at your first step
When she cried at your leaving
A bitter line drawn on your final words
Then the last face is soft as
Lungs harden with drowning fluid
That will stop all inside
Another
Another
Just one more
And end
BRAVE JADE SHOPPING FOR HER WEDDING DRESS by Jill Creighton
I turn away disgusted
Then pay 30p to read
Full Story — Page Four & Five
Can you look?
Can you not look?
A television programme
where you can watch her die, live
like we watched her live, dying
Sitting in a wheelchair,
pushed by Jack, or Max
clutching her Lucozade
What a ratings winner.
What a paper mover.
The fifteen minutes is almost up.
DON’T MISS THE LATEST
Last breath
Much Ado About Love by Etta Dunn
What makes me give my love to thee, not he?
What fanciful property do I find
in thee that others lack, or I don’t see?
Opposing forces of magnetic kind
make the attraction futile to resist.
A comely face and the manners to grace
adorn the stature with which thou art blest,
as do fripperies of the finest lace.
But sightless eyes of love must ask for more
than fleeting superficial beauty and
no depth of thought or spirit to explore.
Thus my soul still seeks its mate to expand,
and, I stand again on the lonely quay,
casting my gaze into the teeming sea.
I cast my gaze into the teeming sea,
watch the males’ mating ritual display,
puffed up and preening, but soon they will be
victims of varnished vamps, gone ere new day.
The soul I seek would never be so bold
as to flaunt in a market such as this.
Such a fine spirit will be in the fold
and that is where I’ll find my Adonis.
I alter my gaze to look heavenward.
Sunshine silvers the edge of a dark cloud
and its ray blinds me, binds me like a cord.
And I hear him, my soulmate, speak aloud,
‘Where art thou? Come to me, come to this place,
this peaceful place, far from the madding race.’
The peaceful place, far from the madding race
is where he weaves spells to astound the world,
where he wove the spell invading my space,
where he writes the words that become unfurled
in the ether as they fly round the earth.
This wizard broke down my defensive walls
with a look, a touch, a portion of mirth
and all was well in the idyllic halls
‘til the wily witch came to haunt the door
that once protected her in time of need.
She hissed, she spat, threw tantrums on the floor,
smashed plates and mirrors and made my love bleed,
so green-eyed was she that she sighed and cried.
So distraught was she that she pined and died.
Aeronautic Assembly by Etta Dunn
Man-mouse Genomix
by Etta Dunn
DNA strands unfurling.
Man-mouse together curling.
What possessed that far gone era
to create such a strange chimera?
Twentieth century genetics:
were those proponents heretics?
Was it their station to mess with Creation?
Genetic manipulation to make a Brave New Nation.
Was Mankind alerted that rodent would be inserted
into the gene pool? No. That wasn’t cool.
Gene insertion – long term cures.
What cost in later years?
They called it advancement
but was it enhancement?
Taking us in forward motion
or back again to the ocean?
Inherited disease now no more,
But through that open door
came another infection,
escaping detection.
Ongoing repercussions.
No global discussions.
Was mankind alerted
that rodent would be inserted
into the gene pool?
No! That wasn’t cool.
Governments deploying forces.
Gaining others’ natural resources.
Too busy, too much vanity
to bother about humanity.
Then stem cell research at a price.
Bits of Man in bodies of mice.
What of species integrity?
This was beyond credulity.
Human embryo in mouse womb?
Imagine the baby boom.
Science had run out of control.
Time for a public poll.
But was Mankind alerted
that rodent would be inserted
into the gene pool?
No. That wasn’t cool.
‘So are we Man or mouse?’
You wail.
‘Both’ I reply with a swish of tail.
‘And… a bit of louse.’
Gaza Conflict by Etta Dunn
Sunday Morning Dreaming by Anne Hamilton
Hear your tread, humming, the jangle of keys
You return with newspapers,
lift me out of the way with a kiss,
grind coffee beans.
I flip cinnamon pancakes onto a plate
“Perfect Sunday morning,” you say, reading the cricket scores.
If my hand is light enough
and my recipe book refined
I will make you a sponge cake, thick with black cherry jam
or – I dither – Madagascan chocolate.
Deftly raining sugar onto eggs that have
sacrificed their sunshine yolks.
I will sift flour like confetti, whisking it to castles in the air.
Strands of angel hair.
Two halves will make a sandwiched whole,
a hot knife keeping the slices perfect,
such melting mixture lingering on the lips
of a delicious kiss.
I will feed it to you, with fat raspberries and clotted cream,
in your dressing gown this afternoon.
Today I won’t care that crumbs will fall
or that The Times still litters the floor.
Gobby by Vicki Husband
Ah wis the gobby
wan in the yard banged oan
aboot oor rights
fir thirty year, aw
that fight got naewhere fast
then it closed like
aw the rest Only
later they found the ‘sbestos
stowed away in
ma lungs, smuggling
ma breath oot, leaving me
little tae go on
The ships Ah built up
knocked me doon in the end
First the cough cough cough
then quickening breath
til ony lang sentence wis
scuppered by wheezing
The wife squanders her
breath on the fags but no here
wi the oxygen
That could blow us aw
tae smithereens Ah couldnae
dae withoot it noo
Ah need it jist tae
dae the daftest o things,
it’s like pitting on
ma sock, pause, sock, pause,
shoe, pause, shoe Cannae go far
Ah’m like a dug on
a lead or wean with
its umbilical cord,
a circle like they
say from cradle to
y’know But Ah’m planning ma
escape jist brooding
o’er the detail
Ah’ve become the quiet
type, nae longer talk
shite, cannae afford
tae Ah’m a man o measured
words, near poetic
The wife says Ah talk
in haikus Can you no jist
gimme peace wuman?
Ah beg of her on
wan o those airless summer
nights when ahm
lying wi the ship
on tap o me breathing in
the coal black sea She
has no reply Her
grey eyes treading water,
watch me slowly drown
make-do-and-mend by Vicki Husband
All I have is - a long shot - his face:
bottom left of frame, features rubbed
with worry, one quick frown that lived on,
a cloud of soot the aftermath of
- no caption - his only prop,
soon gone
Apparently he was a serious man
but polite always polite and great
with animals A real life Doolittle
At twenty two he’d given little thought
to posterity; the adventures I longed to hear
were few
The women were left to recount him
still by still, I demanded him over
again until the stories grew one
and the same; I thumbed them thin
squinted between the heavy grain
searching for definition, spliced them together
and a character stepped out - rear view -
from the fug, hesitated,
walked away from camera - pan-out –
Cue the voice-over:
my mother and grand-mother
bickering over the detail
Who was it always waving?
The character moved too quickly,
my father became grain again
Then once I catch him
in a documentary about the war,
about the horses really and how brave
they were, if there was an animal to be seen
he’d be there and there he was,
talking to a horse, stroking it’s nose
as he turns, I see the cigarette
smoking in his other hand;
I didn’t know that he did
When the reel plays again
- eyes narrowing as he inhales -
I wait to see if he smiles
A Clinical Waste by John Jennett
I held our knitting, corded still
to her contracting belly,
Jellyfish threads down Chiefly Lines from
Mac Neil’s Tartar— Rory.
Stitched with my genetic echoes
of an Irish esquire slain
in 1690 with all sons
but one, at bloody Boyne.
Not before his girl and baby
breathless, slipped through Munster’s fields,
glancing back through trampled corn
for body-hungry Jacobites.
Snugly tucked in good maid’s basket
was ancestral Moses—James—the fragile
link who barely stretched our name beyond
sheer tips of papist’s grimy swords.
Give thanks for their sprint I can extend,
The spider’s web which now suspends
this tepid, slimy handful, still
that hangs in both our pauses.
Shocking perfect tiny toes.
Mistake a twitch; mad glimpse; yet worse
to witness feeble death from fleeting
life and standby helpless.
Fifteen weeks. Too young to see
if he or she, to take a breath,
as birds, regardless, chorused;
anticipating dawn, not death.
Would like to meet Oxford Companion
or a Cambridge Guide. Rifle for some guideline
when its panicked mother can’t resist the urge
to squeeze our child out months ahead of time.
Find refuge in the drama cliché;
“clean towels”, the only prop I take
With scissors—there to shape my nails—
cut free this child I’ve helped to make.
Curl it in a warm-lined box,
no womb, yet if we turn it in,
it’s slung inside a yellow sack
and sent to some remote inferno.
We dig deep, let liberated roots of new-bought tree,
entwine the tiny carcass of our dreams,
and nourish twiggy buds while we consider
the way our son or daughter might have been.
Tide Atlas by John Jennett
Spring past smooth Kintyre
hungry
for the Corryvreckan’s rush;
I know where I’m going.
Knots increase from two to eight
start the giddy vortex
waltzing Scarba’s schist
fanned like bellows up to cliffs.
Headstrong through I plunge the narrows
become the Caileach’s winter shawl;
gulls back-pedal, panting dolphins
race me;
lazy seals are flotsam
in my suds of sweated foam.
Skerries shed me, making shelves for
cormorant’s green ranks
stretching
dry their swimming wings
watching
yellow eyes for slack
The Great Race
A brace against a wall
of swell
that fetches from Cape Breton