Arbor Low

[poliphilo]

My friend veronica_milvus just posted an excellent poem about Arbor Low- the Derbyshire henge. It prompted me to dig out my effort- written nearly 20 years ago- and tidy it up. Gib Hill (short for Gibbet Hill) is a few minutes walk from the henge. It's a neolithic barrow with a bronze age barrow on top of it and- yes- at some stage- I suppose in the 18th century- there was a gibbet there.

                                    ARBOR LOW

 

                                    Aileen stayed in the four wheel drive.

                                    This was the sensible thing to do.

 

                                    The wind was pure unpleasantness,

                                    Slinging the rain like fistfuls of gravel,

 

                                    Beating the gnarly stones.  They looked

                                    Friable, like left-over wodges

 

                                    Of dirty snow.  When I imagine

                                    A priesthood for these places I see

                       

                                    Such men and women as Stukeley emoted

                                    In oakleaf coronets- not today;

 

                                    This weather favours no ghosts but the slatted,

                                    Air-treading low-lives of Gibbet Hill.

Comments

[sovay]

This weather favours no ghosts but the slatted,
Air-treading low-lives of Gibbet Hill.

I wish you would send this one somewhere. It is ghostly.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

I'm glad you like those particular lines- they're the ones I rewrote this morning.

I don't really know where to send it. I opted out of the poetry scene a few years back. Such contacts as I used to have are all severed.

[sovay]

I opted out of the poetry scene a few years back. Such contacts as I used to have are all severed.

Mostly what I know are speculative markets. I will gladly link you to them, if you are interested.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Yes please. :)

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

I would love to get something published, or do some live poetry reading. If you look at the Faber and Faber poetry website, they encourage unsolicited poems. I might give it a go out of sheer hubris.

I'd like to know where else to try.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I used to subscribe to a lot of small poetry magazines. Some of them published me. In the end I became disillusioned. To make a career in poetry you have to be really, really pushy, a shameless self-publicist and know all the right people. Also, it almost certainly helps to live in a metropolis, where you are in a position to attend the parties.

Faber have a website, do they? I may go and take a peek.

[sovay]

Yes please.

All right!

The markets I recommend instantly are Not One of Us, Mythic Delirium, Lone Star Stories, Goblin Fruit, Strange Horizons, Electric Velocipede, Flytrap, and The Pedestal—they publish consistently excellent work, and I do not say that simply because some of it has been mine. They are all small press; they all really care about what they are doing. Magazines where I have never placed poems myself (or not for a long time) but whose company I would like someday to keep include ChiZine, Star*Line, Farrago's Wainscot, and Sybil's Garage; they are interesting reading. And I think you are the caliber of poet who should turn up in pages like The New Yorker, but unfortunately I am not an editor there . . .

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thank you for these. I'll check them out.
:)

[margaretarts.livejournal.com]

Yes, good poem. "The wind was pure unplesantness, Slinging the rain like fistfuls of gravel." Perfect. And "air-treading" is Hopkinsworthy!

[margaretarts.livejournal.com]

unplesant, unplesaunt.

Whatever, it was pure unpleasantness.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

It's a poem I wasn't entirely happy with until I "fixed" it this morning.

[oakmouse]

Lovely poem! And I heart anyone who can use the word friable correctly. *g*

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks.

"Friable" is such a brilliantly tactile word.

[oakmouse]

I'd never noticed that, but you're right. I always get distracted by the fact that the word brings an instant visual image --- of friable stone --- to mind, but once I thought about your comment I realized that it also brings a feel to mind, very like the feel of crumbling old stone.

[veronica-milvus.livejournal.com]

Thanks for posting this. What a difference it makes to meet a new place in particular weather! I loved the "fistfuls of gravel". Having looked at Julian cope's "modern antiquarian" it seems that most people feel about Arbor Low the way you do. I need to go back there next summer.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

If I went in high summer I might feel different. But it is a very exposed site. I should think there's almost always a breeze.

The place I keep going back to is Avebury.