{"id":1352,"date":"2008-08-23T15:43:18","date_gmt":"2008-08-23T15:43:18","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=1352"},"modified":"2008-08-23T15:43:18","modified_gmt":"2008-08-23T15:43:18","slug":"new-poetry-by-gwilym-williams","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/new-poetry-by-gwilym-williams\/","title":{"rendered":"New poetry by Gwilym Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"

A couple of months ago (see 15 June posting + cover artwork) we ran a news item about regular IS&T contributor Gwilym Williams' new collection <\/span>Genteel Messages<\/span> (Poetry Monthly Press, ISBN 978-1-906357-17-7). About the same time I was reading a book about 'street photography' which argued the point that when the genre first appeared in France in the mid-to-late 19th century, there was a close relationship between the photographs being taken and the 'street poetry' being written by the likes of Baudelaire and Rimbaud. (I know, all go off on a creative writing masters course and discuss.) What particularly appeals to me about this poem from Williams' collection is that reflects that street poetry ethos. Enjoy …Ed.<\/span>



On Venice Lido<\/span>


Cargo ships and oil tankers bound for Mestre or Trieste<\/span>
wait patiently in the queue on the long horizon.<\/span>

Here in 1912 Thomas Mann's <\/span>von Aschenbach<\/span>
fondly gazed upon his handsome hero,<\/span>
the young and noble <\/span>Tadzio<\/span>,<\/span>
in his novelette <\/span>Death In Venice<\/span>.<\/span>

Today on the Lido there's really not too much to see<\/span>
beyond those monochrome ships parked in the haze<\/span>
and the high up clock on the Hotel des Baines.<\/span>

On the grey sand there's the usual pre-season plethora<\/span>
of plastic and polystyrene<\/span>

Thermovisco<\/span> is nuzzling with <\/span>Succo e Polpa Pesca<\/span>

A pigeon pair is inspecting an unzipped can \u2013<\/span>
Stolichno Bock Beer<\/span> rusting in a twisty rage of net.<\/span>

A miraculous light bulb has washed up \u2013 glass unbroken.<\/span>

There's the occasional squawk of a gull out to sea.<\/span>

A spray \u2013 <\/span>Byron's Mediterranee Deodorante<\/span>
\u2013 do not expose to naked flame<\/span> \u2013 is corroding at the collar.<\/span>

Half buried I find a <\/span>Debica Vivo Radial<\/span> in good condition.<\/span>

Other curiosities: a solitary pickled onion<\/span>
and a pair of welding glasses in Day-Glo orange.<\/span>

A dog floats by; face down; smooth and slick as a seal.<\/span>

On the long grey horizon nothing is moving.<\/span>

On the long beach men are assembling<\/span>
colonies of bathing huts.<\/span>


* Gwilym Williams<\/span>
<\/font><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A couple of months ago (see 15 June posting + cover artwork) we ran a news item about regular IS&T contributor Gwilym Williams' new collection Genteel Messages (Poetry Monthly Press, ISBN 978-1-906357-17-7). About the same time I was reading a book about 'street photography' which argued the point that when the genre first appeared in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","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-1352","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352","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\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1352"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1352\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1352"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1352"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1352"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}