Simon Smith was born in Redruth, Cornwall and was brought up on the rural Hertfordshire/Essex border. He studied English and American Literature at the University of Kent, before moving to Pennsylvania for two years. From 1991 to 2007 he was a librarian at the Poetry Library in London, becoming head librarian in 2003. Since 2007 he has lectured in creative writing, first at London South Bank University and now at the University of Kent. He was a judge of the National Poetry Competition for 2004, and in 2009 he was a Hawthornden Fellow. He has published four collections of poetry, Fifteen Exits (2001), Reverdy Road (2003), Mercury (2006) and London Bridge (2010). Mercury was long listed for the Costa Prize in 2006/7. Of London Bridge Michael Schmidt said, ‘Simon Smith has an instinct for unexpected forms which wring from his language memorable registers and tones.’ American poet, Bill Berkson remarked, ‘[this] book is really zinging.’ He has written reviews and essays for Poetry Review and PN Review among other magazines, and his translations of Pierre
Reverdy Martial and Catullus have appeared in Poetry Review, PN Review and Stand. He has read his work at the Cambridge Conference of Contemporary Poetry (1992 and 2002); Subvoicive; Crossing the Line; and Blue Bus, and to audiences from Plymouth to Edinburgh. Most recently he has written a book-length poem, ROTE/THRU, with fellow poet David Herd for performance with the jazz group Jack Hues and The-Quartet. He is a founder, with David Herd, of the arts collective Zone. The work sampled here is from Gravesend, a short book to be published soon by Veer Books based around train journeys along the north Kent coast, and Odes, a work in progress.
from Gravesend
A Theory for a Materialist Poetics
I want my life to be a story once Upon a time a four-legged now a three-legged rose Wood table smashed along the railway cutting, Its central leaf missing As my eight-year-old collects climate-change transfers Hungry for permanent structure, A Boost bar and We Love You magazine. The rag-man, a man made from rags, Ticketing ideas, national and local Initiatives added to the fun and sediment By the lads in thick gloves and goggles: Virgil and Horace lined up, but where’s Martial? Item by item dug under the fingernail, Soft skills accompaniment to soft shells. Sheppey clear through Canvey on a day Like today’s material never-ending list Experience crammed in as far as the eye can see, Surrounded by electric Fencing blue air yellow sodium burns through Acid-clear, the tough grasses cut like glass, Where ‘life’ became a history to cry out About grey and brown flatlands tilted Over the edge dangling Pip.
Greenwich
Spangles’ wrappers tumble along the north east coast Hansel and Gretel hot on the trail, But before we get into all of that: ‘Welcome to Deptford’
Tightrope
The coast winds up. Fetch your coat and stout shoes, Build an armada, build an empire Next to inflating the bouncy castle. ‘General Gordon’s Dude Ranch to re-open’. Satchels off and reality occupies my slippers, On the corner the man with the monkey Is snapping snappy-snaps, Elephant & Castle to The Empire samples Off every continent up the road the main Artery to the centre, Indian elephant, Empress Diamond, Pocohontas – Trophies, I’ll be there but not back too late To fall by the wayside to switch from analogue To digital, switch to fictional from real. Whistle.
Lewisham
The anodyne spin pass me A quick squirt of air Freshener restores Arcadia Where caravans and Sweet Jesus Lives A town plummets down a chalk cliff, Church, row of shops, council estate Falling, the lot into multi-coloured polythene Crates for ships, trucks and freight. Benjamin’s Illuminations folded Into a knapsack Somewhere along the route Peeled back to Northfleet, a semibreve Into the middle of nothing And the memory of nobody.
Pit Bull
Expectorate as someone’s going to kick off before someone Starts muttering. Proof you can build a garden wall in 36 hours. Analyse footfall, then you grasp reality, And a sing-song good morning to you is how it goes. Off-duty soldiers attentive to M.O.R., ‘The girls watch the boys watch the girls’ − no narrative. Those shoes in beige. Print off the feeling, dad-and-daughter- ‘Together-at-last,’ chimes The Sun. Hello, I’m Mr Gooseberry, Shift one foot to the other, Braced for the sugar rush − There are two of them, twins, takes two to make a scuffle. Being the neutral, one supports the underdog.
Pub
Runs a line in car parking, three quid a pop. Paisley shirt for your birthday. Top Button done up. Tailed by psychopaths Seen off by ideologues. Don’t blink, stay alive Privatised we crave our square of turf, Red Tops choca with soccer. Stood over, service revolver to the temple. Drop your voice, patina rubbed away All hours, all round the houses, all Round the hours, sequins to squint. Manilowe, Andy Williams, Monro. Outside for a smoke where mums deploy toddlers To ‘the very thought of you’. Meanwhile, Gurney plots his ‘great’ escape from Dartford Asylum.
Opposite Asda
‘Is a sonnet a helicopter?’ enquired the girl Who couldn’t speak past her teeth. Sediment ticking, whilst politics suspended Above the heels by steel wires upside Down, like Mussolini, fingers inked black. Dracula’s blood, concentration paper-thin, Parked memory, Miles Davis’ On the Corner. Mobile Computer Repair Centre, Meccano and crop science. Is your PIN number such a good thing When you project-manage your holiday? Begun with a question, obviously straight As a dye arrows to anti-personnel mines, so end with one end to end.
High Force
Cars in droves parked pretty. Drivers wearing English Heritage socks. Red diamonds. Little Chef’s hanging off the A1 all the way up Like a Denby mug-tree. ‘The dirty city & the dirty country’, Golden section in situ this 13th day of August Tangled symmetry by the toe, Roads leading to mimesis huff and puff And Gori empties its empty pockets. History doesn’t repeat itself, people do Waiting for the Arriva bus never to arrive. Pignut, meadowsweet, selfheal, Making sense of the footfall in the faint path. Last push to Low Force.
Seaford Beach
A local delivery van drops off Vit-bee, Camp Coffee, KP Peanuts, Man-made beach at Seaford, pixelated waves, Pin-pricked bathers. Knowledge in storage The face of a clown nodding through the cello suites. Ferries and containers await clearance for Portsmouth Harbour, Passenger jets stacking above, silk routes through Asia Minor.
from Odes
Ode to David Rees
And life means what it has up to now and most of this is about listening and behind the door signed 'PRIVATE' I receive no signal but drinking the city to draw the line between evening and night, a series of horizons, in white cloud, and you can barely mention the city without halving my attention barely holding the city, my head in bits at the break of the day too reactionary for the revolutionaries too revolutionary for the reactionaries dreamt away at the keyboard the idea of a city you can't think without thinking of Baudelaire, the space to be found out and all the angles angels and how, precisely, real in a pop-up life? and now you really are walking alone in Paris among the crowds, among the changing patterns of use pin it all on gold and the angels and what flips if you don't have time you need to make it keyword 'red' without title or local technique the voice locked up, then the trial and error in a multi-platform world in a city we are never far from a new place to refine the elements re-define the music of the spheres turns that into that 'that's a "how-to" question'
Ode to Felicity Allen
lights switched off, the beacons dampened down with pails of cold grey light or water Representation v Abstraction that epic conflict with nothing real outside the gaze of the work-station and the digitisation of in(form)ation -- click on the icon or the gallery to tip out, I'm a ready-made tip just off the north Kent coast almost out of sight an airborne speck, long distance, a cinder where no plan could be found, we live in that dark an age and no fit state the age of rolling news and its butchery, no position for decision-making in the democratic process, even where one is wearing a bright new coat the report sounds cheap, and deadly sounds the report of loose rounds, the evident spent cartridges where the truth is we're all in the War Zone Libya in the voice of helicopters
Ode to David Herd
now is now: we're all commodities in this sense of ending
where reportage meets montage meets collage meets assemblage
to achieve the simplest of things, running, clean water, say
as words
are the angels, the storyline
out of the mouth,
collapsed on Peckham Rye to conjure angels
as Blake did
at the top of one's voice the lyric
causes you to believe
you were there, once the lyric moment
or something to know by the alphabet or rote, extract
the cento from the heart switched on
talk mode or attack mode? From the dialogue you turn
the next page into the interrogation room
the rate of acceleration of New York is not the same
rate as London
which is more up hill and down hill,
and best walked backwards 'I first recognized art
as wildness and it seemed right
I mean rite, to me'
for an instant, bright and sharp then blown away the clarion
something as difficult as
the distant
the meter running of the everyday
alive to the voice of Simon Smith
I'll mail you the chronology
where we were in 1975, where 36 years ago is 36 years ago
when you were my music
you were my music of the spheres my belle my Bau
delaire my round tush my email my Facebook soup
de jour my kind of private dick my Madame
Butterfly all these years gone
by through you
we compare notes
we meet, shall I come
to you or will you come to me
unhappy as Mercury in our shape-shifting
as we row backwards always backwards rolling
towards beginning with all the inevitable permanence
of the concrete breeze blocks, their presence, their weight
their grey bulk
floats off
above
city
air
to be with
