Slow Things

Poems About Slow Things

Emma Dai'an Wright, Rachel Piercey, Emma Dai'an Wright

• Publisher: The Emma Press
• Year: 2015
• Print ISBN: 9781910139165
• eBook ISBN: 9781910139219
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

What's so good about being fast? Sometimes a little patience goes a long way, and a slow thing can be just what you need. Slow walks, slow thoughts and slow afternoons in the sun provide inspiration for the poets in Slow Things, an anthology which celebrates taking life at a leisurely pace and existing in the present. As ice, traffic and a giant wooden boulder all advance with a soothing inevitability, the poets invite us to see the beauty in the accretion of tea-stains in a teapot and the unwavering stare of a loris.

Acknowledgements

‘Rhaedr’, by Anna Kisby, was shortlisted in the Aval-Ballan Poetry Competition in 2013.

‘Friday afternoon’, by Alison Brackenbury, was previously published in PN Review 219 and Transitions (ed. Joy Howard, Grey Hen Press, 2015).

An early version of ‘At Limekiln Dock’, by Linda Goulden, was published under the title ‘Ice Berth’ in One Seven Four, the journal of the Inland Waterways Protection Society.

‘L’Ospedale’, by Alex Josephy, was first published in The Sigh Press in 2015.

‘That water’, by Di Slaney, was first published in her pamphlet Dad’s Slideshow (Stonewood Press, 2015).

‘May’, by Elizabeth Barrett, was first published in her collection A Dart of Green and Blue (Arc Publications, 2010).

‘Muzzy McIntyre’, by Geraldine Clarkson, was first published in Tears in the Fence in 2014.

‘Cigarettes’, by George David Clark, was first published in The Yale Review in 2013 and also appears in his collection Reveille (University of Arkansas Press, 2015).

About the editors

Rachel Piercey is a former editor at The Cadaverine magazine and a current editor at the Emma Press. She studied English Literature at St Hugh’s College, Oxford, where she won the Newdigate Prize in 2008. Her illustrated pamphlet of love poems, The Flower and the Plough, was published by the Emma Press in 2013 and her second pamphlet, Rivers Wanted, in 2014.

Emma Wright studied Classics at Brasenose College, Oxford. She worked in ebook production at Orion Publishing Group before leaving to set up the Emma Press in 2012. In 2013 she toured the UK with The Mildly Erotic Poetry Tour, supported with funding from Arts Council England as part of the Lottery-funded Grants for the arts programme.

About the poets

Juana Adcock is a poet and translator. Her work has appeared in Magma, New Writing Scotland, Gutter, Asymptote and Words Without Borders. Her first book, Manca, was selected by distinguished critic Sergio González Rodríguez as one of the best poetry books published in 2014.

Elizabeth Barrett has received several awards for her poetry, including an Arts Council England Writers’ Award in 2000. ‘May’ is from a series of sonnets written following the death of her mother and published in her fourth collection, A Dart of Green and Blue (Arc Publications, 2010).

Alison Brackenbury was born in 1953. Her eighth collection is Then (Carcanet, 2013). A new collection is due from Carcanet in Spring 2016. She has won an Eric Gregory Award (1982) and a Cholmondeley Award (1997), and has broadcast recently on Radio 3 and 4. She lives in Gloucestershire and is, often, spectacularly slow.

Cameron Brady-Turner’s poems can be found in the 2012-13 and 2013-14 Barbican Young Poets’ anthologies and in Kumquat Poetry. He is a member of the Burn After Reading poetry collective and is currently studying for an MA in English at UCL.

Charlotte Buckley’s poems have appeared in Icarus Magazine, The New Writer, Stinging Fly and The Cadaverine Magazine (for which she is a regular poetry reviewer). She came third in the 2013 Basil Bunting Poetry Award, was highly commended in the 2014 Gregory O’Donoghue Poetry Prize, and came second in the 2015 Jane Martin Poetry Prize.

Kay Buckley lives in Barnsley. She was overall winner of the 2014 York Mix poetry competition and her poems have been published in magazines including Antiphon, Butcher’s Dog, Brittle Star and Proletarian Poetry. She loves having Sunday as a slow day – reading while drinking a hot pot of tea.

George David Clark is the author of Reveille, winner of the 2015 Miller Williams Prize from the University of Arkansas Press. He is the editor of 32 Poems and lives in Indiana with his wife and their three young children.

Geraldine Clarkson lives in Warwickshire. Her poems have appeared in The Best British Poetry (Salt, 2014), Furies (For Books’ Sake, 2014), and The Poetry Review. She was the Selected Poet in Magma 58 and won the 2015 Magma Editors’ Prize. She is working on her first collection.

Catherine Temma Davidson is a writer and teacher who grew up in LA and now lives in London with her husband and two children. She has published one novel about myths and Greek women, called The Priest Fainted, and two poetry pamphlets: Inheriting the Ocean and Behind the Lines.

Alexandra Davis lives in Suffolk with her husband and four sons. She teaches English and her poems have been published in Agenda magazine and commended in the 2014 Second Light and 2015 Torriano competitions. Her poetry draws on her roles as wife, mother and teacher. She is also a Zumba instructor.

Isobel Dixon is the author of Weather Eye, A Fold in the Map and The Tempest Prognosticator and co-wrote and performed...

Table of contents

• Copyright
• Contents
• Foreword
• Ellon
• In October in the Kitchen I Listen to My Son
• Object Handling
• When It Hit Me It Was Slow, It Was Multiple
• dining
• Cleaning the Teapot
• 10:15
• Fish House
• Weekend
• Rhaeadr
• Friday afternoon
• At Limekiln Dock
• Colour Job
• Y Gwdihŵ
• Ice Well
• Waking Up the Stones
• L’Ospedale
• Sign at the Start of the Road
• What Great Speed In Guernsey
• That water
• Mid-Atlantic Ridge
• Dear Loris
• Stuck in a Traffic Jam on the M25
• Ode to Getting On
• You’ll Get to Know Time
• May
• The Seventh Deadly Sin
• Muzzy McIntyre
• ‘Wooden boulder (1978)’
• Parkin
• Cigarettes
• Acknowledgements
• About the Emma Press