Martin Wilmot Bennett (November 2006)
Gabriel Gbadamosi (April 2006)
William Oxley (January 2006)
William Radice (October 2005)
K.A. Perryman (July 2005)

Martin Wilmot Bennett

OCELLATED WASPFISH. GULF DOTTYBACK.
Black-eyed Trevally, red snapper, blue-tongue Jack:
From where the loudest sound is a sprat
Chomping bits off coral, they’re hauled up
Into an afterworld of thuds and thwacks,
Buried in air, instead of angels
Scaleless four-finned monsters wielding cleavers,
Gabbling prices across white-tiled flats.

Such anomalousness once laid aside,
A feast for the eyes as well as stomach! –
Proving camouflage can be psychedelic
The Picasso triggerfish, for instance;
A lapis and yellow Anafiiz whose tints
An old master might covet; Sultan Ibrahims
Compared to which even a Matisse dims.
That juggernaut of the shallows, the
Dusky-brown droop-mouthed grouper
Sports orange specks. Outglinting rainbows,
The silver-sided turquoise-striped Sohal
Like some light aircraft shows a logo
Of brilliant ochre. ‘Broad crossbars,
Transverse bands, blotches, borders ...’ –
A zoologist, listing them, turns poet-
cum-art-critic. The spectrum’s stretched:
‘Ventral part of head and lips deep scarlet;
along the body two series of jet-black dots
plus a pale caudal peduncle; dental plate
salmon-pink, the chin a lavender grey ...’

As if Aladdin were, in fact, a diver,
There’s no shortage in shapes here either:
Bearded scorpionfish, blunt-nosed Pompano,
A horned zebra sole, some spotted grunts;
Species named after spade, cutlass, needle;
A long-tail carpet shark of whose lethal
Brainlessness an arms manufacturer
Would feel proud; rays that come equipped
With electric kidneys able to deliver
A two hundred and twenty volt shock;
Weird yet authentic double-ended pipefish;
The poisonous puffer; big-eyed scad ...
These flounders are as flat as photocopies
From before angles had been invented,
Inks smudged, glimmers fading. Now add
A sex-and-colour shifting parrotfish –
Hermaphrodite champion of the oceanbed –
And the most feverish surrealist seems prosaic;
Epithets dangle like a severed net …

First published in Lines Review

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About Martin Bennett
Martin Bennett was born in Birmingham, England, in 1952. He read English at St. Catharine’s College, Cambridge. For eight years he lived in Ghana and Nigeria, followed by a period in working in the Middle East. He now lives in Rome, where he teaches and proof-reads at the University of Tor Vergata.

Martin has published two books: West African Trickster Tales (Stories) (Oxford University Press, 1994) and Loose Watches (Poems) (University of Salzburg Press, 1997.)

Martin’s short stories have been broadcast on the BBC World Service as well as on Radio Plateau, Jos, Nigeria. They have also been published in Descant, West Africa, Wasafiri, Passport and Missouri Review.

His poems have appeared in BABEL, Stand, Poetry Ireland, West Africa, Other Poetry, Descant, Dalhousie Review, World Literature Written in English, Antigonish Review, Poetry Wales, Acumen, New Welsh Review, Lines Review and Wasafiri.

Martin is a contributor to North Yorkshire One Nine Nine, a celebration of Yorkshire through photographs and poetry, which is due for publication November 2006 (orderable on line from Electraglade Publications).

His translations have featured in Modern Poetry in Translation, Arion, Stand, Chattahoochee Review and Poetry London.
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Gabriel Gbadamosi

MRS NEVINES' BIRD SANCTUARY LOOKS AT FIRST
Like a meshed community of cages
Where birds get better – or worse,
End up in the world of her glass cases.

At second glance, a white faced owl
Blinks and pivots at the neck
(From north-north-east to roughly south)
The two halves of a single cheek.

But look again, and what's revealed
Of Mrs Nevines' healing work
Is how the sparrow, too, must heal
Fenced in beside the sparrow hawk.

As close against the glint of night
Her stands of birds keep airless watch –
That held the mountains underfoot
Or circled slowly on the lough.

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About Gabriel Gbadamosi
Gabriel Gbadamosi is a poet, playwright and critic. He was a Judith E. Wilson Fellow for creative writing at Cambridge University and a Wingate Scholar researching performance in Africa. He has worked extensively in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and the Caribbean as a writer and lecturer.

His plays include Eshu’s Faust (Cambridge, UK), Hotel Orpheu (Schaubühne, Berlin) and The Long, Hot Summer of ’76 (BBC) which won the first Richard Imison Award. A former Chair of writernet and director of The Society of Authors, he is currently dramaturg for Hydroponic, working with culturally diverse writers, and for the BBC’s Voices radio and television project based in Nigeria, in additional to his work as a presenter of Nightwaves on BBC Radio 3.
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William Oxley

ALONE OR IN PAIRS LIkE PENITENTS THEY STAND
in unholy wind at the bleakest edge
of fields of winter-gutted farmland
where inedible ivy clings to crazy walls
and trees offer bare ideas of form and age.
Some wear coats like men in shabby overalls
or chamois-naked stand log-still
fetlocked in a mash of ice and mud.
I marvel at their patience in such chill,
spare-ribbed statues of neglect whose
wincing flanks betray frost-detected blood,
and think they have a dream
of long-stalked days of green to come:
a special dream - they must! - that will preserve
a sanity and hope in horsey gloom,
which nature files for all who do deserve
some help through days of pre-death death
when wind would drill the stars from night
and freeze to glass bouquets a horse's breath
vainly cropping at rigid spikes of spite
and withered fodder far withdrawn
in nettled corners of each sunless dawn.

From In the Drift of Words, Rockingham 1992

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About William Oxley
William Oxley’s poems have been widely published throughout the world, in magazines and journals as diverse as Sparrow and The Formalist (USA), The Scotsman, New Statesman, The London Magazine, Stand, The Independent, The Spectator and The Observer (UK). Dubbed ‘Britain’s first Europoet’ following the publication of a number of his works on the Continent in the ’eighties and ’nineties, William has read his work on UK and European radio and is the only British poet to have read in Shangri-la (Nepal).

Among his recent books of poetry have been Collected Longer Poems (Salzburg University Press, 1994), and Reclaiming the Lyre: New and Selected Poems (Rockingham Press, 2001). William is Consultant Editor to Acumen Literary Journal (www.acumen-poetry.co.uk).
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William Radice

I GO FOR SOBER PUBLIC DRESS;
I hate to feel I’m out of place;
I favour suits in browns or greys,
With coloured shirts, but simple ties.
At home my guests will scarcely find
My taste in casual clothes profound:
Even alone I sit about
In slippers, sweaters, and at night
I wear pyjamas, corded, striped.
But in my mind I’ve always kept
A store of more unusual dress,
And by my ‘wardrobe’ I mean this.
I’ve come to feel that it exists
As truly as its name suggests:
Even before I’m out of bed
I’m often daringly arrayed;
Or passing time on bus or train
I try my hats on, one by one.
Just now I wore a cummerbund –
The sunset was so wild and grand
I had to walk in clothes to match.
At night I sleep without a stitch.
My wardrobe closed, I lie in bliss,
Dressed in flamboyant nakedness!

From ‘People’ in Louring Skies (1985)

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About William Radice
William Radice’s prolific oeuvre spans spans poetry, translations of poetry and prose, opera libretti, academic articles and reviews, journalism for the Indian Press and broadcasting. His most recent publication is Green, Red Gold: A Novel in 101 Sonnets (Flambard Press 2005). An overview of his career and current activities is available at www.williamradice.com.
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K. A. Perryman

BREAD, SAUSAGES AND BEER
left on the kitchen table,
cleaned so often that
the wood is soft velvet,
without the sheen.
I have just laid a web
of wetness on a slice of melon,
and balanced two dew-drops
on a Damascus apricot, —
and all I get is prison fare.
The wife’s out. Fetching
fire-wood again, I hope.

I have toyed with adding
a snail-shell to offset
the nautilus. No need
for a tell-tale skull
or bruises on the fruit.

Once I’ve done with bread
and sausage, I’ll get back
to the shy shine of pewter,
my hallmark, to pomegranate,
lemon, lace, and linen
with the folds still in, —
all abandoned, as if host
and guests had left a lavish
supper in mid-sentence.

First published in AGENDA Vol. 36 No. 2, Autumn 1998

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About K.A. Perryman
K. A. Perryman was born 1950 in Colchester, Essex, United Kingdom. He studied Modern Languages (German and French) at Magdalen College, Oxford, and moved to Germany in 1973.

K. A. Perryman writes poems in English and German and translates poems in both directions as well as from the French. In 1983 he founded the poetry and translation periodical BABEL, which he still edits. K. A. Perryman also publishes the work of other poets under the imprint of the same name.

In 1996 K.A. Perryman was awarded the Horst Bienek Förderpreis for poetry and in 1998 a Translation Fellowship of the Welsh Arts Council at the University of Wales, Swansea. In 2003 he was elected a Member of
the Bavarian Academy of the Arts.
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