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Lesley Harrison ~ poetry etc

December 16, 2022

Carcanet Poetry

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October 11, 2022October 11, 2022

‘Kitchen Music’

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September 19, 2021

Michael Murphy Memorial Prize 2021

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August 5, 2021

The Fish Shed, Arbroath

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November 13, 2020

CETACEA

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November 13, 2020

GIOfest XIII

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November 13, 2020

Forward Book of Poetry

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July 24, 2020

‘Antlers of Water’ anthology

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March 29, 2020

Arbroath 2020 Festival … in 2021

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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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