{"id":15469,"date":"2018-01-21T09:00:41","date_gmt":"2018-01-21T09:00:41","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=15469"},"modified":"2020-12-09T15:34:24","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T15:34:24","slug":"roddy-williams-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/roddy-williams-5\/","title":{"rendered":"Roddy Williams"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

\n

Fish<\/span><\/span><\/strong>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

\n

in<\/span><\/span> the hospital<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

the<\/span><\/span> fish man told me secrets<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

of<\/span><\/span> life and catfish<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

we<\/span><\/span> watched <\/span><\/span>malawis<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

in<\/span><\/span> a brief feeding battle<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

while<\/span><\/span> the catfish lazed<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

nonchalant<\/span><\/span> fin frond<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

easing<\/span><\/span> like giants through<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

the<\/span><\/span> desperate young crowd<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

the<\/span><\/span> catfish grow big<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

from<\/span><\/span> eating the <\/span><\/span>malawi<\/span><\/span> eggs<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

and<\/span><\/span> dead <\/span><\/span>malawis<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

malawis<\/span><\/span> grow big<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

and<\/span><\/span> have to compete for food<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

with<\/span><\/span> their greedy babes<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

eventually<\/span><\/span> they starve<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

the<\/span><\/span> catfish perform their role<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

deal<\/span><\/span> with the remains<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

that<\/span><\/span> is how it is<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

it’s<\/span><\/span> a <\/span><\/span>self contained<\/span><\/span> system<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

then<\/span><\/span> he was silent<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

\u00a0<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

we<\/span><\/span> exchanged a look<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

before<\/span><\/span> turning back to glass<\/span><\/span>\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n

watching<\/span><\/span> the frenzy<\/span><\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Originally from North Wales, Roddy Williams<\/strong> lives and works in London. His poetry has appeared in Magma, The North, The Frogmore Paper, The Rialto, Envoi<\/em> and most recently in the Great Weather for Media anthology\u00a0 The Other Side of Violet.\u00a0<\/em>
\n<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Fish\u00a0 in the hospital\u00a0 the fish man told me secrets\u00a0 of life and catfish\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 we watched malawis\u00a0 in a brief feeding battle\u00a0 while the catfish lazed\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 nonchalant fin frond\u00a0 easing like giants through\u00a0 the desperate young crowd\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 the catfish grow big\u00a0 from eating the malawi eggs\u00a0 and dead malawis\u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 malawis […]<\/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":[137,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15469","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2018-poetry-picks","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15469","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=15469"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15472,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15469\/revisions\/15472"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}