Zero Gravity
5/5
()
About this ebook
Damian Garside
Damian Garside was born in a small town close to the city of Manchester in the North of England in 1953. In 1964 my family emigrated to South Africa, where, apart from a 3 year stint as a postgraduate student of English at Manchester University, he has lived ever since (the last 5 of which married to Modiegi). His interest in writing poetry began in the early 1980s. Since then he has written a great deal of poetry, particularly in the last few years, and had a number of poems published in South African literary journals and poetry magazines, as well as having a few anthologized in books such as The Paperbook of South African English Poetry (edited by Michael Chapman). At present Garside (who holds a Ph D in English from the University of Cape Town) teaches media, culture and communication on the Mafikeng Campus of North West University. Mafikeng is a town in the North West Province of South Africa that was once famous for the siege it endured during the Second Boer War (1899-1902) Zero Gravity is the first collection of Garside’s poetry to be published.
Related to Zero Gravity
Related ebooks
Satan's Zoo Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsUnfolding Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSnakes and Babies: Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsAt Lake Scugog: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Imaginary Menagerie Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsQuill to Quark: Passionate Poets Provocative Poems Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSkull Kingdoms: An Imaginary Omnibus Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHer Came 7 Bolt Telescope Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFauxhawk Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSand in the Sole Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDeath by Design: cage | stage, #1 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsBunyan's Guide To The Great American Wildlife: What happens when the Manhattan zoo empties its cages? Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsIn the House of the Machine God: The World Saga, #0 Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Hearts of Three Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Nadir Of Sitting Duck Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsHang Ten: Purloin Like a Poet, #10 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsDivine Intervention Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsPoacher Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsWobble Rating: 3 out of 5 stars3/5Once in the West: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5A Young Recruit Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFloating Bodies Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Ball Hab: Strains, #0 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Tale of a Window Salesman Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsSitting on the Floor Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsLyrics From The Labyrinth: A Mind Unleashed Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsFrom Away - Series One, Book Four: a Serial Thriller of Arcane and Eldritch Horror: FROM AWAY, #4 Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsEarth Tones Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsNotes from the Passenger Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsCosmic Conflicts: Blastoff Stories Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratings
Poetry For You
The Odyssey: (The Stephen Mitchell Translation) Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Iliad: The Fitzgerald Translation Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Daily Stoic: A Daily Journal On Meditation, Stoicism, Wisdom and Philosophy to Improve Your Life Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5The Iliad of Homer Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Way Forward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Prophet Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Beyond Thoughts: An Exploration Of Who We Are Beyond Our Minds Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Dante's Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Selected Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Dante's Inferno: The Divine Comedy, Book One Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Canterbury Tales Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Inward Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Leaves of Grass: 1855 Edition Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Tao Te Ching: A New English Version Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5For colored girls who have considered suicide/When the rainbow is enuf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Bedtime Stories for Grown-ups Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Edgar Allan Poe: The Complete Collection Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Poems That Make Grown Men Cry: 100 Men on the Words That Move Them Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A New English Version Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Things We Don't Talk About Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Odyssey Rating: 0 out of 5 stars0 ratingsThe Complete Poems of Emily Dickinson Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Divine Comedy: Inferno Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Beowulf Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Love Her Wild: Poems Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Gilgamesh: A Verse Narrative Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Letters to a Young Poet (Rediscovered Books): With linked Table of Contents Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5Twenty love poems and a song of despair Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5
Related categories
Reviews for Zero Gravity
1 rating0 reviews
Book preview
Zero Gravity - Damian Garside
Copyright © 2014 by Damian Garside.
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the copyright owner.
Rev. date: 01/17/2014
To order additional copies of this book, contact:
Xlibris LLC
0-800-056-3182
www.xlibrispublishing.co.uk
Orders@xlibrispublishing.co.uk
522916
CONTENTS
Whole
101
And in this Dream not a Line Went Missing
Visa or Master
Wake
Way
Wet
When it Comes to Big Bang
Without Parallel
Writ
Writing Poetry This Day
X (for Xmas) marks the spot
I put it to Socrates
At the Border Crossing
Cavalier
Conjugating
In Taung
La Luna
Not Strictly According to Pythagoras’ Theorem
Once Upon a Forest
Selfsame
Copernican System
Not Being Particularly Committed to Dualistic Thinking
PLANETARIUM
A Love Poem with an Even Stranger twist in the Tail than Most
LOST, PRESUMED BURNT
In the Bone
And of the Vertigo of Poetry
State of Grace
Hard as I try
Rite of Passage (Magaliesberg, 3 December 2003)
TRESPASS
Sometimes I get held up too, Mr. Frost
PRESSURE (OF A BAD NIGHT’S DREAMING)
POEM ON THE EQUINOX
Frissance
Within an Inch (Poem Written for Read-only Memory)
Libretta Pulling out all the Stops in her Quest for the Sanctity of High Officialdom
Poem Number Nine (Saved from the Weight of Resurrection)
Obsidian
Viva the Last praise Poem Viva
Casanova Poem Numero Uno
Flame Flowers
Come to Think of It
Poem for Denise
Should the Cap Fit
Catullus at the Tape
If Philip K. Dick had Written the Iliad
Poor Choice
Spectrum Analysis
Love Poem Number Two
Pax Romana
Nicely Divided
Rhythm Section
Graduation
FOR WHAT IT’S WORTH
Death Swish
POEM FOR LUCKY DUBE
If JM Coetzee had Written The Iliad
Café Lite
Dim
Medallion
Fire
For Richard Dawkins
Where are you now, Vladimir Mayakovski?
Still Life
All Along the Axis of Selection (for Imraan Coovadia)
POEM FOR ANDRE BRETON
If Suresh Roberts had written the Iliad
Reading Close Readers
Oilman
Poem for Wilfred Owen
As I Like to Put It (for Daniel, on the birth of his first child)
Out of the Woods
Spider in Absinthe (Absinthe Spider)
At the Grave of Giovanni Jacopo
Lower Case
Vow of Poverty
Verse Blank (for Modiegi)
Ride (for Modiegi)
Slice (of Life)
Speaking of Lambs
Tickle
Gaudeamus
Short
Mamang in Taung
Intellectual Property
Piece of the Puzzle
PASTORAL
FOR DEIRDRE
Time Trek (for Stanley Kubrick)
The Triumph of Self-Destruction
The Message
If Vidal Sassoon had Written the Communist Manifesto
Fabric (for Brian Greene)
False Bay Poem (false poem in False Bay)
Without Batteries
Set in Tibet
Sojourner
General Orders
Observed Pedalling Against the Flow on the Road to Westville Pavilion
Poem for Ryuichi Sakamoto
Pop Goes My Weasel Theory
A Little Long John Silverish
Air Power
Claire Libra Re-revisited
Damned Shepherds (being my little essay in political pastoral)
Fine edge
If Luis Bunuel had Written the Iliad
Lady of the Lake as Hindu Metaphysician
Mixed Blessing
Prudentia Juris
Free, Fair Territory
Beyond Comparison
Darkness at Linz (Poem as Watercolour)
Upside Down Man Walking Beneath a Blood Moon
Beneath the Trees
Big Brotha
Catullus Remix
In Our Red World Down Here
If Only (Life Were Like a Woody Allen Movie)
Of Cloudy Nights and Garbo Complexes
With Not the Slightest Idea of Special Relativity
In the Rhyming Logic of Contemporary Poetry
Don’t Try This At Home
Everything that is the Case
Honey Pot
False Bay Fish
Enough
First People
Not the Deepest Hole in the Universe
For Lesedi (my student who was killed in a car crash on the eve of her graduation)
Bra Ted
The Nature of the Argument
Bombmaker, Thief
If Julia Kristeva had Written The Odyssey
Miners
Castagno’s The Young David
In Mocoseng
His Epitaph: Our Most Accomplished Poet
Shield
Poem Written During an Imaginary Crossing of The Golden Gate Bridge
Desert Flower
Pandora
Newton
Harvest
Fingamus Igitur
In my Painting
Like Lichen
Set Piece
For J
Donut
In a Whisper
Sappho
Stegosaurus
Storm
Send me a Message
TV Studio Bird
The Pieces
O, For a Muse of Ice
Loop Poem
Dark English Heart
Let the Poem Fail
For Cuckoos
O Prospero
Rorschach Coyote Story
Blarcseb
Exception to the Rule
All Praise to the (Reel) Eel (I Feel)
Short Poems (some untitled)
WHOLE
A needless Alexandrine ends the song,
That, like a wounded snake, drags its slow length along.
Alexander Pope: An Essay on Criticism
There is nothing treeish about the word tree.
Nothing fruity about the word fruit.
And nothing serpentine about
the word snake
whose mental concept has
already wrapped itself
around my arm
whose hooded head is raised,
about to strike at, then
swallow my pen
devour it
whole.
There is nothing worth bracketing about the word being.
Nor any point putting scare quotes around what foreshadows death.
101
postmodernism 101
will be written
in the mirror room
(so make sure you look good before entering
the examination)
the notes for chaos mathematics 101
will be sent to all students
on butterfly wings
(please note that students will
not be allowed to
steal other students’ fractals)
the surrealism paper (part
of creative writing 101)
will be written with pens
and
paper should
the student deem this
entirely necessary
and those writing
the master’s examination in
Zen haiku
please note that you
will be pressed for time, the
allotment is a mere
hour for
every precious
syllable.
AND IN THIS DREAM NOT
A LINE WENT MISSING
All along they suspected that he had been reading poetry.
Quietly; on the sly.
Thus when they
dragged him down to the cellar
for hypnosis
the crucial question was one of missing time and whether
it would take heavenly regression through hellish childhood
to find every smidgen or iota that can be found
passing through, so to speak, every
protective membrane
until
we have the code, the key like
something stored on a microdot
like the headland of an island
suddenly visible
secret squeezed out of something
next to the near-nothingness of a grammatical stop.
VISA OR MASTER
I espied Socrates
loading his trolley in the supermarket
wife Xantippe flashing
new hand-bag
rubber wheels groaning
under so much bulk saving
wishing to accelerate