Three STEMS
Rowan EVANS
1.
O erasure, cloud hackle
forced over head. Is it
valid to be temporary
in a drop, carving
sound from here.
Who says ‘opal green’
still hating so many?
EFFIGIES YARDS HIGH, SUDDEN CHANGES OF LIGHT
Total non-engagement
now not possible, and
how to write. Beauty is
a warrant for constriction
and word ‘ours’. White
gravel, little rabbit bone,
the sun today is shattering.
MODULATIONS OF TENSION, LEVEL BY LEVEL
Into damaged fields
before acquaintance we are
directly aware, in the
hour of vision. A blast
steals the light and dark
pattern of a bank in
this refulgent summer.
ARRESTED IN FLIGHT AT SOME POINT
Our cities with glowing
hand kept safe, no rain
that’s nice. Heat delivered
rapidly to surrounding areas,
transparent garments.
So far as experience extends
there are no exceptions.
A SERIES OF COMPRESSIONS, SCENIC FRICTIONS
Shudder in the next room
as if this could make peace
comissioned by the blaze.
On foot and noun-heavy
they are lit this afternoon,
interminable. At corners
pillars stand gold, empty.
OTHER SIMPLE DIRECT MOVEMENTS
2.
First appeal of linkagessigned onto absence
where
bright-lit
flower in lowland purely
human & now haunted
revolves
each way.
Errors are frequent &
embedded in the idiom
serve to
account
for periods of activity
pro-rosea, stalks of red
become
glad mesh.
Limbs falter on clearest
channels (one word won’t)
car of
amaryllis
that machine translation
striking anti-pose with
arms or
embers.
Project to fall from,
heavenly disc is useless
hung in
view &
fronds from the white
stone make no allowance,
the cast
basilica.
3.
(i)
From rail it makes rail
An invariant language
Century tenderness until ridge
the help examined
A-
long
Nightingale glanced universe
as gas energy
Sunlight uncertain to Nightingale-
light, its glanced halting the
(ii)
bill in limbs!
glass hooks talk
spirit-cars
unlike positions
(iii)
Midway and come headlights.
Indefinite needs
Rocks are everywhere in the world
and if you find one please let me have it
(iv)
stuck here in a ’mobile
with a species of motion
alpine machines to
upper sky dross
no false shrine
cirm cirm
purple haze
all in my brain
Notes
‘Stems’ is an ongoing sequence that seeks a point at which found text, quotation and personally motivated writing become muddied by one another. The poems bear some relation to the collage-form of the cento, and to the procedural ‘Asymmetry’ poems of Jackson MacLow, but also follow lyrics by Denise Riley, Allen Fisher and Tom Raworth where multiple borrowed or assumed dictions become heavily compounded. Major sources for these poems are listed below; in addition, each also contains material repurposed from my notebooks, abandoned poem docs and phone notes.
1.
The lines in capitals are phrases from Antonin Artaud’s The Theatre and its Double (1938), translated by Mary Caroline Richards (Grove Press, 1994); some further words and phrases are from Isaac Asimov’s Robot Visions (Roc Books, 1990). This poem was written at the time of the 2016 EU Referendum.
2.
Words and phrases are quoted from Ezra Pound, The Classic Anthology Defined by Confucius (Harvard University Press, 1954) and Ernest Fenollosa and Ezra Pound, The Classic Noh Theatre of Japan (New Directions, 1959).
3.
This sequence uses processed text from several poems and remembered conversations, as well as misheard lyrics by Bob Dylan and Jimi Hendrix. “Cirm cirm” was an Anglo-Saxon onomatopoeic transcription of the goldfinch’s song, thought to be an origin of the modern collective noun ‘a charm.’
Rowan EVANS is a poet, composer and sound artist who studied at Cambridge University and is the author of freak red (Projective Industries, 2015), cante jondo mixtape (If a Leaf Falls Press, 2017), ODE RHIZOME MOUNTAIN SONG (Moot Press, 2016) and returnsongs (Wide Range, 2012). He received an Eric Gregory Award in 2015 and a selection of his work appears in Penguin Modern Poets 7: These Hard and Shining Things (Penguin, 2018) with Geoffrey Hill and Toby Martinez de las Rivas. Rowan is co-editor of Moot Press, where he co-curates the Anathema reading series, and artistic co-director of the interdisciplinary performance company Fen. Rowan begins practice-based PhD research into modern poetry and ancient language at Royal Holloway this Autumn.