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    The Latest Noel
    The Latest Noel
    The Latest Noel
    Ebook70 pages32 minutes

    The Latest Noel

    By James Ward

    ()

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    About this ebook

    The Latest Noel is a collection of poems on subjects as diverse as British Summer Time, car boot sales, the 20th century thinker Georges Bataille, the connection between bird watching and waterfalls and Marxism, Valentine's Day, English folklore, Magpies, extraterrestrials visiting the Earth, and Christmas. If you're a fan of the 'I feel pain more deeply and sensitively than anyone who's ever lived' type of verse, it probably won't be your cup of tea.

    But if you're not ... well, who knows?

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCool Millennium
    Release dateJan 2, 2018
    ISBN9781386799474
    The Latest Noel
    Author

    James Ward

    James Ward is the author of the Tales of MI7 series, as well as two volumes of poetry, a couple of philosophical works, some general fiction and a collection of ghost stories. His awards include the Oxford University Humanities Research Centre Philosophical Dialogues Prize, The Eire Writer’s Club Short Story Award, and the ‘Staffroom Monologue’ Award. His stories and essays have appeared in Falmer, Dark Tales and Comparative Criticism. He has an MA and a DPhil, both in Philosophy from Sussex University. He currently works as a secondary school teacher, and lives in East Sussex.

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      Book preview

      The Latest Noel - James Ward

      The Red Waterfall

      AN ARMED REVOLUTION of liquid

      Presaged by a quickening,

      Mysterious only to things adrift.

      The future’s hammering.

      Terrifying hiss of a cold volcano,

      Importunate howling sky,

      Panic horror at an overload,

      And Bacchus steps out from the rapids’ thigh.

      One country’s screaming headline

      Is another’s tedium.

      Tedium, this, for the alderflies,

      For the willows whispering in the sun,

      For the moorhen taking her ease.

      All safe beyond the river’s feuds,

      Secure in secure territories,

      Unconcerned by the news.

      Paramecium, Volvox, Astrianella -

      Monocelled peasants, escaping the fish.

      Simocephalus, Ostracod, Keratella –

      Singing as they clear the ledge:

      "Now away with all your superstitions!

      And the masses arise, arise!

      We’ll change for good the old conditions!

      And stir the dust to win the fight!"

      A new world is ledgered in a bedlam of foam:

      And over each new transaction a rainbow’s hope.

      And I Would Swing Out

      AND I WOULD SWING OUT

      over the whole sheep-riddled land

      spitting snowdrops and croci

      like little blobs of gum,

      my palms spread wide like a butterfly’s,

      and arc up madly in the contours of the trees,

      and down their most shadowed secret sides,

      entirely soil-bound until the last.

      And when the sheep averted their eyes,

      I’d swing out again anew

      over the whole fabulous sheep-riddled land.

      British Summer Time

      WE’RE LOOKING FORWARD to a growth in light,

      to the separateness of things again;

      to stitchwort from the mulch at night

      and Phoebus smacking window panes.

      The day-saving hour sinks to the soil

      With her heraldry of dark and cold

      to her summer-retreat of mineral oil,

      where forests lie petrified in stone.

      Tonight Proserpina looks up at the sun,

      answers her phone, somewhere Antipodean,

      checks her watch, slips running-shoes on,

      then sets off for a lightening horizon.

      It’s 1am. Every British index finger

      spells out three hundred and sixty degrees.

      The underground gates close on the mad, old, grey hour

      and a numinous girl sings of lupins and bees.

      Scene From a School Chess Club

      I CRIED WHEN THE NEIGHBOUR’S dog died, he said.

      Then smiled. I may not even have heard him right:

      I was opening King’s Gambit Declined at the time,

      And my hearing’s not perfect, I know.

      But it made me remember what I knew about him;

      Not much. Just: about a year ago, when he’d been twelve,

      He’d had his problems with his dad. That’s all. He said it with

      A dismissive laugh, an I was daft in those days snort.

      But I got the impression those days weren’t so long ago,

      That somewise they still clung to him, that

      He was still a doggy-death crier, deep down inside.

      And although I’m in reasonably good emotional health

      (I think), hearing his words, I almost

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