An appreciative review of Linda Lamus's A Crater the Size of Calcutta

appears here on David Foster-Morgan's blog....

The Poetry Book Society Bulletin on Linda Lamus's A Crater the Size of Calcutta (Mulfran, 2015)

"Published posthumously following her death from cancer in 2008, Linda Lamus' debut collection affords us an all-too ephemeral glimpse of a nascent talent tragically lost to us. Edited by Carrie Etter and with a foreword by Tim Liardet, these are intricately crafted poems, distilled impressions of her world travels in crystalline snapshots of people and places which linger long in the memory. It is down to the sterling work of Carrie Etter and Mulfran Press that we can hear Lamus' startling voice: 'Look. I am the shadow watching from the stars.'"

Launching Linda Lamus's A Crater the Size of Calcutta, 30 October 2015

It was a splendid evening on Friday, 30 October at the Boston Tea Party on Park Street in Bristol. Many of Linda's friends and family came to celebrate the publication of her collection, A Crater the Size of Calcutta, by Mulfran Books, and ten of us read a poem each. Thanks to Karen Hoy for these photos.

 Dikra Ridha reads "Ghazal."

 

John Terry gave a wonderfully exuberant performance of "Signor Floretto's Italian Flea Circus."

A full room, with some audience members following along in their copies of the book.

 Madeline Gittus reads the title poem.

There will be a second launch of the book in Cardiff on Thursday, 5 November as part of the First Thursday series at Chapter Arts Centre. 

Linda Lamus's A Crater the Size of Calcutta (Mulfran, 2015), second selection

Hell’s Angels

A nurse shows me photos of a biker party.

Her boyfriend stands with others, part-clad

in leathers, cocks dangling in pints of lager.

Other nurses begin circling, moving in.

They cluster on my bed, hyena cackles

attracting more.  Their pink claws snatch

at the photos; they salivate, white teeth snapping.

The Great Suit stalks through the ward followed

by whirling white coats.

Holiday snaps?  –  it’s bored, rhetorical.

The hyenas collapse laughing.  One rolls onto

my cotton savannah

and clutches her sides.

Another slides, hysterical,

to the blood-spotted floor.

You can purchase a copy by emailing the publisher at leona at mulfran dot co dot uk with a shipping address, and she will send the book with an invoice for £9 (thus no charge for shipping).

Linda Lamus's A Crater the Size of Calcutta (Mulfran Press, 2015), first selection

Linda Lamus's book is out at last, and I'm so pleased. As I think individual poems may work to show the book's strengths more than passages, I'll post several on my blog over the next week. 

Island of the Pelicans (La Isla de los Alcatraces)

Despite the Rule of Silence, you hear whispers;

the sometime clank of ball and chain,

echoes in the mess hall and exercise yard.

I swear they’re fingering my mind

on the cold side, where Bay winds slice the sun.

I’m edging down the steep concrete path

until my leg twists to a halt.  Suddenly, snug

as a bullet hole in the wall beside Solitary,

there’s one perfect hummingbird hovering,

his bill drawing nectar from scarlet monkey flowers.

Our heads are in the clouds, the tiny bird and me,

the cross-Bay winds.  I breathe in salt and flowers,

stand watching so close I feel his wings beat

air currents, disturb my hair.  I could touch

the quivering magenta breast.  His eyes hold

every secret of The Rock.

You can purchase a copy by emailing the publisher at leona at mulfran dot co dot uk with a shipping address, and she will send the book with an invoice for £9 (thus no charge for shipping). If you'd like to know a little more about Linda, there is a tribute page here. 

Lesley Saunders' The Walls Have Angels (Mulfran, 2014)

Some favourite passages:


...although some mornings
we wake in a past room
so familiar is the window
and soft-footed

like the look of a pearl
that we feel we are
the kind of stuff
continuously inhabited

by light and memories
of light, winter birds
falling out of the sky
more spirit than flesh....

from "Nightshirt"

...her face contemplative as glass....

from "Annunciation"

                                  The song in her head held

its wisteria note for the length of a question....

from "Music for Two Keyboards"

...and the slight sense of

          mistaken identity

each time the daughters

catch sight of their

vivid altered selves.

from "Psalms for the House"

                                             The blue

was something else: the cool of wall

against a woman's back, the linen

weight of her hem, and the light itself

               material as the jug of warm milk

in a corner.

from "Smalt"

...movements of the soul in vivacious flesh....

from "Shudder"

                                       Spoke without notes

in front of all these silences....

from "The Power of Light"

                    Comes a dancer

out of the Gloucestershire bluebell woods

blue-veiled with whatever it takes

to get to the truth.

from "Out of the Blue"

The air is suddenly bee-yellow,

peony-red, aflame:

there is more to this world than this world....

from "Enter the Dragon"

At the door the last visitor

must slough his dead skins

like a disreputable coat

and wait for the music.

from "Keepers"

You can purchase The Walls Have Angels at Waterstone's here for either home delivery or click and collect service.

Publishing Linda Lamus's first collection with Mulfran Press (yay!)

Some of you will have known the late poet Linda Lamus, who died in December 2008 and whom I was delighted to consider my friend. The last time I saw Linda in the hospital, she spoke movingly, urgently of her desire to publish her first book of poetry. Some months after her death, her widower John Lamus asked me if I'd see this wish through, and I agreed. My parents' deaths in 2009 and 2011, on top of my heavy workload at Bath Spa University, delayed the work considerably, but last year I finally found a publisher for the manuscript with Mulfran Press. When editor Leona Medlin told me she would publish it with Mulfran, I nearly cried in both pleasure and relief. 

The book will be titled after one of its poems, A Crater the Size of Calcutta, and published this October, with readings planned for Bristol and Cardiff and more to follow. I'll also be reading a couple poems from it at all the readings I myself do in the year following, to try to spread awareness of Linda's poetry.

Hurrah!
 

Prize night photos, Monday 16 August 2010

fellow shortlister Maureen Jivani and I

my friend Francesca Francoli (my guest for the event), me, and Maureen

the irrepressible Naz Jivani and Mulfran publisher Leona Carpenter

Maureen thought my trophy resembled a telescope....

Thanks to Naz and Maureen Jivani for the photos.

Mulfran postscript

I am sorry to learn that one interpretation of the previous post was that I disliked my friend Maureen Jivani's book Insensible Heart, when I meant to suggest the contrary! Its taut poems, delicate in both their lyricism and rhythms, risk wider territory than most first collections, drawing on imagination as well as experience. (How's that for a recommendation?)

Mulfran, a new poetry press based in Cardiff

I write this more as a notice than a recommendation, as I've only read one of their works, Maureen Jivani's Insensible Heart, and that in manuscript, as Maureen is a friend. But it's a cause for celebration when a new poetry press starts up, especially one publishing first books and pamphlets, encouraging emerging poets, who need the support so desperately. I'll be watching and reading, and in the meantime, good luck Mulfran! Their website is located here.