stack

James Davies

• Publisher: Carcanet Poetry
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9781784104863
• eBook ISBN: 9781784104870
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

stack is a book-length poem, and the début Carcanet title of one of the UK's rising poetry talents. Described by its author as a document of "minimalist interventions", the small descriptions that make up stack capture seemingly – and actually – everyday scenes, "found' images from walks, tabletops, cafés, bus stops, and the conveyor belt of still-lives that is the poet's imagination. Following in the footsteps of minimalists such as Aram Saroyan, Robert Grenier and Robert Lax, Davies has dedicated much of his life as a writer so far to finding innovative ways of saying less. Resisting the poetic trend of showing why ordinary things are magical, his writing shows why ordinary things are ordinary: a packet of beef, the roof of a shed, computer stuff in a computer bag. Yet there is a philosophical aspect to stack. The uncanny precision of its images, the tiny disruptions in grammar and syntax, feel like symptoms of language's attempt, and failure, to reflect the world. Each time words move in to capture it, reality slips: something is added, or something is lost. stack can be read as a list of discrete compositions, a series of connected images, or a set of modular combinations. What binds the poem is Davies's flair for slow, disinterested inspection. The result is a poem that invites its readers to linger, to dally – a welcome curative for our rapid-fire world.

STACK

rocks1

walked into a bar

didn’t a roof

i was holding a bit

i had a broken bit of skirting

stair-rod too

a loud bang

a red big bus

morning following early

on a rock

a hedgehog

leaves

comes

sellotape

a huge thing

i like to walk in a field

the skys

lime

o’clock

leaning next to a grapefruit

bought an electrical item with the wrong lead

crushed a snail

talking to a brick

thinking about a shed

some times a month

bird|||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||no bird

three | square | alarm | clocks

white green blue

white | green | blue

green white blue

rocks2

piglet jumping

glass twix

9 petals

turned the sound down on a video, minimised the tab and left it running

9 hours and then started another one

shouldn’t i be outside watching a snail

what have you got there for lunch

to use paint but not make paintings

jug3

2 buddhas make same soup

one makes it differently

the sea is blue

white green blue

the sea is blue

green white blue

my hat is yellow

little birds can be brown

that little blue bird is brown

that little bird is brown

i moved a seat

no fox¹

i sat in the wind on a 10-ft rock and dropped a big blue ball

she danced ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• TITLE PAGE
• CONTENTS
• STACK
• ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
• COPYRIGHT