Good morning, poetry lovers, and welcome back after the Easter hiatus (I was planning to post poems of the day over the break, but was stymied in the event by a wobbly internet connection - apologies).
I'm delighted that so many seemed to enjoy Friday's Don Paterson poem, and decided to follow up today with another - very different - contemporary favourite of mine: Look We Have Coming to Dover! by Daljit Nagra. Nagra won the Forward prize for best individual poem with this in 2004, and it's the title poem of his first full-length collection, which was published this year - I reviewed it back in February, and was blown away by it. I love the exuberance of his language, which reminds me very strongly of Dylan Thomas (particularly Under Milk Wood). Hope you like it too.
Look We Have Coming to Dover!
So various, so beautiful, so new - Matthew Arnold, "Dover Beach"
Stowed in the sea to invade the lash alfresco of a diesel-breeze ratcheting speed into the tide with the brunt gobfuls of surf phlegmed by cushy, come-and-go tourists prow'd on the cruisers, lording the waves.
Seagull and shoal life bletching vexed blarnies at our camouflage past the vast crumble of scummed cliffs. Thunder in its bluster unbladdering yobbish rain and wind on our escape, hutched in a Bedford can.
Seasons or years we reap inland, unclocked by the national eye or a stab in the back, teemed for breathing sweeps of grass through the whistling asthma of parks, burdened, hushed, poling sparks across pylon and pylon.
Swarms of us, grafting in the black within shot of the moon's spotlight, banking on the miracle of sun to span its rainbow, passport us to life. Only then can it be human to bare-faced, hoick ourselves for the clear.
Imagine my love and I, and our sundry others, blared in the cash of our beeswax'd cars, our crash clothes, free, as we sip from an unparasol'd table babbling our lingoes, flecked by the chalk of Britannia.
