{"id":11089,"date":"2016-07-02T08:00:25","date_gmt":"2016-07-02T08:00:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=11089"},"modified":"2016-06-09T12:49:04","modified_gmt":"2016-06-09T12:49:04","slug":"dan-stathers-3","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/dan-stathers-3\/","title":{"rendered":"Dan Stathers"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>The hardest kid in school<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>sat with bins in corners,<br \/>\ninvisible as chewing gum,<br \/>\nhis arms changing colour;<br \/>\nindigo to violet;<\/p>\n<p>his xylophone ribs<br \/>\npractising hollow melodies<br \/>\nand his school tie choking<br \/>\nas he\u2019s flipped<br \/>\ndown pinball corridors.<\/p>\n<p>He spent lunch-breaks<br \/>\nholding breath in cubicles,<br \/>\nreading books on space and insects,<br \/>\nsoles pressed to the half-hung door<\/p>\n<p>and when the last bell tolled<br \/>\nhe sprang: a cat from a box,<br \/>\nvanishing down alleyways<br \/>\ninside a tug-torn blazer<br \/>\nto hide in a room<br \/>\nbehind comic book heroes.<\/p>\n<p>You asked me who the hardest kid in school was.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>After studying creative writing at the Open University, <strong>Dan Stathers<\/strong> was awarded the William Hunter Sharpe Memorial Scholarship by The University of Edinburgh (for poetry). He occasionally blogs at <a href=\"https:\/\/grumpyaphid.wordpress.com\/\" target=\"_blank\">grumpyaphid.wordpress.com.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; The hardest kid in school sat with bins in corners, invisible as chewing gum, his arms changing colour; indigo to violet; his xylophone ribs practising hollow melodies and his school tie choking as he\u2019s flipped down pinball corridors. He spent lunch-breaks holding breath in cubicles, reading books on space and insects, soles [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11089"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11092,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11089\/revisions\/11092"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}