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Lesley Harrison ~ poetry etc

August 4, 2023

‘On a Wing and a Prayer’. Performance by Nordic Viola

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July 27, 2023

Chicago Review of Books interview

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July 24, 2023

‘Whale Songs’ at WayWord Festival, 22 Sept 2023

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July 10, 2023

Scottish Poetry Library launch, Thur 13 July 7pm

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July 10, 2023

‘Seven Rooms’ anthology, Tenement Press

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June 30, 2023

‘Kitchen Music’ launch, Scottish Poetry Library

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May 15, 2023

Online launch of ‘Kitchen Music’, Tue 30th May 7pm

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March 3, 2023

‘Whaling and the Gothic North’

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March 3, 2023

‘Kitchen Music’, published by Carcanet May 2023

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DISAPPEARANCE

DISAPPEARANCE     [extract]

I must have disturbed him when I came up the companion .… He was unapproachable, as a misfit should be.
– Donald Crowhurst, logbook of the Teighnmouth Electron. 29th January 1969.

 

[…]
How, singlehanding in a bad storm,
light-poor, deprived of sleep, beyond isolation

and fatigue as the boat took a beating
shedding green tons, letting the dark in

through shuddering deck boards;
working at waking, the tiller jammed hard

at his side while the boat leaned and leaned,
the second up front, watching the sea’s sliding surface

as it brimmed and fell while he nursed the boat across
great holes that closed and opened

beside them, the two of them watching for minutes
as the storm fretted and at last began

to fail, the boat butting forward, correcting its roll
in small calms, riding weightless

as the surface formed
itself and held, the wind sighing

in one vast outbreath,
and then he was alone again.

 

From Disappearance : North Sea Poems, publ. Shearsman, 2020.

[Photo from Bas Jan Ader: In Search of the Miraculous, by Door Jan Verwoert. MIT Press, 2006.]

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