Back Issues
Issue 1 of Essence "Spirit" includes the work of established writers such as Des Dillon, Thomas A. Clark, Kenneth Steven, Kevin MacNeil and Larry Butler. Also featured are Catherine Woodward, Graham Hardie, Dominic Boyle, Andy Manders, Christine French, Hope Jones and Robert Marsland (the editor of Essence).
The work is good as a short selection shows here:
Pears
I think of that house in early evening
Somewhere at the end of summer
All the doors and windows open
Filled with the afterglow of sun
And the whole house heavy with the scent of pears
There in the lawn that ancient tree
A hundred summers old, and maybe more,
Around it a deep, dark ring of pears.
I picked them hour after long hour
To thud into baskets in high hills
Leaving only the broken ones,
All drizzled and wandering with wasps,
And it was as if the house became some strange ship
I was filling for a long voyage
That the rest of our lives might be made of pears.
Kenneth Steven
Loch in the Sky
loch in the sky
sky in the loch
lark in the sky
sky holds the lark
song in the air
air spreads the song
light loosely cleft
left could be right
when night is day
no one is wrong
Larry Butler
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Dead Finch Flying
I found a dead finch down by the river
this morning. Looked like she had rolled over,
folded her wings; died with her tiny claws
in the air like branches of micro trees.
I noticed her eyes screwed up like she would
do just before hitting a tree full force.
I lay her in my palm spreading one wing
then the other - a Japanese dancer
standing still. I look about and blow air
into her beak hoping she'll spring to life
chirping at take off - a dead finch flying.
I'm Jesus when he brung Lazarus back.
God's electromagnetic breath on the
infinite but dead cosmos in his hand.
Des Dillon
The Roebuck
Blue poured down on the dirt;
It waited for the Roebuck
And past the trees
the sky was purple,
Darkening with the streaks
Of a mile tired sun.
It said it was only watching the russet strings
Dash across the dead,
And pull them to a pyre
One by one,
Where amber blazed
And spidered into black.
The Roebuck
Head down from starry spray
Creeping up behind,
Thunders slow through
Cratered corridor,
Crushing the thorns under its tread
And it watches
Enamored,
Begging as bracken to be burned,
In the fires of the Roebuck,
Haloed by the repentance
Of the dead.
Catherine Woodward
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Here is a selection of the poems featured in Issue 2 "Eros" which includes work by writers such as Dee Rimbaud, Lyn Moir and Graham Hardie, and many other writers, a good number of whom are from the USA.
Oyster
as I stroked the oyster
between her legs
she smiled
and I sunk the pearl
deep
into the seas of love
A Whisper
he licked the feathers
of her bow
amongst the sheets of silk
each tongue a whisper
and each tongue a secret
from the valleys of the earth
The Virgin's Birth
she placed her hands
around the softness of the erection;
a heart of memories,
the wood glistening in the sun
and the slight trickle
of the spring water from the burn;
as he ejaculated she began to cry
Graham Hardie
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Root Flower Red
This flower is fire red,
a core of vermilion,
petals petulantly open.
Within the folds of stamens,
filaments and fuzz
is a centre of cunt;
a descent into primal void,
into primitive violent being.
The taste of it
in the mouth
is sour, musty, intoxicating:
the taste of blood
pulsating to the ululating tide
of the moon.
What I mean to say though,
writing in the dust with bones, is...
my dreams are peopled with holes:
tunnels, entrances, openings;
a crazy paving of windows and doors.
I am constantly a victim of movement,
squeezing through constrictions,
falling or flying through dead, silent air;
and in my dreams, always
I awake to the ubiquitous wan, grey light
of sleepless morning
yawning
scratching armpits, face, thighs,
rubbing never-quite-awake eyes:
the petals of yesterday like dust
to the rusted clock's restless ride
And what is on that other side?
An unattainable, unimaginable light!
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Through this blood flower,
through the angry vibrant red of it,
the root of our collective being,
the root of our animal soul,
we struggle towards the light.
It is no accident
that this spectrum starts in red.
We are all blood:
cunt, cock,
meat, flesh;
intestine,
artery,
vein.
To dive into red
is to be swallowed by cunt
to relive
the clamped agonies of our birth
in anticipation of death
and the ultimate constriction
from which there is no release...
death is the place
we have truly learned to fear
suspecting there is
no hallucinated rainbow,
no fantastic flight...
only unspeakable blackness:
a void,
the ultimate negation of light.
Dee Rimbaud
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Here are some extracts from "Experimental", the third issue (available to purchase here) which includes work by the American collective Exquisita, and the Bulgarian poet Mina Stoyanova whose contemporary Yassen Vassilev is featured below, amongst others:
The Question Being Dina Kafiris
or
was
it
God
Was it you who crucified me
placed
you
in
my
path
SCARABEUS SACER
he who gives birth to himself
hardly suffers from oedipus complexes
hardly knows electra closely
he crawls like a snake out of the ground
and evil omens thrive around
magicians grow
in the apple of his eye
a boatman tirelessly rowing the sky
brooding stars and hatching ark
the moon opens its eyelid
and the ship sinks into the sun
spanish armada in the clouds
tristan the mad is doomed
geo milev must die
the ego disfigured
somewhere there marches
samuil's one-eyed army
somewhere there marches
beheaded the last poet
and September Septembers the Scarabeus
Yassen Vassilev
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Missing Pieces, i.e.
Priest Grim dipping imbeciles in the River Styx.
Midgets in frightwigs singing His imminent tidings.
I- sitting childeyed in high pine limbs . . .
#
"Virgin,"
Sighs Mistress Night,
"I prithee-
Lift my inky skirts . . ."
#
The west wind whistling its swete breth-
even the feeding swine will lift their eyes . . .
#
I spent this winter
viewing the evening fields-
My Inn is empty.
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White mice licking his Highness's filthiest skillets.
Silly little mice. Tisk, tisk. Tisk, tisk.
Jaydn DeWald
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