{"id":20375,"date":"2019-11-06T08:00:35","date_gmt":"2019-11-06T08:00:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=20375"},"modified":"2020-12-09T15:50:24","modified_gmt":"2020-12-09T15:50:24","slug":"niall-m-oliver","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/niall-m-oliver\/","title":{"rendered":"Niall M Oliver"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Straight off the bat<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Straight off the bat, I reckon you know<br \/>\nbetter words than me. Big juicy ones<br \/>\nbathing in the pool of your tongue. Show-<br \/>\nstoppers on each fingertip, pointing me<br \/>\ntowards the nearest dictionary. I&#8217;d say<br \/>\nyou keep a few snugged up your sleeve<br \/>\nlike a silk tissue. When lost for something<br \/>\nmy great uncle Tommy used to say: always check<br \/>\nthe last place first. So, times I go looking, hoping<br \/>\nto find treasure, but at best two or three might fall<br \/>\nfrom my cuff like dull pennies. Uncle Tommy<br \/>\nused to make those appear from behind my ear,<br \/>\nand a master of escapology, he hood-winked a slew<br \/>\nof heart attacks throughout his puff. They say number<br \/>\nsixteen finished him.\u00a0Here\u2019s two coming now, tickling<br \/>\ntheir way down my arm: <em>Myocardial Infarctions<\/em> \u2014<br \/>\nthat\u2019s what the doctor called them.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<div><strong>Niall M Oliver<\/strong> is an Irish writer who has recently returned home with his wife and two boys after a decade living in London.\u00a0His poems have previously featured in <em>Crossways, Burning House Press, The Lake Poetry <\/em>and<em> Visual Verse.<\/em><\/div>\n<div class=\"yj6qo\"><\/div>\n<div class=\"adL\"><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; Straight off the bat Straight off the bat, I reckon you know better words than me. Big juicy ones bathing in the pool of your tongue. Show- stoppers on each fingertip, pointing me towards the nearest dictionary. I&#8217;d say you keep a few snugged up your sleeve like a silk tissue. When [&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":[138,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20375","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2019-poetry-picks","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20375","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=20375"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20375\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":20466,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20375\/revisions\/20466"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20375"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20375"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20375"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}