Oz Hardwick is a European poet, photographer, occasional musician, and accidental academic, who has published ten chapbooks and collections, and loads more interesting stuff with other people. He is Professor of Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University.
The naturalist’s chairs
after Chris Packham’s appearance on Gogglebox, June 2023
After the string-lynched crows,
the firebomb that dragonned his gates,
the liars, the lawyers, the parcel
of fox bespoke to his despair
he cancels TV work for three months
to sculpt whales and snakes and birds
in the studio where he has woven a nest of blankets
for the kindest company of poodles.
Now he talks about chairs – how he draws chairs,
dreams about chairs, wears T shirts printed with chairs,
attends exhibitions of chairs,
keeps fifteen to twenty chairs in storage
believing, perhaps, what exists to support
(their long-ago forest, deer-spindle legs)
can be hoarded, promise
we’ve got you.
Em Gray is a neurodivergent poet from Brighton. She won second prize in the Mslexia Poetry Competition 2022 and in the Urban Tree Writing Festival competition 2023, and has been shortlisted for the Creative Future Writers’ Award. Twitter @ Em_words
#Adiyog
(in memory of Amanda Beckles)
It’s supposed to bring you joy,
this prana
C18H10N2O4,
C18H10N4O2,
C7H8N4O2
In chocolate, coffee,
or milky mocha like your melanin skin;
every other day you combined
nitrogen
that building block
with something deep within
to help others recover
from that tower block.
It is supposed to be a laughing gas;
that is why the Rwandans danced together.
Once, alone together, we shared asana.
Now you speak to me
in Shiva’s unmistakable silence;
freed from Parvarti and the poverty of the elites.
A kundalini queen once told me
one cannot live on a mountain alone
but there’s no shortage of company here:
Everest is littered with the bones of those
who did not know when to take a break;
very few of those bones belong to sherpas.
I wanted to be your guide
I still do I think
I always will.
Jnana seeking sukh but stuck in sthira
by the sight of smoking stairwells.
There are thirty three hells; levels of
burning like that night on the Lancaster West Estate when part of you was bested;
asphyxiated,
from a distance.
You held your prana
as long as you could
Hetepu beloved.
Come forth by day.
Vidal Montgomery‘s debut compilation reflects a poetic pedigree extending back to early Edinburgh Fringe Festival performances with Apples & Snakes, continued through a spoken word spectacular with the Jazz Warriors Afropeans project at the Barbican, and incantations with his own spellbinding bands Jazzreloaded and Mooz. In recent years Vidal has been the musical director for TS Elliot prizewinner Roger Robinson’s Portable Paradise, Horsedreamer and Shout Projects, Randolph Matthews’ Walter Tull Memorial, Alesandra Seutin’s Boy Breaking Glass homage to the work of Gwendolyn Brooks, Nicole Rachelle Moore’s Jazzmothology tribute to Langston Hughes, and the premiere of Forward Prize Winner Mona Arshi’s Small Hands at the Lutonia Festival. Website: https://linktr.ee/TaylormadeStudios
Note: this poem was previously published on: Four Point Five