theIssue 7, October 2009 www.durham.ac.uk/grove

GROVERed Gloves

Reaching the restaurant lateI find the empty shellsOf your gloves on the cold kerb: Stretchy, crushed red velvetWhich slithered off your lapTo float in the sodium stream. What could they mean, exceptYou have arrived before me,And simply taken your place? The things we forget, or lose,Live in a heaven of debris,Waiting for us to collect them; Already your naked handsAre fluttering over the table,Missing they don’t know what.

Andrew Motion

POEM OF THE MONTH

EDITOR’S COMMENT

Welcome to another selection of work, whether English Language, Translations, Student Writing or material related to events in Durham. Keeping with this issue’s introduction of other literary forms we have included several short stories and we intend to include other forms in the future. Winter is approaching and the pieces included are all meant to reflect this in some way or other, but mainly, as ever, it’s simply an excuse to publish good writing. Enjoy!

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THE TEAM’S PAGE ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Especially when the October wind

Especially when the October windWith frosty fingers punishes my hair,Caught by the crabbing sun I walk on fireAnd cast a shadow crab upon the land,By the sea’s side, hearing the noise of birds,Hearing the raven cough in winter sticks,My busy heart who shudders as she talksSheds the syllabic blood and drains her words.

Shut, too, in a tower of words, I markOn the horizon walking like the treesThe wordy shapes of women, and the rowsOf the star-gestured children in the park.Some let me make you of the vowelled beeches,Some of the oaken voices, from the rootsOf many a thorny shire tell you notes,Some let me make you of the water’s speeches.

Behind a post of ferns the wagging clockTells me the hour’s word, the neural meaningFlies on the shafted disk, declaims the morningAnd tells the windy weather in the cock.Some let me make you of the meadow’s signs;The signal grass that tells me all I knowBreaks with the wormy winter through the eye.Some let me tell you of the raven’s sins.

Especially when the October wind(Some let me make you of autumnal spells,The spider-tongued, and the loud hill of Wales)With fists of turnips punishes the land,Some let me make of you the heartless words.The heart is drained that, spelling in the scurryOf chemic blood, warned of the coming fury.By the sea’s side hear the dark-vowelled birds.

DYLAN THOMAS

THE GROVE IS FUNDED BY

Dear Readers,

Welcome to the first Grove of the term. Moving to to cover a more expansive defi-nition of ‘creative writing’, Durham’s foremost literary journal is getting ambitious indeed. We have increased distribution, are working hard to get ourselves known and are pleased to announce that for the first time ever the release of this issue will be celebrated with a launch party!

Where and when? The venue will be the Durham Institute of Arts (ex- Fish tank, on Neville Street, just off North Road) and the night begins at 8pm on Monday 9th November. There’ll be several poetry readings and live acts followed by a live DJ and, best of all, entry is free! Search for “The Grove Launch Party” on Facebook.

English Writing, Student Work and Translations... all the usual sections are pres-ent and this time our features section includes poetry from last month’s new Faber and Faber poetry reading - we’ve managed to grab some exclusive interviews there. And we’ve just finished doing so again during the Durham Book Festival.

And finally, we must once again say a big thank-you to those who have contributed their work to the student writing section. If you would like to be featured in the next issue then send your submissions to the section editor, Sophie, at s.m.c.caldecott@dur.ac.uk. Whether it’s poetry, short stories, drama extracts or travel writing, The Grove wants to know! We feel proud people entrust their work to us.

That’s all for moment; get stuck into the issue and we hope to see you on Monday the 9th.

-The Grove Team.

Write to grove@dur.ac.uk to join the mailing list or get in touch.Back issues at www.dur.ac.uk/grove

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Ernest HemingwayDan Burt ENGLISH LANGUAGEENGLISH LANGUAGE

Winter Mornings

Through frost I navigate Hyde ParkAs shapes loom from ebbing darkWhen one, red hair drawn back and tiedAbove high cheek bones piques my eyesWhich slit to focus. I crane, slackWay, as last resort change tackTo scout the prize I seem to see

The western sea splits you from meAs do your children, husband, faith,You lie past reach of sail, a wraith.I know the odds. But still I stareAt a thin stranger walking there,Like dawn watch too long at seaHailing landfalls that cannot be.

DAN BURT

Two Hens

Make prayer at the concrete troughBeneath the dripping tap. Flush now with the summerThe water poplars graze a slow benedictionOver the birds, and a miser’s rain falls through the morning.

From my desk I look out on thisepitome of good fortune and pray for more

rain. The weather has turned. It will do thatif you wait. The wind is in the southand the leaves of the poplars shineas though something that was wounded is now healed.

These past days have tried and found mewanting, and I have almost failed, but here

I am, still who I always was,

MARK TREDINNICK

only more so. The days you love are notthe days that prove you. Winter is my weather.I grow by waiting. And there is no end

of the dying one did not knowone had yet to do to one’s self.

But you’ve had days like these. I envythe hens the steady circle of their days,but this is not how mine go; I am strung from starsthat once were gods and can’t seem to forget.

In Another Country

In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more. It was cold in the fall in Milan and the dark came very early. Then the electric lights came on, and it was pleasant along the streets looking in the windows. There was much game hanging outside the shops, and the snow powdered in the fur of the foxes and the wind blew their tails. The deer hung stiff and heavy and empty, and small birds blew in the wind and the wind turned their feathers. It was a cold fall and the wind came down from the mountains.

We were all at the hospital every afternoon, and there were different ways of walk-ing across the town through the dusk to the hospital. Two of the ways were along-side canals, but they were long. Always, though, you crossed a bridge across a canal to enter the hospital. There was a choice of three bridges. On one of them a woman sold roasted chestnuts. It was warm, standing in front of her charcoal fire, and the chestnuts were warm afterward in your pocket. The hospital was very old and very beautiful, and you entered a gate and walked across a courtyard and out a gate on the other side. There were usually funerals starting from the courtyard. Beyond the old hospital were the new brick pavilions, and there we met every afternoon and were all very polite and interested in what was the matter, and sat in the machines that were to make so much difference.

The doctor came up to the machine where I was sitting and said: “What did you like best to do before the war? Did you practice a sport?”

I said: “Yes, football.”“Good,” he said. “You will be able to play football again better than ever.”My knee did not bend and the leg dropped straight from the knee to the ankle

without a calf, and the machine was to bend the knee and make it move as riding a tricycle. But it did not bend yet, and instead the machine lurched when it came to the

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

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Ernest HemingwayErnest Hemingway

brightly lighted, and noisy and smoky at certain hours, and there were always girls at the tables and the illustrated papers on a rack on the wall. The girls at the Cova were very patriotic, and I found that the most patriotic people in Italy were the café girls - and I believe they are still patriotic.

The boys at first were very polite about my medals and asked me what I had done to get them. I showed them the papers, which were written in very beautiful language and full of fratellanza and abnegazione, but which really said, with the adjectives re-moved, that I had been given the medals because I was an American. After that their manner changed a little toward me, although I was their friend against outsiders. I was a friend, but I was never really one of them after they had read the citations, because it had been different with them and they had done very different things to get their med-als. I had been wounded, it was true; but we all knew that being wounded, after all, was really an accident. I was never ashamed of the ribbons, though, andsometimes, after the cocktail hour, I would imagine myself having done all the things they had done to get their medals; but walking home at night through the empty streets with the cold wind and all the shops closed, trying to keep near the street lights, I knew that Ì would never have done such things, and I was very much afraid to die, and often lay in bed at night by myself, afraid to die and wondering how I would be when back to the front again.

The three with the medals were like hunting-hawks; and I was not a hawk, although I might seem a hawk to those who had never hunted; they, the three, knew better and so we drifted apart. But I stayed good friends with the boy who had been wounded his first day at the front, because he would never know now how he would have turned out; so he could never be accepted either, and I liked him because I thought perhaps he would not have turned out to be a hawk either.

The major, who had been a great fencer, did not believe in bravery, and spent much time while we sat in the machines correcting my grammar. He had complimented me on how I spoke Italian, and we talked together very easily. One day I had said that Italian seemed such an easy language to me that I could not take a great interest in it; everything was so easy to say. “Ah, yes,” the major said. “Why, then, do you not take up the use of grammar?” So we took up the use of grammar, and soon Italian was such a difficult language that I was afraid to talk to him until I had the grammar straight in my mind.

The major came very regularly to the hospital. I do not think he ever missed a day, although I am sure he did not believe in the machines. There was a time when none of us believed in the machines, and one day the major said it was all nonsense. The machines were new then and it was we who were to prove them. It was an idiotic idea, he said, “a theory like another”. I had not learned my grammar, and he said I was a stu-pid impossible disgrace, and he was a fool to have bothered with me. He was a small man and he sat straight up in his chair with his right hand thrust into the machine and looked straight ahead at the wall while the straps thumbed up and down with his fingers in them.

“What will you do when the war is over if it is over?” he asked me. “Speak gram-

bending part. The doctor said:” That will all pass. You are a fortunate young man. You will play football again like a champion.”

In the next machine was a major who had a little hand like a baby’s. He winked at me when the doctor examined his hand, which was between two leather straps that bounced up and down and flapped the stiff fingers, and said: “And will I too play foot-ball, captain-doctor?” He had been a very great fencer, and before the war the greatest fencer in Italy.

The doctor went to his office in a back room and brought a photograph which showed a hand that had been withered almost as small as the major’s, before it had taken a machine course, and after was a little larger. The major held the photograph with his good hand and looked at it very carefully. “A wound?” he asked.

“An industrial accident,” the doctor said.“Very interesting, very interesting,” the major said, and handed it back to the doc-

tor.“You have confidence?”“No,” said the major.There were three boys who came each day who were about the same age I was.

They were all three from Milan, and one of them was to be a lawyer, and one was to be a painter, and one had intended to be a soldier, and after we were finished with the ma-chines, sometimes we walked back together to the Café Cova, which was next door to the Scala. We walked the short way through the communist quarter because we were four together. The people hated us because we were officers, and from a wine-shop someone called out, “A basso gli ufficiali!” as we passed. Another boy who walked with us sometimes and made us five wore a black silk handkerchief across his face because he had no nose then and his face was to be rebuilt. He had gone out to the front from the military academy and been wounded within an hour after he had gone into the front line for the first time. They rebuilt his face, but he came from a very old family and they could never get the nose exactly right. He went to South America and worked in a bank. But this was a long time ago, and then we did not any of us know how it was going to be afterward. We only knew then that there was always the war, but that we were not going to it any more.

We all had the same medals, except the boy with the black silk bandage across his face, and he had not been at the front long enough to get any medals. The tall boy with a very pale face who was to be a lawyer had been lieutenant of Arditi and had three medals of the sort we each had only one of. He had lived a very long time with death and was a little detached. We were all a little detached, and there was nothing that held us together except that we met every afternoon at the hospital. Although, as we walked to the Cova through the tough part of town, walking in the dark, with light and singing coming out of the wine-shops, and sometimes having to walk into the street when the men and women would crowd together on the sidewalk so that we would have had to jostle them to et by, we felt held together by there being something that had happened that they, the people who disliked us, did not understand.

We ourselves all understood the Cova, where it was rich and warm and not too

ENGLISH LANGUAGEENGLISH LANGUAGE

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Ernest Hemingway ENGLISH LANGUAGE

matically!”“I will go to the States.”“Are you married?”“No, but I hope to be.”“The more a fool you are,” he said. He seemed very angry. “A man must not marry.”“Why, Signor Maggiore?”“Don’t call me Signor Maggiore.”“Why must not a man marry?”“He cannot marry. He cannot marry,” he said angrily. “If he is to lose everything,

he should not place himself in a position to lose that. He should not place himself in a position to lose. He should find things he cannot lose.”

He spoke very angrily and bitterly, and looked straight ahead while he talked.“But why should he necessarily lose it?”“He’ll lose it,” the major said. He was looking at the wall. Then he looked down at

the machine and jerked his little hand out from between the straps and slapped it hard against his thigh. “He’ll lose it,” he almost shouted. “Don’t argue with me!” Then he called to the attendant who ran the machines. “Come and turn this damned thing off.”

He went back into the other room for the light treatment and the massage. Then I heard him ask the doctor if he might use his telephone and he shut the door. When he came back into the room, I was sitting in another machine. He was wearing his cape and had his cap on, and he came directly toward my machine and put his arm on my shoulder.

“I am sorry,” he said, and patted me on the shoulder with his good hand. “I would not be rude. My wife has just died. You must forgive me.”

“Oh-” I said, feeling sick for him. “I am so sorry.”He stood there biting his lower lip. “It is very difficult,” he said. “I cannot resign

myself.”He looked straight past me and out through the window. Then he began to cry. “I

am utterly unable to resign myself,” he said and choked. And then crying, his head up looking at nothing, carrying himself straight and soldierly, with tears on both cheeks and biting his lips, he walked past the machines and out the door.

The doctor told me that the major’s wife, who was very young and whom he had not married until he was definitely invalided out of the war, had died of pneumonia. She had been sick only a few days. No one expected her to die. The major did not come to the hospital for three days. Then he came at the usual hour, wearing a black band on the sleeve of his uniform. When he came back, there were large framed pho-tographs around the wall, of all sorts of wounds before and after they had been cured by the machines. In front of the machine the major used were three photographs of hands like his that were completely restored. I do not know where the doctor got them. I always understood we were the first to use the machines. The photographs did not make much difference to the major because he only looked out of the window.

TRANSLATIONS

This selection is pretty much indulgence for me, celebrating the shift away from our ‘only poetry’ stance by including a stunning piece of reportage and a little taste of what I think is the best novel in the world. I hope you also enjoy the drama excerpt, translated especially for The Grove. So as not to make poetry jealous, I added to the mix a few lines from a major figure.

from The Brothers Karamazov, Book VII, Chapter 9

Mitya was informed that he was, from that moment, a prisoner, and that he would be driven at once to the town, and there shut up in a very unpleasant place. Mitya listened attentively, and only shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, gentlemen, I don’t blame you. I’m ready.... I understand that there’s nothing else for you to do.”

Nikolay Parfenovitch informed him gently that he would be escorted at once by the rural police officer, Mavriky Mavrikyevitch, who happened to be on the spot....

“Stay,” Mitya interrupted, suddenly, and impelled by uncontrollable feeling he pronounced, addressing all in the room:

“Gentlemen, we’re all cruel, we’re all monsters, we all make men weep, and mothers, and babes at the breast, but of all, let it be settled here, now, of all I am the lowest reptile! I’ve sworn to amend, and every day I’ve done the same filthy things. I understand now that such men as I need a blow, a blow of destiny to catch them as with a noose, and bind them by a force from without. Never, never should I have risen of myself! But the thunderbolt has fallen. I accept the torture of accusation, and my public shame; I want to suffer and by suffering I shall be purified. Perhaps I shall be purified, gentlemen? But listen, for the last time, I am not guilty of my father’s blood. I accept my punishment, not because I killed him, but because I meant to kill him, and perhaps I really might have killed him. Still I mean to fight it out with you. I warn you of that. I’ll fight it out with you to the end, and then God will decide. Good-bye, gentlemen, don’t be vexed with me for having shouted at you during the examination. Oh, I was still such a fool then.... In another minute I shall be a prisoner, but now, for the last time, as a free man, Dmitri Karamazov offers you his hand. Saying good-bye to you, I say it to all men.”

His voice quivered and he stretched out his hand, but Nikolay Parfenovitch, who happened to stand nearest to him, with a sudden, almost nervous movement, hid his hands behind his back. Mitya instantly noticed this, and started. He let his outstretched hand fall at once.

“The preliminary inquiry is not yet over,” Nikolay Parfenovitch faltered, somewhat

FYODOR DOSTOYEVSKY (Translated from Russian by Constance Garnett)

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Ryzard KapuścińskiTRANSLATIONSFyodor Dostoyevsky

embarrassed. “We will continue it in the town, and I, for my part, of course, am ready to wish you all success... in your defence.... As a matter of fact, Dmitri Fyodorovitch, I’ve always been disposed to regard you as, so to speak, more unfortunate than guilty. All of us here, if I may make bold to speak for all, we are all ready to recognise that you are, at bottom, a young man of honour, but, alas, one who has been carried away by certain passions to a somewhat excessive degree...”

Nikolay Parfenovitch’s little figure was positively majestic by the time he had finished speaking. It struck Mitya that in another minute this “boy” would take his arm, lead him to another corner, and renew their conversation about “girls.” But many quite irrelevant and inappropriate thoughts sometimes occur even to a prisoner when he is being led out to execution.

“Gentlemen, you are good, you are humane, may I see her to say ‘good-bye’ for the last time?” asked Mitya.

“Certainly, but considering... in fact, now it’s impossible except in the presence of-”

“Oh, well, if it must be so, it must!”Grushenka was brought in, but the farewell was brief, and of few words, and did

not at all satisfy Nikolay Parfenovitch. Grushenka made a deep bow to Mitya.“I have told you I am yours, and I will be yours. I will follow you for ever,

wherever they maysend you. Farewell; you are guiltless, though you’ve been your own undoing.”

TRANSLATIONS

Victoriano Gomez on TV

Victoriano Gomez died on 8 february in the small town of San Miguel, El Salvador. He was shot under the afternoon sun, in the football stadium. People had been sitting in the grandstand of the stadium since morning. Television and radio vans had arrived. The cameramen set up. Some press photographers stood on the green playing field, grouped around one of the goals. It looked as if a match was about to begin.

His mother was brought out first. The worn out, modestly dressed woman sat fac-ing the place where her son was to die, and the people in the grandstand fell silent. But after a while, they began talking again, swapping comments, buying ice cream and cold drinks. The children made most of the noise. Those whose who could not find seats in the grandstand climbed a nearby tree for the view.

An army truck drove on to the field. First, the soldiers who would be in the firing squad got out. Victoriano Gomez jumped down lightly on to the grass after them. He looked around the grandstand, and said loudly, so loudly that many people heard him: ‘I am innocent, my friends.’

RYZARD KAPUŚCIŃSKI (Translated from Polish by William Brand)

The stadium became quiet again, although whistles of disapproval could be heard from the places of honour where the local dignitaries sat.

The cameras went into action: the transmission was due to begin. All over El SAl-vador, people were watching the execution of Victoriano Gomez on television.

Victoriano stood near the running track, facing the grandstand. But the camera-men shouted at him to go to the middle of the stadium, so that they could have a better picture. He understood and walked back into the middle of the field where he stood to attention - swarthy, tall, twenty-fout years old. Now only a small figure could be seen from the grandstand and that was good. Death loses its literalness at that distance: it stops being death and instead becomes the spectacle of death. The cameramen had Victoriano in close-up, however: they had his face filling the screen : people watching on television saw more than the crowd gathered in the stadium.

After the firing-squad’s volley, Victoriano fell and the cameras showed the sol-diers surround his body to count the hits. They counted thirteen. The leader of the squad nodded and slid his pistol into his holster.

It was all over. The grandstand began to empty. The transmission came to an end. Victoriano and the soldiers left in a truck. His mother stayed a while longer, not moving; surrounded by a group of curious people who stared at her in silence.

I do not know what to add. Victoriano was a a guerilla in the San Miguel forests. He was a Salvadorian Robin Hood. He urged peasants to seize land. All of El Salva-dor is the property of fourteen latifundita families. A million landless peasants live there too. Victoriano organised ambushed of the Guardia Rural patrols. The Guardia Real is the latifundistas’ private army, recruited from criminal elements, and the ter-ror of every village. Victoriano declared war on these people.

The police caught up with him when he came to San Miguel at night to visit his mother. The news was celebrated in every hacienda. Unending fiestas were organ-ised. The police cheif was promoted and received congratulations from the presi-dent.

Victoriano was sentenced to death.The government decided to promote his death. There are many dissatisfied, mu-

tinous people in El Salvador. The peasants are demanding land and the students are crying for justice. The opposition should be treated to a show. Thus: they televised the execution. Before a standing-room only crows, in close-up. Let the whole nation watch. Let the watch, and let them think.

Let them watch.Let them think.

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TRANSLATIONSTRANSLATIONSFederico Garcia Lorca Federico Garcia Lorca

The flutes of the shadows sound,and the smooth gong of the snow.

Run, Preciosa, run,lest the green wind catch you!Run, Preciosa, run!See where he comes!The satyr of pale starswith his shining tongues.

Preciosa, full of fear,way beyond the pines,enters the house that belongs,to the English Consul.

Alarmed at her criesthree carabineers come,their black capes belted,and their caps over their brows.

The Englishman gives the gypsy girla glass of lukewarm milk,and a cup of gin thatPreciosa does not drink.

And while, with tears, she tellsthose people of her ordeal,the angry wind bites the airabove the roofs of slate.

from Romance Sonambulo (Translated from the Spanish by William Logan)

Green, how I want you green.Green wind. Green branches.The ship out on the seaand the horse on the mountain. With the shade around her waist she dreams on her balcony, green flesh, her hair green, with eyes of cold silver. Green, how I want you green.

Preciosa and the Breeze (Translated from the Spanish by A. S. Kline)

Preciosa comes playingher moon of parchmenton an amphibious pathof crystals and laurels.The silence without starsfleeing from the sound,falls to the sea that pounds and sings,its night filled with fish.On the peaks of the sierrathe carabineers are sleepingguarding the white turretswhere the English live.And the gypsies of the waterbuild, to amuse themselves,bowers, out of snailsand twigs of green pine.

Preciosa comes playingher moon of parchment.Seeing her, the wind rises,the one that never sleeps.Saint Christopher, nakedfull of celestial tonguesgazes at the child playinga sweet distracted piping.

- Child, let me lift your dressso that I can see you.Open the blue rose of your wombwith my ancient fingers.

Preciosa hurls her tambourineand runs without stopping.The man-in-the-wind pursues herwith a burning sword.

The sea gathers its murmurs.The olive-trees whiten.

FEDERICO GARCIA LORCA

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Albert CamusTRANSLATIONSTRANSLATIONSFederico Garcia Lorca

Under the gypsy moon, all things are watching her and she cannot see them.

from Ballad of the Civil Guard (Translated from the Spanish by A. S. Kline)

The horses are black.The horseshoes are black.Stains of ink and waxshine on their capes.They have leaden skullsso they do not cry.With souls of leatherthey ride down the road.Hunchbacked and nocturnalwherever they move, they commandsilences of dark rubberand fears of fine sand.They pass, if they wish to pass,and hidden in their headsis a vague astronomyof indefinite pistols.

Singing Cafè (Translated from the Spanish by A. S. Kline)

Lamps of crystaland green mirrors. On the dark stageParrala holdsa dialoguewith death.Calls her,she won’t come,Calls her again.The peopleswallow their sobbing.And in the green mirrorslong trails of silkmove.

from Caligula

(Caligula, the young emperor, has just reappered in the palace gardens. He had walked away three days earlier, after his sister-lover’s death. Caligula looks exhausted, messed up and unkept. He is sitting on one side of the stage.)

Act I, Scene 5:

Hélicon, from one end of the stage to the other: Hello, Caïus.

Caligula, in an unaffected voice: Hello, Hélicon.

(Silence)

Hélicon: You seem tired?

Caligula: I’ve been walking a lot.

Hélicon: Yes, you’ve been gone for some time.

(Silence)

Caligula: Yes, it was hard to find.

Hélicon: What was?

Caligula: What I wanted.

Hélicon: And... what was it that you wanted?

Caligula, still completly natural: The moon.

Hélicon: What?

Caligula: Yes, I was after the moon.

Hélicon: O!

(Silence. Hélicon comes closer)

ALBERT CAMUS (Translated from French by A.L.)

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TRANSLATIONSAlbert Camus

STUDENT WRITING

This month The Grove has been inundated with wonderful writing. As Leonard Co-hen once said, ‘Poetry is just the evidence of life.’ Nice to know that so many of you are alive and writing poetry! Keep it coming… are the prose-writing people alive?

Aldeburgh

Green-gray estuary,Strand of tranquility,Storm clouds stroking silent sea.

I stand and reminisce about a time I’ve never seen,Dancing on the sea wall and skipping in betweenThe dragons’ teeth,Ghost town sleeping underneathThe waves could never tellWhy old men set their eyes onDark blue band of the horizonAnd reminisce about a time they knew too well.

Sea breeze flirtingWith my hair, feet are hurting fromDisplacing pebbles on the beach.

The sky-blue painted fishing boat lies stranded on the shoreLike some expired beauty on the edge of the dance floor,She’s yearning forA second chance to glide and soarThrough seas of yesteryear.I hurl a stone into the sea,Try to commit to memoryThe place in which it disappears.

Surreal light is falling and theSeagulls are callingMe to some unfamiliar home.

ALICIA LEWIS

Hélicon: What for?

Caligula: Well! It’s one of the things I haven’t got.

Hélicon: Of course, but that’s settled now, isn’t it?

Caligula: No, I couldn’t get hold of it.

Hélicon: That’s a bother.

Caligula: Yes, that’s why I’m tired.

(Pause)

Caligula: Hélicon!

Hélicon: Yes, Caïus.

Caligula: You think I’m insane.

Hélicon: You know I never think.

Caligula: Yes. Well! But I’m not crazy and, really, I’ve never been this reasonable. I simply needed impossibility. (Pause) Things, as they are, don’t feel satisfactory.

Hélicon: That’s a pretty wide-spread opinion.

Caligula: That is true. But didn’t know that before. Now I know. (Still natural) This world, as it is, is unbearable. Hence, I need the moon, or happiness, or immortality - something a bit crazy maybe, but not from this world.

Hélicon: That’s solid reasoning. But, generally, one can’t reason to the end.

Caligula, getting up, but still behaving calmly: You don’t know that. Maybe it’s because we never reason till the end that nothing is ever obtained. But maybe to remain logical to the end is sufficient.

(He looks at Hélicon)

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Joseph CroninSTUDENT WRITINGSTUDENT WRITINGAlicia Lewis

Lose my shoes brave the freezingWater, finally seizingThe moment, lost beneath the briny foam.

Claustrophilia

I have found my niche in booths,enshrined my place in life behindpartitions, chairbacks, shelves. Let me

explain – my childhood was a box too big to hold me, so I chrysallised inside my duvet, where change happened.

When I emerged, I sought supportfrom brick facades for my new bones and at parties, I always fought my corner.

My first vote saw me add the pleasureof a third dimension to my walled world.The cross I spilled onto the ballot paper

was a black, excited thing. Then came the guilt. I had to find religion, all its wooden doors, to take me in.

Soon, I would not stand for a urinal, loving to slide home the lavatory’s bolt, feel the shower screen’s rubber edge meet its mate.

Now, I eat in cafés, savouringhigh backs and low lights more than meals.And, O, the precious moment between fire doors!

All that I have left to long foris the day they measure all my sidesto make the perfect box in which to sleep.

MATTHEW GRIFFITHS

Hektor

Wrap my reward in silver skin.Cry no more, Andromache.I sew thenrend eternally.

Take pride in hours spent transfixed,in treating my mind with herbal kicks.Earning permissionto safely exist.

Patience in pacing the roll of the tongue,Drink coffee, it scalds; but I’m cold, so cold.Inhale these fumesand never grow old.

Tarry not, Alexandros, this Battle’s yet won.Polish armour by moonlight but never by sun.Wake up, dear brother.Look forward, move on.

NICK TOSELAND

Visitor

There was a Land Rover on the drive when I got back. The boot was open and someone was standing beneath it, writing on a piece of paper. As I walked closer I realized who it was.

“Hello,” I said.Uncle Jim dropped the pen and looked up. “Oh, hello. I didn’t see you there.” He reached into a box in the boot and pulled something out.“Have a cucumber,” he said, thrusting one into my hand. It was wrinkled and

bent, and didn’t look much like a cucumber at all.“Thanks,” I said. There was a pause.“I knocked on the door but nobody was in,” he said.The lights were on in the house and I wondered how that could be. “Do you want me to go check?” I asked, but Jim shook his head.“No, no. Don’t worry about that.” He shuffled forward to face me. His voice went

JOSEPH CRONINJOSEPH CRONINJOSEPH CRONINJOSEPH CRONIN

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Rebecca PaulSTUDENT WRITINGSTUDENT WRITINGJoseph Cronin

forgotten from within the grotesque shoutof bitterness, your fists clenched fast, eyesshot to pieces in the bullied morning of defeat, fliescake your body as you stagger across the wooden beamsbare and solemn, in strangled reverie – or so it seems –for on the tarmac lies a memory,the fate of others, cast awayyou’ve trudged through the warmer places, where people strive to hid their faces,in darkness or in flickering light, they scurry, slide away from sightand bury their hands and feet: in allthey care not for the lonely roadthey commune together, and in filthhallowed ways are caught and equally sought after –

just as suddenlythe ghost of cinematic past is overhere we are, amongst the clover

horizon in hand, embodying helpis the middling tread of someone else.

quiet. “How are you coping anyway?” he said. “How’s your dad, and the other one… alright?”

“Fine,” I said.There was a long silence. Jim stared at me intently. He was a wizened old man now,

with a white beard and bloodshot eyes. I thought I could smell alcohol on him.“Well, tell your dad I called,” he said finally.“Will do.”He crumpled up the abandoned letter and stuffed it in his pocket. “If you ever want to come round for dinner, you’re more than welcome,” he said. “Sure thing,” I said. I didn’t really mean it, but I said it all the same.He shut the boot and got in the car and started the engine. I watched him drive off

and then shut the gate. This wasn’t the first time, I thought. No, this wasn’t the first time.

I walked into the kitchen and threw the cucumber in the bin. Dad was peeling potatoes by the sink.

“Did you hear someone…?” I stopped myself.Sometimes you don’t need a clean answer.

Aeroplane

Was like Phosphorus,the descent a glint on the atmospherestirring on streets only unthought glances.Landing imminent,From above, the country ablazethrowing back light beams, battlingeven Morning Star, for beauty.

SOHINEE SEN

Distinguish the Modern Day

Your thoughts on the absent plane! and see alongthe wider stonesa sunshine decimal foam, with songbounding from its forms, its linescontrived from the darker times,its meaning wasted in the crooked house

TOM TRENNERY

Success

You and I and everyone all just swim for the horizon, reaching for that linear hazy siren. We stroke the waves and carve our path, cresting, falling, racing, crawling. floundering: bubbles blind, salt spluttering, ears screech, thrashing- As I kick down the life below the horizon steals back. Why can’t I dive down deep to that vibrant inertia before I drown stretching for

REBECCA PAUL

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Lydia KnoopSTUDENT WRITINGSTUDENT WRITINGRebecca Paul

We may never know who exactly she wasWhat she was doing and why she was contentBut in those awkward moments when she looked at me sidewaysIt had all made perfect sense

a distant ghostly line we never will reach.

You

You are terrifyingly sudden and new.Compelling and powerful forceRisky unchartered waters,Fluttering dancing rhythms I can’t control.

You are a tantalising seductive taste.Thunderous clatter, in my muddled mindExciting, enticing, enchanting,Smiling blankly into spaces.

You are the uncertain, unknown element.Longing for you; scared of losingMyself in the tidal wave.Yearning, impatient, eager,To know your thoughts.

CATHERINE HINGLEY

Sideways

As she looked at me sidewaysThe pale, gauze glint in her eyesCaught fire, like a forest in a droughtGlass-like, and deep in thought

The wall-to-wall inscriptions on her faceSpoke of love and wolves and chestnutsAs, placing both her hands in her lapShe looked at me sideways

Her curious smile betrayed no secretsUnder the olive sky. Her contentmentSeemed to somehow follow me around the roomWherever I went

ALISON CHEYNES

Things and Stuff

Things. Springy and useful, “There are some things on the table for you.” “There are some things in the cupboard you might like.” Things taste nice. Things look good. Things fit gaps.

But stuff. That’s different; stuff ’s the stuff between the things. Stuff ’s infinite, indefinable but there, and somehow heavy. Stuff the stuff at the back of the cupboard or covered up. People give you stuff you can’t get rid of. Stuff the stuff that you don’t know what to do with, left in houses. Stuff stays.

AUDREY ADAMS

Words in Silence

You said at times like thesethere was less around to inhibit things.Now, I crave your body-heat, to dissipate my dreams.Night mares, tossing manes across my back;lashes purer than love congealas blood’s passion sours black.Tomorrow’s sun will ache into the sky.Waking: no easier on the eyes than hot lightning,than ice clutching skin.

Tonight, to break beneath your weight –I would give anything.

LYDIA KNOOP

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Toby Martinez de las RivasEVENTS AND INTERVIEWS

EVENTS AND INTERVIEWS

This issue The Grove was lucky enough to attend the new Faber & Faber poetry event in Durham. The tour gives four new poets the chance to read and discuss their poetry throughout the country, allowing them a platform to expose and promote their work. Here is a taste of their work, what they said about it and a post-inter-view review by Jamie Baxter.

Heather was brought up in London and Wales. She was awarded the Michael Donaghy Poetry Prize from Birkbeck College in 2007, and received a commen-dation in the Troubadour Poetry Prize and won an Eric Gregory Award in 2008. Heather is also an artist and exhibits nationally and internationally.

HEATHER PHILLIPSON

German Phenomenology Makes Me Want to Strip and Run through North London

Page seven-I’ve had enough of Being and Timeand of clothing. Many streakers seek quieter locationsand Marlborough Road’s unreasonably quiet tonight.If it were winter I’d be intellectual, but it’s Tuesdayand I’d rather be outside, naked, than learned-rather lap the tarmac escarpment of Archway Roundaboutwearing only a rucksack. It might come in useful.I can’t take any more of Heidegger’s dasein-diction,I say as I jettison my slippers.

When I speak of my ambition it is not to be a Doctor of Lettersor to marry Friedrich Nietzsche, it turns out,or to think better.It is to give up this fashion for dressing.It is to drop my robe on the communal stairsand open the front door onto the commuter hour,my neighbour, his Labrador, and say nothingof what I know or do not know, except what my body announces.

Toby was born in 1978, grew up in Somerset, studied history and archaeology at Durham where he began writing. He won an Eric Gregory award in 2005 and the Andrew Waterhouse award from New Writing North in 2008. His poems have ap-peared in a number of magazines. He currently lives in Gateshead where he teaches English to asylum seekers and refugees.

TOBY MARTINEZ DE LAS RIVAS

Song

An ‘arrogant little tool,’ that was Migdale.

All five foot four of him.

Always scratching his head and looking pained and adjusting himself.

The last time I saw him, it was his fell-fed silhouettestraddling the gate in half-light,

‘too busy’ to come in good time for the birth, and ‘too poor’ for the vet,instead he came like a thief in the night,

shooing the crows and draping an inverse, eyeless thingover his shoulder with disdain like a soiled boa.

As he sloped away, his back grew dark with burst caul, the slipped haloof that ‘poor fellow.’

Goodbye, little song.

Goodbye, Migdale.

They said in the village you were an absentee landlord, a shirker, a fool.

But nightfall and sun-up wait at your beck and call.

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EVENTS AND INTERVIEWSFiona Benson Question and AnswerEVENTS AND INTERVIEWS

eyes that are like any kind of deep water.It has come to those coiled, snaking gutswe had when we were younger still-those balled-up sock guts of an afternoonstolen back from college.It has come to the spastic, ticking urgesrising through skin at the simplestrespositioning of your weasel hips,or the one in twenty-seven kissesI might land about your mouth,of the right temperature and diction.

Was I even hungry once for eating?Were you ever not the end to all fasts?

Fiona is an Anglo-Scottish writer currently living in Exeter. She was educated at Trinity College, Oxford and then St. Andrews, where she completed the MLitt in Creative Writing and a PhD on Ophelia. She received an Eric Gregory award in 2006 and is working on her first book of poems.

FIONA BENSON

Lares

I keep going back to that bird, snaggedby a halter or skein of fibre or yarnand strung from the gutter of the opposite housewhere it quartered the wind, each bead of its spineand the dead-drop of its skulllit up against the breeze-block wall,claws pushed out as if skidding to a haltwhile its beak transmitted code.

I say a prayer to you, small ghost,small noosed spirit of the eaves,dangling from the prow of the housesinging all four winds, the spindle and pinand needle and thorn of your hollow bonesriding you on air that is redolent with sporesafter the fact of your scavenged heart,the stolen tissues of your wings.

Jack was born in Norwich in 1984, graduated from Norwich School of Art and Design in 2005 and is currently studying towards a PhD in Creative Writing at Goldsmiths, where he also teaches English Literature. He is a librettist, musician and co-edits the anthology series Stop Sharpening Your Knives. He won an Eric Gregory Award in 2007 and lives in Hackney.

JACK UNDERWOOD

Weasel

So Weasel, it has come to this;to your thighs like tall glasses of milk,your biscuit hair,

What in your opinion does poetry do? What should it be doing?

Heather: I think that my primary aim for poetry is play, and this is something that Jack and I have talked about: the idea of serious play. I’m also an artist and think that art is something that children do a lot of and most people don’t do as much as they get older, and I think that it’s the same with poetry. It does lend itself to surprise and surprising yourself often. If you start a novel, you might know where it’s going, but when I write a poem, I think it’s going somewhere, and then it goes on somewhere completely different, so, for me, it’s that element of surprise. What I’m looking for in my own poetry and in other people’s poetry is always to be surprised.

That seems to be such an important point. Robert Frost says “no surprise in the writer, no surprise in the reader”, and that seems to be an enormously important activity in writing , but how do you get surprise into writing? It’s such a difficult thing, isn’t it? How do you stay surprised yourself?

Toby: Well, it’s a good question, but I think it’s one you stop worrying about. You get surprise into your writing by being surprised by things. I tend to find that I’ll see something that’s not necessarily surprising, but something which moves me. The last one I remember was walking across a bridge into Newcastle and there was a little, wee robin that had just been tossed up the windshield of a car, and it was a very horrendous, beautiful and terrible thing to look at as it lay there, and a whole series of thoughts coalesced around it, and three or four poems have come out of that.

QUESTION AND ANSWER SESSION WITH THE POETS

JACK UNDERWOOD

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Jack Underwood InterviewEVENTS AND INTERVIEWS

a lonely career. What you’ve been talking about is the idea of writing as an incredibly social activity, and I wonder whether you feel that’s true.

Heather: I think for me that it is quite a social activity, surprisingly perhaps. I’m based in London, and in London there are an awful lot of opportunities for do-ing readings, so for me there are two sides. There’s the side when I’m at home, writing on my own in solitude, but then the advantage with writing poetry, that maybe you don’t get so much with writing novels, is that you can go and read your work to people. For me, it’s critical to have the opportunity to read it and hear it read aloud to see people’s responses to it, and see how that feeds back into the writing, so it becomes a social activity. Also, a lot of the poets I read with I see regularly, so we’re all in the same boat in this ridiculous, sort of non-career, and it’s fun.

EVENTS AND INTERVIEWSQuestion and Answer

If your audience didn’t like your work would it change your own perspective on your work, and even change the poem?

Toby: Well, essentially I think there’s a huge difference between how you read a poem to yourself and how you read it to an audience. I don’t bind to the idea that a poem is designed to be read aloud. I think what we mean by that is read aloud in your head, if that doesn’t sound too obtuse. I think we all have a voice in our head that we use to test a poem and I think when a poem comes out of your mouth it’s very different and that creates a difficulty. I think we’ve all had poems that worked in some places and didn’t work in others, but I wouldn’t then go and change the poem because of that. I think I’d trust the way I heard it in my head first.

Do you write with a specific audience in mind or do you just write for yourself?

Fiona:I’m not sure that either is true. You try and write a poem for itself, I think, you try and listen to what it wants to say, but I think we all have readers who we send our work to who are really important to us. For example, I have a friend who has been reading all my stuff for the past seven years, and it’s really been incredibly helpful.

Jack: I think it’s a really interesting question, because the reader with a capital ‘R’ is a confusing concept. There’s an ongoing, theoretical digging that goes on that renders anyone’s words essentially meaningless except for the reader’s. The reader brings their own associations, and the denotative level of language that we trust as writer, for example when we use the word ‘cow’, we think we’re actually pointing towards a cow, is something that’s been largely philosophically disproved, and so actually what we’re doing is gesturing towards an idea of ‘cow-ness’. Simon Benson said that “the dictionary is the graveyard of language” and I don’t think that you can write in those conditions. The reader is the person who endows any kind of meaning, who creates a real, physical shape to the words that you offer. You write for anyone and everyone in the hope that what they understand you understand, and I think poets prize that kind of communication above anything else.

Do you have any rituals when you write? Do you have a place you have to be in order to write?

Fiona:When I moved in with my husband, he made me a writing room which I’ve never written anything in. I don’t have a routine at all. I think I like writing in bed.

There are quite a lot of stereotypes about writing being an incredibly personal thing, and quite

After cornering Jack Underwood into an interview, our Jamie Baxter reviews his work.

Although unassuming in nature, Underwood offered some intriguing insights into poets and poetry. He immediately dismissed the mystique surrounding poets and the idea that they have some insight that others do not, but went on to say that “language belongs to everyone”. Underwood’s advice for those writing poetry today is to ask questions, but he went on to say “it would not be to ask questions about themselves or anyone else but about asking the right questions for everyone.”

Regarding his influences Underwood first cited Spanish poet Federico García Lorca, who he described as being “philosophically complete”. He talked about the Russian doll nature of Lorca’s imagery, describing the Spaniard’s poetry as being “a highly invitational kind of poetry” and said that “I could only hope that [this effect] would occur with my own.” Another poet mentioned was Charles Simic whose worlds Underwood described as “dark and interesting”. As well as this, the playfulness of Simic’s work appealed to him and he described being playful as a poet today as “a risk” as there is a fear you will not be taken seriously. The last poet he mentioned was the late Michael Donaghy who Underwood believed “seems to be able to encapsulate everything about a rhetorical framework…and borrow in terms of allusion other worlds, literary or otherwise. He just seems to have a complete control over the world he is talking about and the way he talks about it.”

Underwood started the reading with a short poem entitled ‘Theology’. He remembers waiting for a panther at the zoo and staring up into the trees, finally stating “Suppose there was no panther.” This set the tone for Underwood’s poetry as building an image and then leaving the listener or reader with something to ponder, so the poems don’t simply finish with the last line. ‘Hannah-loo’ is set in a time and

AN INTERVIEW WITH JACK UNDERWOOD

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COPYRIGHTEVENTS AND INTERVIEWSJack Underwood Interview

place that couldn’t exist. A three-piece band is lent “a gypsy dollar” to cut their first record and the poem moves off in a prosaic way with much biography, finally pulling the reader in with a question so as to bring into focus the reader’s involvement. The final poem Underwood read was ‘Toad’ and he introduced this poem as being about an old friend. This toad has a habit of eating soap and the poet tells it not to, for fear the toad will be sick. Underwood then comes back to this at the end of the poem, reflecting in the image of the soap his own disgust at this habit with “Toad, it makes my insides sick.” From this pamphlet it is obvious that his poetry can be novel, funny and insightful. His style is still slightly in a state of flux, but for a young poet this can only be a good thing.

The whole evening was designed to promote these poets and their pamphlets and as a pre-first collection the pamphlet reads as a great introduction to the possibilities of Underwood’s poetry. I look forward to his first collection.

EVENTS CALENDAR

Join us for an evening of poetry, music, cheap drinks and dancing on Monday 9th November from 8 ‘til late in the DIA (Neville Street) to celebrate the launch of the magnificent seventh issue of The Grove. It should be a brilliant night.

THE GROVE LAUNCH PARTY

Mondays, 7.30-9pm at the Big Jug: Literature Discussion Group. This year, tutor David Crane will be discussing the poetry of T. S. Eliot.

Tuesdays, 7.30pm: Creative Writing Society. Whether it’s overcoming writer’s block or getting feedback on your work, CW can help. Contact creative.writing@dur.ac.uk to find out more. ER157.

Wednesdays, 7.30pm: Poetry Society. Alternate sessions discussing poems brought by established poets and poems written by members. Free. Venue: a living room near you. Contact Rowena at rowena.knight@dur.ac.uk.

Philosophy Society talks every Wednesday. Coming up : ‘If I say I’m lying, should you believe me?’ (4th of November, 7.30pm) ER204 and ‘Is ethics something to laugh about?’ (11th November, 7.30pm). Contact phil.soc@dur.ac.uk.

WEEKLY EVENTS

ENGLISH LANGUAGE

Andrew Motion, “Red Gloves”. From Selected Poems (Faber & Faber, 2002)

Dylan Thomas, “Especially When the October Wind Blows.” From Collected Poems (Everyman’s Poetry, 1997) Ernest Hemingway, “In Another Coun-try.” From The First 49 Stories (Arrow Publishers, 1993) Mark Tredinnick, “Two Hens.” From The Road South (River Road Press, 2008) Dan Burt, “Winter Mornings.” From Searched For Text (Lintott Press, 2008)

TRANSLATIONS

Fyodor Dostoyevsky, “The Brothers Karamazov: The Garnett Translation.” Trans. Constance Garnett. (W. W. Nor-ton & Co., 1976)

Ryszard Kapuscinski, “Victoriano Gomez on TV.” Trans. William Brand. From The Soccer War (Granta Books, 2007)

Federico Garcia Lorca, “Preciosa and the Breeze” Trans. A. S. Kline; “Ro-mance Sonambulo” Trans. William Lo-gan; “Ballad of the Civil Guard” Trans.

A. S. Kline; “Singing Café” Trans. A. S. Kline. Intellectual copyright is held by the authors and translators

STUDENT WRITING

Intellectual copyright of all material in the Student Writing section is held by the authors

EVENTS AND INTERVIEWS

While the material featured in the Events and Interviews section is yet to be published, all intellectual copyright is held by Faber & Faber. We would like to express our thanks to Jamie Baxter and Alice Mullen for helping us greatly with the interviews.

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