Last Saturday at the Free Verse poetry book fair in Conway Hall I ran into Ian Heames who was manning a stall alongside Justin Katko. Katko’s press, Critical Documents (http://plantarchy.us), has published some very important material over the past couple of years including J.H. Prynne’s Kazoo Dreamboats, Josh Stanley’s Contra Night Escha Black, Ryan Dobran’s Ding Ding as well as work by Ian Heames such as Gloss To Carriers.
There is a lyrical energy weaving its way through Ian Heames’s poems and I was much struck by small pamphlet poem Out Of Villon which has been published by cucpress (cucpress.tumblr.com). Here I found myself reading echoes of Robert Browning filtered through Basil Bunting and Stephen Rodefer:
This evening, select, extant
Dictating these discrepant lays
All day by the bell of Sorbonne
That predicted angel who has none hour sounds
At the time, I felt Lady Memory
To begin again in the metro
By doing this I’m drinking wine
By force
My asperity is a lyre.
This poem is dated December 1st 2009 and was published in 2011. Look out for it; it is a haunting poem which won’t quite leave you alone. Ian Heames has also edited an interesting little magazine, No Prizes, issue 2 of which appeared earlier this year. It contains work by Bill Fuller and Sean Bonney as well as Jeremy Prynne’s thoughts on Peter Larkin which had been delivered at the inaugural event of the un-American Activities reading series in May of this year in Cambridge.
Ian Brinton
Tears in the Fence 