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POETRY FOCUS: ELLIOT HURST

I am pleased this post-referendum Friday in London to feature a surprising new British voice in poetry, Elliot Hurst, a former student of mine. It's a voice that seems to erupt without much interest in decorum or politesse, guided by Surrealism, nihilism, punk, black comedy, the Beats - and, a what have you got, I'm against it - sort of vision - except, the fluent imagery is striking and effective.  It may be indie, but it's not fake.

 Elliot Hurst has a BA in Creative Writing and Film Studies from Kingston University and is currently studying for an MA in Publishing at Oxford International Centre for Publishing Studies. Favourite themes include human behaviour and relationships, consumerism, industry, deterioration and body horror. Photo to follow.  

THE NORTH ZOO
The great apes

were petrol-bombing the

historic North Zoo

eating handfuls out of neighbours'

wheelie bins, for the dinner-dance. 


My eyes became useless,

his scrofulous sore wept

as gauze-eyed delinquent newborns

fraught with refrigerator burns

grizzled for their volcanic counterparts

in the bargain zone. 


Petroleum hag

like the tube worms of the ocean bed

sniffed it out keenly

with her long proboscis.


Tangles of dead weed like flayed crickets

a compact species.

Petroleum hag has her tickets

for the dinner-dance.


Impact on the skull

retained the fragments

within his hood

and stabbed into a thick pulp

like a mollusc's mucous

tangles of seaweed like

clumps of dead black hair

with roast dinner eyes


I have a dream of mass mobility

collected conveyance

sun extinguished his paternal spark

and shone

over his compacted skull.


He stole into the night

with a sixteen-fish roast

and a brach of gherkins

but kept it for himself

and fed his own thick pulp

to babes of the wilderness.


Which reminds me of Ben -

cast out from one wilderness

into another. 



poem copyright the author 2014.
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