{"id":5702,"date":"2013-10-31T13:00:05","date_gmt":"2013-10-31T13:00:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=5702"},"modified":"2013-11-01T09:48:49","modified_gmt":"2013-11-01T09:48:49","slug":"5702","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/5702\/","title":{"rendered":"WN Herbert’s ‘Murder Bear’ turns Hellbeareen especially for IS&T – Happy Halloween!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Hellbeareen<\/strong><\/p>\n

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Murder Bear liked to disguise himself as the ghost<\/p>\n

of a small boy when it was time to walk among<\/p>\n

the spirits and enquire which did homeowners prefer,<\/p>\n

tragedy or terror? They would lean down to correct him,<\/p>\n

‘I think you’ll find it’s trick or…’ – only to see ichor<\/p>\n

start to pour from the child’s eyes and nose and ears,<\/p>\n

and hear behind them the scorching hiss of tar<\/p>\n

slumping its way down their stairwell like a tongue,<\/p>\n

unscrolling itself in pops and flickers, squeezing<\/p>\n

between the banisters like mud through smoking teeth<\/p>\n

and curling around their melting slippers – ‘…terror!’<\/p>\n

the now-decayed urchin would conclude, before<\/p>\n

reforming and heading next door. He loved our games,<\/p>\n

and would often slip a drowned kitten or two<\/p>\n

into the basin where the children dooked for apples,<\/p>\n

or thread a libertarian’s liver onto the string<\/p>\n

of treacle-dunked scones. Nothing delighted him more<\/p>\n

than substituting for a pumpkin the flaming head<\/p>\n

of a much-loved teacher, or intricately carving a neep<\/p>\n

into an anatomically correct inverted platypus.<\/p>\n

Come midnight he would lead a dancing host<\/p>\n

of rot-shrouded skullheads through town as<\/p>\n

the sky filled with ghost riders trailing horse guts,<\/p>\n

and daub the splintering doors of cowering householders<\/p>\n

with a paw replenished by dips in a boiling tureen<\/p>\n

of blood and borscht, borne on the back of the skeleton<\/p>\n

of a giant turtle raised by his necromantic skills,<\/p>\n

while bellowing theatrically, ‘Bring out your living!’<\/p>\n

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W.N. Herbert<\/strong> is the Dundee Makar or laureate. He teaches Creative Writing at Newcastle University, where he’s Professor of Poetry & Creative Writing. He is mostly published by Bloodaxe. Recent and forthcoming titles include Omnesia, The Third Shore<\/em> (with Yang Lian), Whaleback City<\/em> (with Andy Jackson), and, of course, Murder Bear<\/em> <\/a>(Donut).<\/p>\n

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*Hellbeareen<\/em> does not appear in the Murder Bear<\/em> pamphlet, but if you love Murder Bear as much as we do, read more about his exploits here.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

                            Hellbeareen   Murder Bear liked to disguise himself as the ghost of a small boy when it was time to walk among the spirits and enquire which did homeowners prefer, tragedy or terror? They would lean down to correct him, ‘I […]<\/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-5702","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5702","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=5702"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5702\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5705,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5702\/revisions\/5705"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5702"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5702"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5702"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}