Laura Besley, "sum of her PARTS"

Congratulations to Laura Besley, University of Leicester PhD student and MA Creative Writing graduate, whose new collection, sum of her PARTS, has just been published by V. Press!

Laura Besley (she/her) is the author of Sum of her PARTS, (Un)Natural Elements, 100neHundred – shortlisted for the Saboteur Awards – and The Almost Mothers. She is an editor with Flash Fiction Magazine and runs The NIFTY Book Club - a monthly online book club wherein participants read & discuss novellas-in-flash. Currently, she is a Creative Writing PhD student at the University of Leicester. Having lived in the Netherlands, Germany and Hong Kong, she now lives in land-locked central England and misses the sea. Her website is here.    

About sum of her PARTS, by Laura Besley
sum of her PARTS is a collection of 30 micro pieces, each exactly 50 words with a one-word title. They explore female body parts and how they are used and abused by those around them, as well as celebrated.  

You can read more about sum of her PARTS on the publisher's website here. You can read a review of the collection on Everybody's Reviewing here. Below, you can read two sample pieces from the collection. 

From sum of her PARTS

solitary

most days
I like
living alone, 
no one 
to moan
about my
lack of 
culinary skills
or clothes
strewn around; 
only when 
a robin - 
breast aglow - 
frolics in 
a birdbath
or I
almost choke
on a 
piece of 
molten cheese
on toast
do I 
regret certain 
decisions made
long ago.

bold

It's an hour before sunrise when I wake and discover I've turned into a trombone, my body shiny-sleek. I try out my new mouthpiece, a short shy toot at first. Subsequent blows grow in length and volume until I am blaring, brass-band loud. This is my voice. Hear me. Listen. 

Gram Joel Davies, "Not Enough Rage"

Gram Joel Davies grew up in a council house in the Westcountry. Working class and university-educated, he is enthusiastic about psychotherapy and works as a counsellor in private practice. His poetry concerns itself with an experience of being (through rural and urban landscapes) and with belonging (in relationships marked by emotional disturbance). Publications have appeared over the decades in Magma, The Moth, Poetry Wales, The Centrifugal Eye and many other places. Not Enough Rage will be published by V. Press in October 2023. His debut collection, Bolt Down This Earth (2017), is also published by V. Press.

About Not Enough Rage

Not Enough Rage is very gutsy and very heady. Written over the course of two decades, it is something of a companion volume to Bolt Down This Earth, but pushes Davies' perceptions and style to new points of contact with the world. It is at once peripatetic and personal. Themes of awe and disaffection wrap around one another like wrestling dragons, equally matched. The poems often have a musicality that is intended to buoy meaning on a current of implicit feeling. Rather than exclusively literal or logical, this is writing that hopes cast a magnet into the back of the mind and bring up knots of association, as much sensed as seen.

You can read more about Not Enough Rage on the publisher's website here. Below, you can read two sample poems from the collection. 

From Not Enough Rage, by Gram Joel Davies

A Taxonomy of Wingèd Serpents

When dragons, one bold as rusted pipework,

the other bluer than icebergs, pitch

and lacerate each other inside the mind,

at times I’ll plummet, while other days

I’ll walk a comet. Not caring much

what phylum/family/genus the symptoms are.

My doctor differs, mid-turn on his swivel

chair under the sincere light of his PC

with his coded manuals near: classification matters.

Medieval bestiaries, with their stunted

perspectives, draw commonalities through sea lions,

fishes and ducks. But, he assures me,

modern expertise puts little stock in superficial

characteristics, then loses me in split-tooth jargon...

Order Calidraco ... Dracoform ...

A web search churns up myths, citing creatures

who raise little boys in splendid palaces,

feed them riddles reinforced by scalds

and love, or heap approval on a bed

of starlit coins. By his screen light, the doctor

discredits links with Triassic lines –

you may be rough-mailed and warm in the marrow.

He even touches the genetic element, a stratus ribbon

helixed through a moody firmament,

most interested in the composition of the belch-

stain chemical breath. With swivelled eye,

he advises that identity, as it pertains

to conflicted dragons, has a crassness stigmatised

at meal parties (and better left unshared). My affect

wears the flare of rust and roars like glaciers.

In Which *I* Don’t Fit

*I* don’t look good     in bandana or tie-clip

and tattoos slip *my* skin     like film off cocoa

Clinique ‘Happy’ abandons *me*     up the extractor fan

*I* always admired thatch     cottages

from inside student digs     but council kids

took the posh piss     for the way *I* said

actually     the accents *I* tab through

are like game toons’     facial hair

*I* don’t     quite     qualify     for social housing

perhaps *I* belong     with the badger

drunk on fallen apples     so *I* buy craft ales

with *my* JSA     and sit in the park trying

to figure out poplar hybrids     by street-light

the skate-ramp runs cool     but *I* never learnt the fakie

everybody interesting     leaves the country     *I* do

Guardianistawaffle     then remain in tenements

with the names of men     coal-toting

up quicksand rivers     too heavy

in *my* face     for bachelor

honours     but groundsman     gutter-laying

don’t believe in     clinical     depression

though it’s BBC boffins     who give *me* the best buzz

*I* protest     against buying the licence

retail management     is afraid

*my* lexicon derogates     their intelligence quotient

it’s these entry jobs     which *I* enter

and re-enter     endlessly

the ones *I* step off     like Chaplin from a tram

HR greasing *me*     into tribunals

Charles G Lauder Jr, "The Aesthetics of Breath"

Charles G Lauder Jr was born in San Antonio, Texas, lived for a few years each on America’s East and West Coasts, and moved to south Leicestershire, UK, in 2000. His poems have been published widely in print and online, and in his two pamphlets Bleeds (Crystal Clear Creators, 2012) and Camouflaged Beasts (BLER, 2017). From 2014 to 2018, he was the Assistant Editor for The Interpreter’s House, and for over twenty-five years he has copy-edited academic books on literature, history, medicine, and science. His debut poetry collection is The Aesthetics of Breath (V. Press, 2019). He is on Twitter @cglauder

About The Aesthetics of Breath, by Charles G Lauder Jr

The Aesthetics of Breath, my debut poetry collection and most recent book, focuses on history, both public and personal. Some of the poems are about well-known historical figures like Einstein and Napoleon, as well as America's past, whereas others are about my Texas childhood. Quite a few explore masculinity and my relationship with my father, and what it means to live as an ex-pat for the past two decades. The book ends with a sequence of a dozen poems about family relationships and home.

From The Aesthetics of Breath

Time and Distance

There’s a doppelganger in my house,
taller, slimmer, mistaken for me
over the phone. He cries like I do

but that serrated tongue can cut
those closest to him, hissing out
when he’s cornered and angry.

He brings up Star Wars and Doctor Who,
he knows I like to talk about them,
as if he’s learning, but avoids girls and sex.

He won’t swear, prefers the sweetness
of sugar and fudge; at fourteen,
I was dared and haven’t stopped since.

I protest I am more than number tricks,
facts and figures about space and light,
or what Tudors ate for dinner. Maybe

he is more than I ever could be.
Friends say he’s a time traveller,
that he’s really me from the past,

but surely I would remember this.
Is he proof of a parallel universe 
bleeding into ours? I know what’s next:

rebellion into booze, weed, and speed,
though he can’t stand the taste of beer.
He’ll discover his father’s feet,

gravity-tacky, are made of clay,
have never left earth. There will
be time and distance between them.

Sir Walter Raleigh of Bexar County, Texas

Returned from England I bestow this gift of grandchildren

like valuable treasure laid at your feet   you the king and queen

          and I magus explorer buccaneer spy

          blown in from the cold of the New World

                   after seven eight years

                   with natives half-naked half-crazed.

Their DNA is a cypher spelling out rough and tumble gorse

          hawthorn and bramble shredding the balls of thumbs

                   ancient ponds where witches floated and innocent drowned

                   great warriors asleep underground await to be woken

                              steed-shaped headlands stampede into the sea

                                        seawater spewing from black nostrils.

The dead   revered in song and story around the fire of a once

magnificent empire trading in flesh opium and tea

           lost generations buried in mud   burned by mustard

           dance as shadows on these chalky faces wild as dandelion and nettle

             she on all fours roars and hisses      scratches at the air

                     he poised and on guard   finger pointed and cocked.

***

On the journey here through Detroit to Oklahoma

then a two-storey train down into Texas

           they marveled at how high we were   mountains of snow

           replaced by a sun so hot it burned their ears as we landed.

Wires crisscross overhead like a cage   snakes hide at their feet 

at the museum they circle round mammoth and saber-tooth

           hunched down and looking for the moment

           to spring   then pose beside their fresh kills.

Your feast of grilled cheese sandwiches tastes of rubber

pickles too bitter   bacon thin and greasy   their first doughnut

            takes them two days to finish before they finally give up

                       and chase each other for miles.

Night is as bright as day   lit up door to door with Christmas lights

front-lawn inflatable Santas snowmen and kings   they clap

            and shout    try to catch fake snow on their tongue

                        but turn down your offer of church.

***

 

You notice a change of accent when I translate

that I’ve lost my bearings   how to find the corner store

            my old school   where old girlfriends lived.

            America has grown small in my absence

                       a fear and hysteria grips the kidneys

                       so hard no one can piss

                       without a loaded pistol in hand.

You think he’s gone over   painted his skin

bowed down to trees and standing stones

           tossed coins and armour into the river

           to appease angry gods    and take me to the preacher

                      who tells me there is no saviour but Jesus.

What should I confess? That I stood naked in a circle

about the fire handfasted to a daughter of Mercia

            calling forth spirits of the forest

            to fill my limbs while I fill her

                        with my seed and the air

                        with mud-moon howls,

yielding this ragwort   this cornflower   their fevered heads

buzz with my memories of glass and steel cities   fibre-optic

            highways    of drive-thrus   drive-ins    gated driveways

                      of starting over   the pelts from their backs

                      traded for new clothes   new name   new face.

Featured Poet: Helen Calcutt

Helen Calcutt's poetry and criticism has featured in publications including the Guardian, The Huffington Post, The Brooklyn Review, and Southbank Poetry. Her debut pamphlet Sudden rainfall was published by Perdika Press in 2014. It was a PBS Choice. Her full-length collection, Unable Mother, described as 'a violent and tender grapple with our cosy notions of motherhood' (Robert Peake) was published by V. Press in September 2018. It was re-created into a dance-theatre performance, and then into short film, by Redstorm Productions under the title Naked.

Helen was awarded a professional development grant from Arts Council England to write her second poetry collection A mountain that is your grief you can't utter in April 2019. She is creator and editor of acclaimed anthology, Eighty-Four (Verve Press, 2019), a book of verse on the subject of male suicide, grief, and hope. It was shortlisted for the Saboteur Awards 2019.  Helen is also successful dancer and choreographer, working with a specialism in the conversation between text and movement. She also works as a tutor and mentor for the likes of Poetry By Heart, Writing West Midlands, and The Poetry School, and is a visiting lecturer in Creative Writing at Loughborough University. Her website is: https://helencalcutt.org/

Below you can read a poem from her collection, Unable Mother. 

Crossing

This stable feels like a boat. Its roof rocks the hollow. 
There are windows on every side, concealed.  
Though it feels like a heart exposed, 
if hearts are water.
There are horses hanging like oars. 
The darkest pool touches their eyes, 
where their lives are suspended. 
My hands are trembling. 
I imagine they’re wings. That my mind could navigate 
the darkest crossing, 
if these crossings were waters, 
or a drowned field –

and by field, I mean
the resting place of my daughter. 
The animal world that keeps her, 
before I wake her.