Eyewear is very pleased to welcome Ken Edwards (pictured) this Friday. His books include the poetry collections Good Science (Roof Books, 1992), eight + six (Reality Street, 2003), No Public Language: Selected Poems 1975-95 (Shearsman Books, 2006), Bird Migration in the 21st Century (Spectacular Diseases, 2006) and the novel Futures (Reality Street, 1998). The prose work Nostalgia for Unknown Cities is seeking a publisher.He has been editor/publisher of Reality Street Editions since 1993. Edwards is active in music as well as writing: he wrote the text for a piece by John Tilbury for piano, voice and sampled sounds, There’s something in there…, which was premiered in Leeds in 2003, and his music for Fanny Howe’s Spiral was first performed in Brighton and London in 2004. After 35 years in London, he now lives with his partner Elaine in Hastings, on the south coast of England, and works as an editor for the Royal College of Nursing.
Brilliant Sojourn
1
Lagged in our tree-house we turn hands to any
Thing and really get down to it mending the ribs
Bruised unexpectedly by concrete in the garden
Confident of vertical solutions to the
Horizontal crisis hoping to understand the real
Cloud formations that have embellished the imaginary sky
The word-box established anew on its bed of slate
The sloping courts of the spider in the good & mild
Weather bathing the windows from an angle
A schedule established and music is rooted in it
Soft works that require thought before supper
But high winds blow up now the half-moon clinging to
Moving clouds they follow laws of indeterminacy
Which, concentrating on, your brain would lose its bearings
Instead you follow the endless dark lane you keep the faith
You come up thankfully to the Golden Key
2
In the alternative scenario since everyone
Already knows the end the whole thing’s celebrating
Itself like a sonata in certain pursuit of its major triad
This is not open to us from this point
The sojourners will adapt themselves to such
As it appears and to no more than that
If they encounter the transcending element
Of wind they will now buy a woollen hat
If they arrive at water they will find a bridge
The southern sky is blinded by the network
And the form of their emerging words
Also the necessary interruptions
The point is that intention be destroyed
1
Lagged in our tree-house we turn hands to any
Thing and really get down to it mending the ribs
Bruised unexpectedly by concrete in the garden
Confident of vertical solutions to the
Horizontal crisis hoping to understand the real
Cloud formations that have embellished the imaginary sky
The word-box established anew on its bed of slate
The sloping courts of the spider in the good & mild
Weather bathing the windows from an angle
A schedule established and music is rooted in it
Soft works that require thought before supper
But high winds blow up now the half-moon clinging to
Moving clouds they follow laws of indeterminacy
Which, concentrating on, your brain would lose its bearings
Instead you follow the endless dark lane you keep the faith
You come up thankfully to the Golden Key
2
In the alternative scenario since everyone
Already knows the end the whole thing’s celebrating
Itself like a sonata in certain pursuit of its major triad
This is not open to us from this point
The sojourners will adapt themselves to such
As it appears and to no more than that
If they encounter the transcending element
Of wind they will now buy a woollen hat
If they arrive at water they will find a bridge
The southern sky is blinded by the network
And the form of their emerging words
Also the necessary interruptions
The point is that intention be destroyed
3
But we are done with words tonight we’re sick of them
And if we heard a diva & her band were to fulfil
A booking from across the northern current then
Slaking our appetite with fish & rice
We would attend with poised ears
there are some
Serene & highly technical elements in the music
Those exiled Russians have produced
That gladden the austere marshes of the estuary
And even the sojourners fare well with this
New stuff laid over an existing grid
poem by Ken Edwards
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