Ken Edwards

As the annus horribilis 2020 draws to a close, there is one ray of light at least for me – I just received by email a draft of the cover and first page proofs of my promised Collected Poems from Shearsman Books. A 520pp+ monster! It spans my poetry from around 1975 onwards.  I'm very happy that the cover will feature a photograph by Elaine. So I'm proofreading right now, and there will be more news soon.

DAY TO DAY I see tiny cities made of gold and stellar formations of uncanny provenance, all wrecked in the flood, even at its muddy rim. [pic: Elaine Edwards]

THE NEXT DAY But something is not right. The hum of traffic – that’s what I’m still convinced I remember; from morning till evening it was like the constant swell of the sea – is gone, and a great silence reigns. The world ruffles ever so slightly with every possibility lurking below its serene surface. The press of the floorboards on my bare feet is comfortable, the door handle nestles nicely in my palm, air gently enters and exits my nostrils. I open, I go through. I click the door shut. What is this place? It’s where we are. [pic: Brian Marley]

DAYS GO BY E pointed out to me that just below one of the windows in the house-backs visible from the back of our house someone has over the past week built up a stash of items on the flat roof. A large cardboard box topped by a large tupperware container and a plastic bag. From time to time a man opens the window and extracts items which seem to be food. We speculate that he's self-isolating and has no access to a fridge (those windows face north and are in shadow much of the day). Also visible are a good number of bottles, apparently white wine.

DAY BY DAY I am moving I am sitting up now. I am hither and thither looking. What season is it? Probably spring. The evidence, such as species of flowering plants or the particular activities of birds (they sing, I can hear them), is out there, beyond this place. It’s impossible to sing without a voice-box. To listen without a brain. We are therefore all real beings with real organs – we confirm the existence of each other. We are here but we are also there. In another place that I sense is out there still, but can only imagine. Out there is a promise, I suppose: the imaginary air of an imaginary place that is not this place, waiting for me until I can feel it for myself.

YET ANOTHER DAY A tiny wisp of white cloud drifts across the square of light blue, slowly, right to left. When that has disappeared, there is only blue for a while, interrupted once by the vertical flight of a bird, a dark shape moving too swiftly to reveal its species. Some time later, another cloud appears on the right; as it too drifts across, it seems to tug behind it a larger, glitter-edged one that, as it comes fully into view, causes the smaller one to dim and dissolve into its blue surround. After a further period these clouds, too, drift behind the left of the frame.

ANOTHER DAY Then I’m awake. No, I can’t even say that: “then”. Erase that. Begin again. But I just did. What am I talking about? So then. Light is what I was first aware of, coming in from what I was slow to realise was the window, on the left hand side, flowing onto and outlining the great globe above me. I’d imagined it to be some huge satellite, or was it a mammary to suck on; but it’s only the Japanese paper lantern that hangs from the ceiling above the bed; it’s a bed that I am in, the pale sunlight streaming in on it making a brilliant crescent. It’s white, there’s gold in the picture, there’s blue there too, I’m aware of blue. Pale blue. I remember that lantern from another time. It’s still there! It’s moving ever so slightly, which makes me aware there is a breeze, the window must be ajar. Immense, golden light: like waking in a kind of a palace, or I could be in a cathedral or something, but no, it’s the early sunshine working its way through the slats of the wooden venet...