Matthew Stewart, "The Knives of Villalejo"

Matthew Stewart, photo by Marina Rodriguez

Matthew Stewart works in the Spanish wine trade and lives between Extremadura and West Sussex. Following two pamphlets with HappenStance Press, he published his first full collection, The Knives of Villalejo, with Eyewear Books in 2017. His more recent poems have featured in The Spectator, The New European and Wild Court. He blogs at Rogue Strands.

About The Knives of Villalejo

By Matthew Stewart

My poems begin with the truth. They then generate a world that lies beyond mere facts, reaching out for authenticity of feeling, aiming to generate a jolt of recognition that enables readers to set off on their own journeys. 

The piece from The Knives of Villalejo that follows is a case in point. It might ostensibly be about an incident at a wine trade fair in Germany, but that's not to say the incident in question took place there or even took place at all as portrayed in these lines. There was, however, a moment somewhere, somehow, a memory that demanded to be captured and then transformed. This process ended up as an implicit invitation to readers to reach beyond a posh hotel in Düsseldorf, to recall, renew and reassess their own experiences. How did they learn to deal with their school tie? Do their parents somehow still accompany them when they undertake a task that was taught at home decades earlier?

At Prowein

In a plush, anonymous room
just before the trade fair opens,
I reach for a tie, ignoring 
the looming, wall-to-wall mirror.

I close my eyes and stall my thoughts,
and Dad’s behind me once again.
We coax a perfect, funnelled knot
and pour me out as if to school.

Jessica Mayhew, "Longship"

Jessica Mayhew’s first pamphlet, Someone Else’s Photograph, was published by Crystal Clear Creators in 2012. After graduating from UCL with a Masters in English Literature, she spent a year working in south-east Asia, and during this time, wrote a pamphlet titled Amok, which was published by Eyewear in 2015. Her poetry, fiction and essays have been published in magazines and journals including Ambit, Stand, Staple, Brittle Star, Magma, and The Interdisciplinary Studies Journal. Jessica currently lives in Northampton with her partner, and her former street dog, Bracken. Instagram: @jesslmayhew

Below, Jessica talks about her new book, Longship, which has just been published by Eyewear. See: https://store.eyewearpublishing.com/products/longship

By Jessica Mayhew

When I was little, my Gran used to tell us grandchildren to remember that we, like her, were Vikings. She came from the Shetland Isles, and told us stories about islands of rock with no trees, the North Sea which drowned the sailors in our family, the old Gods. When she died, my uncle commended her to Valhalla, and her gravestone was carved with a longship.

These stories have always enthralled me. In fact, my tattoos are all inspired by stories from the Eddas. In my poetry, I wanted to capture moments in Norse mythology that would speak to our own experiences of life. Njord and Skadhi's ill-fated marriage, how Freyja got her necklace, what Odin whispers to the body of his son - these are all stories of imperfect, very human beings who still fascinate me.

Longship breaks the boundaries between Norse mythology and the modern world. It assumes the voices of the gods and goddesses, and weaves them through stories of love, death and nature today. Poems act as a communication between our modern selves and deeper, older impulses and ways of living in nature, ‘feeling the night / come on like a bruise, a gentle harm.’ I was thrilled when Longship was selected as the winner of the 2018 Melita Hume Poetry Prize.

Colette Sensier, the judge of the 2018 Melita Hume Prize says, 'Longship blurs myth and modern life, moving between ventriloquism of the gods of the Norse myths, and the griefs of present day bereavement, love and – portrayed in fabulous language on the brink between surrealist metaphor and natural wonder – climate apocalypse.'

Here is a poem from the book.


Baldr

Dusty quartz and ore
bolted through with gold,

raw wood, oak and apple, sap-wet,
speared, all swore me no mar.

I’d kiss flames from flint,
Dredge water for dousing 

from the hooves of the waves 
and the ships that saddled them.

I let the bear nuzzle my neck,
mouth foaming and fanged – 

bolder, I leapt from cliffs, woundless.
I winged up the high pines,

swung from rookeries. 
From there, I could watch in secret

my blind brother, face turned
to the sunset, feeling the night 

come on like a bruise, a gentle harm.



Notes on the myth: 
After Baldr’s nightmares about his coming death, his mother Frigg makes everything in all the worlds swear an oath not to harm him. She only leaves out the mistletoe, believing it too small to cause any hurt. Loki learns this, and tricks Baldr’s blind brother Hod into killing Baldr with a shaft of mistletoe.    

Featured author: Sam Meekings

Sam Meekings is a poet and novelist. He is the author of Under Fishbone Clouds (called "a poetic evocation of the country and its people" by the New York Times) and The Book of Crows. Reviews from the Stacks said of his latest novel, The Afterlives of Dr Gachet, that "This book does not work like any other I have read; it is on a level all its own, and truly a masterpiece of our day.” He has spent the last decade teaching and working in China and the Middle East. He currently balances his time between writing, teaching, raising two children as a single father, and drinking copious cups of tea. His website is www.sammeekings.com. 

Here, Sam talks about his latest novel. 

On The Afterlives of Dr Gachet, by Sam Meekings

I first saw Van Gogh’s Portrait of Dr Gachet in a newspaper article about it being the most expensive painting ever sold at auction (of course, that record has been broken many times since then). Something about that melancholy look on his face got snagged in my mind, because I soon found myself reading up on the strange and extraordinary painting. I found, to my surprise, that though thousands of books have been written about Vincent Van Gogh, there was very little information out there about that sad old man he painted in the last month of his life. My novel is therefore a product of both research and imagination: the end result of my journey to bring this fascinating character back to life. 

The book tells the story of Paul Ferdinand Gachet, the subject of one of Vincent Van Gogh’s most famous portraits: one that shows what the artist called "the heartbroken expression of our times." But what caused such heartbreak? The novel follows Doctor Gachet from asylums to art galleries, from the bloody siege of Paris to life with Van Gogh in Auvers. It also looks at his afterlife inside the painting, from the bunkers of Nazi Germany to its mysterious disappearance with a reclusive billionaire in Tokyo. In this way, the book uncovers the secrets behind that grief-stricken smile.

Extract from The Afterlives of Dr Gachet

We have been here for some time. Look at his face. Or rather try to look at him without tilting your head.

He is leaning backwards, his head nestled against his fist, and his tired but unflinching eyes stare back at you. Or rather they stare into you, they burrow as deep as a corkscrew through the skull. His look confirms that there is nothing that can be done. His left hand steadies himself against the table. His face – and therefore the focus of the painting – is off-centre, and so the immediate impression is that everything is slightly out of kilter. The world is worn down at the edges, as weather-beaten as his thin and haggard face. We have moved in so close that he need only whisper to be heard, though this will not be necessary; there is a closeness between us that nudges beyond the limits of speech. We have been here for some time.

Get a better look. His body looms large – the canvas cannot contain him, and he threatens to spill out the sides. His heavy blue jacket appears stitched from some stormy ocean. It is buttoned close to his neck (the collar sags open, revealing a shock of white) and is almost indistinguishable in texture and material from both the cobalt blue mountains seen behind him, and beyond them the azure blue sky – each laps at the edges of the next, like waves crashing one after another at the edge of the shore. There is little attempt at depth: the background is blurred and empty of detail, a wash of swirling blues. The painter appears to suggest that his subject knows full well that blue is shorthand for a particular kind of melancholy, and knows too that he is already deep within it. His eyes affirm that this is the depth to which we test ourselves.

Who is this man? 

Poem by Shelley Roche-Jacques

Shelley Roche-Jacques’ poetry has appeared in magazines such as Magma, The Rialto, The Interpreter’s House and The Boston Review. Her pamphlet Ripening Dark was published in 2015 as part of the Eyewear 20/20 series. She teaches Creative Writing and Performance at Sheffield Hallam University, and is interested in the dramatic monologue as a way of examining social and political issues. Her debut full collection Risk the Pier is just out, from Eyewear.

Shrink

In here I’m fine. It’s watercolour prints
and plants, and wisely-chosen magazines.
I’ve thought all week about the goals we set.
How I must stop and think and draw deep breaths.
You said we need to figure out what triggers
the attacks. Did you call them attacks? 
What’s triggering the rage. The incidents.

I’ve really thought on that. The one at work
the other day. For God’s sake! They’re good guys!
Collecting for charity - dressed for a laugh
in floral blouses, lipstick, sock-stuffed bras
and heels – I guess I knew one shove would do. 
I didn’t mean for him to break his leg. 
But he was asking for it dressed like that.

I still can’t quite believe they called the police.
Second time in a week. Who knew that taking
adverts down on trains was an offence?
I had to climb onto the seats to reach,
but then the plastic casing slid clean off.
I wrenched the poster down and stared at it.
Are you beach body ready? I was not.  

There’s no getting away from it.
Even at night
it’s all bunched up tight 
in a sack of dark
above my head.
Or it stretches away 
like the pier, or hospital corridor, 
through the stale bedroom air
and there’s me at the end of it
there –  tiny – 
shaking my fist silently.

But let me try to keep my focus here.
The worst of it is when I hurt my son.
A children’s party is a hellish thing.
And this one had a clown who made balloons:
a flower or tiara for the girls, 
swords for the boys. I didn’t say a word.
I simply smiled and helped set out the food.

I nearly made it past the party games.
Musical statues. Robin Thicke. Blurred Lines. 
There comes a time – a limit, I should say:
it’s five year olds gyrating to this song.
The music stopped -  I yanked my frozen son
and scrambled through the streamers to the door.
Through You’re a good girl. I know you want it.

Unfriending soon began – and Facebook throbbed 
into the night – She calls herself a mum.
She’s fucking nuts. It’s just a fucking song.
And worse, the snidey stuff, the faux concern.
It must be awful to be in that state
where something like a song can trigger that.
She has some issues. Let’s give her a break.

A break! Yes please!
I’m sad face, sad face. Angry face.
The trolls of Twitter 
sent me almost off the edge.
Why d’ya hate men so much @suffragette?
Look at her! Jealous!
The bitch needs shutting up.
I know where you live.
I clutched the blind,
and stared into the dark
each night for months.

I lost the fight online. Or lost the will.
I said I’d try to focus on real life.
Now that’s become as messy and as grim.
I keep returning to the Town Hall steps.
I must have played that scene a thousand times.
I knew the strip club bosses would be there
in James Bond suits and aviator shades.

The dancers, I had never seen before.
I left the meeting, having said my bit
and found them waiting cross-armed on the steps.
One blocked my way, with eyes I won’t forget:
so green and angry. What right did we have?
Did we want them to lose their fucking jobs? 
It was alright for us - the la-di-da’s.

I’m not alright. I think that’s why I snapped.
I really wish that I could take it back. 
I don’t remember everything I said. 
I’m pretty sure I mentioned self-respect
and then the men came out and shook their heads.
If I had stopped and thought and drawn deep breaths
would that have worked? What else do you suggest?