Month: January 2020

Duende

© JStadnicki, 2020

It looks like a lorry’s parked outside, just by a flower pot. I am arguing with online friends about class differences, ideologies, lack of revolutionary zeal, young-black versus white-old. Reversing over the pot, the lorry crashes into my neighbour’s house. I pause the argument to look for a quote from On Disobedience in the pile of books due to go to charity shops. Police and fire brigade should be on their way. There might be questions needing answers about circumstance, and whether anybody tried changing the course of events. My neighbour and I, maybe the driver, would have. The writer of this account would have too, by swiftly changing the lorry’s position from here, to somewhere at the far back of the landscape. Yet some would argue that for centuries barbarism solved all our problems by force and violence, proving to be such a success.

© Maria Stadnicka 2020

CRASH #2 CARDIFF

Saturday, 15 February 2020 at 19:30 / @ The Flute and Tankard, 4 Windsor Place, CF10 3BX.

This is the second night of CRASH – Cardiff’s brand new poetry night with a passion for the weird, funny, imaginative, dark, experimental and dreamy.

A fantastic lineup of poets awaits – Luke Kennard, Jess Mookherjee, Thomas Stewart, Peter Daniels, David Turner and Maria Stadnicka.

There will also be open mic slots.

The event is entirely FREE and there will be open mic slots.

Come, drink, bring friends, enjoy!

Seeds of Melancholia

2020 catches me off guard. I finish a glass of red wine and start my list of New Year resolutions brushing my teeth. My dentist suggested it, to prevent staining. Spitting paste foam in the sink I notice my second watch shows one past midnight. British time. On the other wrist, my first watch shows one past two. The time in the country I grew up. Youngsters already pissed pints on street corners, on the way home after celebratory fireworks. The end of a decade and all I’m thinking about is how lonely must have been for Ian Seed to share a hotel room with a woman he’d never met. And all due to a booking error.

© Maria Stadnicka 2020

! Recommended reading: Seed, I. (2018) New York Hotel, Bristol: Shearsman Books.  [TSL Book of the Year 2018]