here's a poem and a flash fiction...some browsers may mangle the line breaks
******
THE CRETAN WIFE
I was accompanied by my wife, who was fifteen years my junior and spoke with a Cretan accent which the others found either disturbing or mysterious, depending on whether they came from the islands to the north or to the south. As we passed down the streets of ancient villages I often caught sight of the men staring at her with expressions of both intense attraction and repulsion.
She had begun to have occult dreams and waking visions. She saw people walking through doorways that no longer existed, ghosts seated at table in full sunlight, triremes making their way along the coast, half-naked warriors from the Peloponnese sprawling by the riverside, their helmets and shields filmed with dust. She said she had listened to an hour-long conversation on a telephone that had long since been removed from the hallway of the small hotel in which we were staying, a conversation between an irate mother and her wayward daughter in Piraeus in 1921.
This unexpected activity left her drained of energy yet nervy and alert at the same time. It made her so languid that she moved slowly and sensually, her limbs relaxed, her black hair loose. A dark erotic charge flowed from her and I burned fiercely within its radius. Our lovemaking became strangely violent. She would display herself, insouciant and passive, whilst recounting her latest dream or vision. This would excite me, and the more she babbled the more aroused I became. Even in the midst of our passion she would continue her breathless narrative.
For months we travelled on the mainland, through the mountains, along the coast, staying only in villages and small towns, never in cities; and we moved from one island to another, without haste, without plans, without destination.
********
83
Boticelli cherubs
hunted down to extinction
for their silky skins
to be turned into ladies' lingerie
and angels too
trapped and decapitated
till none was left
except in folklore
their powdered bones dissolved
in aphrodisiac tinctures
every part used
even the sigh the last breath
crushed from their lungs
smelling of hyacinth
and bubbled through champagne
The Shining, The Third Man, Midnight Cowboy, Fargo, Marie (Geissendorfer), Heart of Glass, The Texas Chainsaw Massacre ('git up them stairs and git yr grandpa'), Dark Star, Diva, Alien, Auguirre Wrath of God, Toy Story, Toy Story 2, It's a Bug's Life, Dirty Harry, Magnum Force, Steelyard Blues, Don't Look Now, The Big Lebowski, Withnail and I, Slacker, Barry Lyndon, The Great Ecstasy of Woodcarver Steiner, Le Diner de Cons, The Castle (Rob Sitch), Blade Runner, Blow-Up, Ed Wood, Performance, The Wicker Man, Il Postino, Fight Club, A Touch of Zen, Clockwork Orange, London (Keiller), Robinson in Space (Keiller), Radio On, Man Bites Dog
Poets, Authors, Artists & Associated Interests & Influences: The Wanderer, The Seafarer, Geoff Chaucer, Will Shakespeare, Chris Marlowe, John Webster, John Milton, Herrick, Donne, Villon, Basho, Li Po, Henry Vaughan, Cowper, Emily Dickinson, Edward Thomas, A E Housman, Auden, Ken Smith, Robert Bly, Anne Sexton, Robert Lowell, James Joyce, Rilke, Verlaine, Baudelaire, Rimbaud, Gertrude Stein, Holderlin, W S Graham, Norman Nicholson, Norman McCaig, Rutger Kopland, Iain Crichton Smith, Edwin Morgan, Tony Harrison, Clive James, Nicanor Parra, Lorca, Jarry, Ted Berrigan, Seamus the Famous, Geoff Hill, Iain Sinclair, W G Sebald, Ian Breakwell, Whitman, Lawrence ( D H), Chris Logue, Brautigan, Dicky Dawkins, Ez and Old Billyum, T S Eliot, Neruda, Judi Benson, B S Johnson, Johnnie Coe, Apollinaire, Dante, John Berryman, Camille Paglia, Bob Creeley, Big Ted, N Machiavelli, Montaigne, Art Schopenhauer, Al Camus, Peter Cook, Ivan Illich, Louise Bourgeois, George Pavlopoulos, Brendan Cleary, Ern Malley, Anthony Burgess, Michael Longley, Robert (Gaz) Edric, John Murray, David Lightfoot, Rob (Mr Eli) Etty, E M Cioran, Cyril Connolly, Liz Bishop, Dylan (Bob and Thomas), Dr W C Williams, Barry McSweeney, Ian McMillan, Seany Sean O'Brien, Matthew Sweeney, Matthew Thin White Duke Caley, Tracey Emin, David Jones, Basil Bunting, Guillevic, Stevie Smith, Geo Orwell, Thomas Mann, Manfred Mann (not), James Thurber, Patti Smith, Marshall McLuhan, Tom Hodgkinson, Bil Cobbett, George Steiner, Oliver Cromwell, Roy Fisher, John Wilkes, Virgil, Propertius, Horace, Catullus, Homer the Blind, Homer Simpson,
Heroes
No more heroes, please.
Michael Blackburn's Details
Status:
Married
Here for:
Networking
Orientation:
Straight
Hometown:
Lincoln
Religion:
Atheist
Zodiac Sign:
Pisces
Education:
Post grad
Occupation:
Writer & Artist
Hello, you either have JavaScript turned off or an old version of Macromedia's Flash Player. Click here to get the latest flash player.
Michael Blackburn RT @mrwilliam: Not just 5 year olds. 10-13 year olds being asked as well. http://bit.ly/1TVIjdPosted at 5:15 PM Nov 19 from Twitter view more
About me: &&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&&
MY ROLE AT THE UNIVERSITY OF LINCOLN
This year (2009-2010) I am teaching on the MA in Creative Writing; first year Crisis and Confidence module; first year Introduction to Literary Studies; 2nd year Creative Writing; third year independent study (creative writing dissertations).
Allow me to boast of my own achievements...my first collection of poems, The Constitution of Things, was published in 1984 and was followed by a variety of pamphlets and books, including The Prophecy of Christos and The Ascending Boy. Two new chapbooks are about to appear this year (2008): Eskeleth and Apples, and Let's Build A City. My poems have appeared in many places over the years, including the Guardian and The Independent, as well as in various anthologies such as the best-selling Being Alive from Bloodaxe Books.
In 1995 I was Writer in Residence on the Internet, for which I produced a hypertext project, The Last of Harry. In 2003 was commissioned to take part in 24-8, a tour of writers in the East Midlands. I have received writer's bursaries from Eastern Arts and the Arts Council and my poems have won prizes in numerous competitions. Another hypertext project, Portrait of the Artist as a
Cyborg, funded by the Arts Council, received its first full public showing in the EMMTEC building at the University of Lincoln as part of the Lincoln Book Festival 2007.
I have also been an editor on Poetry & Audience (Leeds University), Stand Magazine and Country Life. I have set up and run two presses and magazines of my own - Jackson's Arm Press (which produced poetry pamphlets and Harry's Hand) and Sunk Island Publishing (which issued the paperback Sunk Island Review and a number of novels).
From 2005 - 2008 I was the Royal Literary Fund Fellow at Lincoln University, advising students on their writing skills.
An unusual attack of modesty prevents me from going on, but if you wish to find out more you can read a fuller story on my website, Art Zero.
Should you wish to, you can befriend me here and on Facebook.
The Effective Learning Programme provided by the University can be found on the Virtual Campus under Courses>Skills/USC>Effective Learning Programme. It contains valuable information on structuring your essays and improving your writing.
PLUS - A good, short handbook available in the local bookshops is: Making Your Case; A Practical Guide to Essay Writing by Rebecca Stott, Anna Smith & Rick Rylance published by Longman/Pearson Education, 2001. ISBN 0 582382 44 0
Thanks for accepting our friendship! Virgogray Press is an indie press with big dreams! Be sure to check out all of our publications and authors at virgograypress.blogspot.com and keep up with the latest news from the press at virgograypress.wordpress.com! We publish mostly poetry and proudly produce chapbook editions of writer's work! Right now we're also open to submissions of poetry. We're currently looking for poetry for our anthology series, which collects various opinions from the writing community by way of their poetry or prose on various topics. We've done an anthology called Valium which was about the psychological pharma industry and are getting ready to publish our next edition in November, a publication called "So It Goes," the topic being death for this chap. We're accepting submissions for Carcinogenic Poetry, an online poetry blog that will roll out in December! Do you have a chapbook manuscript you'd like published? We're accepting these as well, but not for long. Submissions will close by the end of the year!
Till then, stop by our official site and associated sites and get to know some of our authors: Marc Olmsted, A.J. Kaufmann, Justin Blackburn, Suzi Kaplan Olmsted just to name a few! And thanks again!!!
Diverse Deeds, the replacement for Sundays at the Oto is now set up for the first event (Sean Bonney, Grapefruits and John James), on September 24th at Cafe Oto. Full details on its MySpace Page.
Chicks dig scars, everyone knows that, right? Meet Severence DeSnappio, a man who creates ‘fake’ injuries for desperate clients. He’ll get you a stab wound, shot gun blast, snowboarding injury - but a bite from a great white shark?
Set in Miami, Chicks Dig scars is a lyrical, Lynchian mix of dream logic and hard boiled detection.
THEY'RE HERE!!
The exciting superhero YA books are now out!!
HERO .COM: RISE OF THE HEROES and VILLAIN .NET: COUNCIL OF EVIL - are now available in the UK!!
Check out Waterstones, WHsmiths, Borders and www. amazon. co. uk
WHICH SIDE ARE YOU ON?
One of the best American writers writing today, Mark SaFranko, author of 'Hating Olivia: A Love story', the excellent sequel 'Lounge Lizard' and countless short stories, plays, poems and songs, has kindly agreed to be the Guest Editor at Beat the Dust. Any submissions that come in over the next six weeks will be considered by Mark for publication at Beat the Dust in March. We want new, we want inventive, we want hard-hitting and thought-provoking short stories, flash fiction and poetry. Please read the Beat the Dust submission guidelines then send us your very best post-punk writing to the email address in the guidelines or via the send a submission page at beatthedust.com.
Thanks for being a friend of Beat the Dust, the space for writers to flex their literary muscle and for readers who see reading as exercise. The litzine is regularly updated with the best kick-ass poetry, short stories and flash fiction from around the world. To view and submit writing, go here.
