{"id":9889,"date":"2016-01-03T09:00:07","date_gmt":"2016-01-03T09:00:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=9889"},"modified":"2020-12-14T11:20:24","modified_gmt":"2020-12-14T11:20:24","slug":"on-the-twelfth-day-of-christmas-we-bring-you-terry-quinn-and-emma-simon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/on-the-twelfth-day-of-christmas-we-bring-you-terry-quinn-and-emma-simon\/","title":{"rendered":"On the Twelfth Day of Christmas we bring you Terry Quinn and Emma Simon"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>On January 3rd<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>I will pause<br \/>\nas I usually do<br \/>\nbefore cracking the hard cover<br \/>\nand checking whether my birthday<br \/>\nfalls on a weekend<br \/>\nand then some random stuff<br \/>\nlike how many cubic centimetres<br \/>\nequal a cubic inch<br \/>\nor the currency in Sweden<\/p>\n<p>and so meander onto<br \/>\na blank white page<br \/>\nwhich is of course<br \/>\nthe first day of the year<br \/>\nwhich will remain blank<br \/>\nas will the second<br \/>\nexcept for the note<br \/>\nthat will read<\/p>\n<p>see previous year<\/p>\n<p>which I hope will be annoying<br \/>\nwhen I want to check a fact<br \/>\nin decades ahead<br \/>\nwhen I\u2019ll curse myself<br \/>\nas I usually do<br \/>\nfor not buying the damn thing<br \/>\nin mid December<br \/>\nbefore hibernation settles<br \/>\nlike snow in impossible villages<br \/>\non cards I will soon take down.<br \/>\nIt\u2019s Kroner by the way.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Terry Quinn<\/strong> worked in the NHS as a Medical Engineer before retiring in 2012 to concentrate on writing. His collection \u2018<a href=\"http:\/\/www.indigodreamsbookshop.com\/#\/terry-quinn\/4576230497\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">The Amen of Knowledge<\/a>\u2019 won the Geoff Steven\u2019s Memorial Prize, he was runner-up in the BBC Poetry Proms 2014.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Christingle Oranges<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>This is the time of year<br \/>\nwe trick ourselves into belief:<\/p>\n<p>a stained glass light<br \/>\nthat slants a winter\u2019s afternoon,<\/p>\n<p>a boy holding an orange<br \/>\nwhich fills the deep belly of the church<\/p>\n<p>with a strange flickering.<br \/>\nMy children are old enough to know<\/p>\n<p>it doesn\u2019t snow in December<br \/>\nbut they persist in disregarding forecasts<\/p>\n<p>to taste the porous air for signs.<br \/>\nThis is the only time of year I sing,<\/p>\n<p>lungfuls of sentiment, like a warm front<br \/>\ndriving darkness northwards, for a time.<\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p><strong>Emma Simon<\/strong> was selected for this year&#8217;s Jerwood\/Arvon Mentoring scheme. She&#8217;s been published in various magazines. She won the Prole Laureate competition in 2013, and was recently commended in the \u00a0Battered Moons poetry competition. She lives in London.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>&nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; On January 3rd I will pause as I usually do before cracking the hard cover and checking whether my birthday falls on a weekend and then some random stuff like how many cubic centimetres equal a cubic inch or the currency in Sweden and so meander onto a blank white page which [&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":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9889","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-twelve-days-of-christmas-2015"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9889","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=9889"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9889\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23843,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9889\/revisions\/23843"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9889"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9889"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9889"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}