British Contemporary Poetry

Night Life

_{Illustration © Atlanta Wiggs in International Times, June 2021}

Ward 4B

During a heatwave, visitors are 
forbidden beyond the reception desk. 
 
Breathing machines run on batteries
after midnight nurses rush out 
 
on cigarette break. There is 
a sudden drop in humidity         
 
with the scream of a new-born 
dug out of the womb by hand.
 
Outside the hospital, a man walks
between candles like into a forest 
 
delivering flowers to the maternity. 
Alley cats rummage through garbage, 
 
wish him good luck. Staff change shifts
back at depot for deep-cleaning.
 
Summer rainwater washes away 
night traffic blood puddles.

_{© Maria Stadnicka, June 2021, published in International Times on 26 June 2021.}

“Stark, bleak but also beautiful-haunting” / “Buried Gods Metal Prophets” reviewed by Mike Ferguson

There are many voices in these poems about degradation, fight, resilience and defeat. There is defiance, and some ‘needs-must’ wry humour, but in the regular resignation – a kind of strength when that is all you can produce – it is deeply despairing. That the collection begins with Radioactive Milk, a poem that births the horrors of both its (and the whole book’s) reality and symbolism, it is not surprising there’s a dark portrayal of suffering and at best some kind of basic survival.

The other ‘voice’ – one that works with and against the poetic – is that contained in the documents and notes and reports and diagrams and other similar that set the scene/s of orphanage, alienation, abuse, doctors/medical, government, history and so on. Stadnicka’s poetry has such a startling ability to move into the expanse beyond this – where it needs to be exploring in and around the actual – that these other reminders are anchors to what should be an extraordinary context, but is in human history a bleak norm.

There are so many threads I would like to follow and unravel here, but I have only just finished a complete read and know I will want but also have to return to begin tying these together. I don’t mean that’s a necessity to be engaged and moved by the full narrative of these memorable poems. I mean that is what I want to do, because I am so engaged. To share a few impressions: the child Stupid (as so-called, though clearly not as the observations reveal) talks of pulling teeth – having to pull out one’s own teeth – and so when this reference point appears again in a poem like Sister’s Night Shift, it resonates in its differing reveal, […]

Full review available here.

Buried Gods Metal Prophets published by Guillemot Press and illustrated by Antonia Glücksman is available here.

‘Buried Gods Metal Prophets’ out on 11 Feb. 2021

Buried Gods Metal Prophets published by the Guillemot Press, UK.

Editors: Luke Thompson and Sarah Cave

Design and illustrations: Antonia Glücksman

Free online launch on 11 Feb. 2021 at 7pm. Please register using the Guillemot’s Events Page which is available here: https://www.guillemotpress.co.uk/events/11th-february-book-launch-maria-stadnicka-featuring-susie-campbell.

About Buried Gods Metal Prophets:

Maria Stadnicka’s latest poetry collection Buried Gods Metal Prophets is inspired by the experiences of her siblings, who lived in a Romanian children’s home between 1978-1987. This was the period of Romania’s Communist Party’s disastrous ‘Decree 770’, which banned contraception and abortion, at the same time as awarding women with more than five children an ‘Order of the Heroine Mother’. As a result, an estimated twelve million illegal abortions took place between 1967 and 1989 and over 250,000 children were placed in orphanages or care homes.

Stadnicka builds a polyphonic poetic documentary inspired by Julia Kristeva’s idea that poetry can establish ‘space and infinity’ beyond the restriction of linear poetics. The juxtaposition of narratives builds a world in which the omnipresent voice of the government echoes in the mechanised communication between the state and the individual, as well as in the control over the process of information dissemination in a climate where the private ownership of a typewriter without state permission, meant prison sentence.

Buried Gods Metal Prophets is based on her personal experience when working as a teacher at St. Stelian Orphanage which cared for three hundred children diagnosed with HIV and AIDS. Exposing the reality of living in state care during the Cold War, it explores the spectre of political and human tyranny that can contribute to a generational socio-cultural trauma. Children are called by numbers, not by names, and even the letters they write to Santa Claus are subject to censorship.

The creative process was informed by interviews with family members, and research around childhood trauma, neglect and child language development. The book responds to what Sartre calls literary ‘commitment and substance of enterprise’, looking at survival as an act of defiance.

January 2021

Hermit Age

When I get lonely, I visit my local tip. Apart from Wednesdays, I am guaranteed to find someone about, willing to help me get rid of a load of stuff which, up to that point, had prevented me from moving on in life. One time I discarded so much of my old junk that back home I noticed the front door sign was gone, and the post box which had my name on it. I got in and a woman I’d never met before was moving about hoovering. She was wearing my shoes.

Geometry

Nietzsche insists that a person must

find at least one truth before a good

night sleep. A terrible prospect

considering how facts come about,

with their own sets of variables.

wind force,

speed in metres per second,

momentum at impact

with a surface, temperature

and friction between molecules

Ninety-degree angles do not exist

in real life. Until now science tricked

us into believing in verticality.

Meanwhile it builds a simplified version

of the world, a dummy manual, if you like,

for funding purposes.

Somnia | Four Movements in F Minor

Billed as ‘Four Movements in F Minor’, Somnia is split into parts, ‘Allegro’, ‘Largo’, ‘Scherzo’ and ‘Finale’. The poems explore living through terrorism and fear, although these themes could be metaphorical or literal since the poems’ concerns focus on the effects on people living through these times. From ‘Allegro’, ‘Witness’ takes place a supermarket where ropes are on sale and shoppers talk about the pending hurricane,

Across the isle, a women looks out.

Trains deliver milk and morning newspapers;

at the end of his shift, a night watchman

lights a cigarette watching umbrellas running

to shelter. He has nowhere else. His children

sent him a blank telegram. Monochrome winds,

he thinks. Time to repair, to build.

The house he was born in no longer exists.

The punch of the last line carries a heft in contrast to the seemingly mundane routine of everyday lives. As others are hurrying home to shelter from adverse weather, the watchman has no one else to be concerned about him. In ‘Defence Mechanism’ from ‘Largo’, a questions throws a person,

I move

rubble pieces

across the chess table

unsure of what bishops,

rooks, pawns are for

in this game.

Would you kill a bird?

the angel asks.

A stone grows

in my mouth.

Between my flesh

and my heart,

rust.’

The poet is Romanian and lived through a political regime of a dictator, secret police and general paranoia where neighbour reported neighbour to save themselves form arrest. The question isn’t necessarily about a bird, but could you kill to save yourself? Can you do what it takes to survive?

Somnia is accomplished and timely, built on acute observation and drawn without judgement. The poems focus on the darker sides of humanity, the intrusion on every day lives by the political forces and show solidarity with those simply trying to protect family and survive.

Somnia (published on 6th April 2020 by Knives, Forks and Spoons Press) was included among ‘the best books to read during lockdown’ by The Telegraph Arts (May 2020). The book is available at Knives, Forks and Spoons, The Poetry Book Society, Waterstones, Amazon and the following independent shops:

Banner Books (Ennistymon)
http://bannerbooks.ie

Book Corner (Saltburn-by-the-Sea)
bookcornershop.co.uk

The Bookshop (East Grinstead)
eastgrinsteadbookshop.co.uk

Brendon Books (Taunton)
brendonbooks.co.uk

Bridge Bookshop (Isle of Man)
bridge-bookshop.com

Browsers Bookshop (Porthmadog)
browsersbookshop.com

Gullivers Bookshop (Wimborne)
booksandvinyl.co.uk/gullivers

Gnash Comics
gnashcomics.co.uk

Gwisgo Bookworm (Aberearon)
gwisgobookworm.co.uk

Haslemere Bookshop (Haslemere)
haslemerebookshop.co.uk

Hungerford Bookshop (West Berkshire)
hungerfordbookshop.co.uk

Lindum Books (Lincoln)
facebook.com/lindumbooks

Mostly Books (Abingdon)
mostly-books.co.uk

Niche Comics and Bookshop (Cambridgeshire)
nichecomics.co.uk

Red Lion Books (Colchester)
redlionbooks.co.uk

Sam Read Bookseller (Grasmere)
samreadbooks.co.uk

Wivenhoe Bookshop (Essex)
wivenhoebooks.com

The Woodstock Bookshop
woodstockbookshop.co.uk

Research Sample #4731

Photograph © Saul Leiter

Dreamed we were eating

pasta with mud and no-one

complained that earth lacked

seasoning. Yes, thank you,

since you ask, I will have

another portion of this.

At present it makes life

bearable.

Until tomorrow / Free online reading 16th June, 7.30pm

Photograph: @John Stadnicki – MMXVIII

An opportunity to hear new work, as well as fragments from Somnia.

SOMNIA (front cover) published by The Knives Forks Spoons Press, April 2020.

Event organised by Gloucester Poetry Festival!

Registration and further information: here.

Thank you! Maria

Until tomorrow, you can listen to:

‘The Seventh Virtue’.

Note:
Latest book Somnia published this year by the Knives, Forks and Spoons Press was released on 6th April and can be ordered from the following independent bookshops:

Banner Books (Ennistymon)
http://bannerbooks.ie

Book Corner (Saltburn-by-the-Sea)
bookcornershop.co.uk

The Bookshop (East Grinstead)
eastgrinsteadbookshop.co.uk

Brendon Books (Taunton)
brendonbooks.co.uk

Bridge Bookshop (Isle of Man)
bridge-bookshop.com

Browsers Bookshop (Porthmadog)
browsersbookshop.com

Gullivers Bookshop (Wimborne)
booksandvinyl.co.uk/gullivers

Gnash Comics
gnashcomics.co.uk

Gwisgo Bookworm (Aberearon)
gwisgobookworm.co.uk

Haslemere Bookshop (Haslemere)
haslemerebookshop.co.uk

Hungerford Bookshop (West Berkshire)
hungerfordbookshop.co.uk

Lindum Books (Lincoln)
facebook.com/lindumbooks

Mostly Books (Abingdon)
mostly-books.co.uk

Niche Comics and Bookshop (Cambridgeshire)
nichecomics.co.uk

Red Lion Books (Colchester)
redlionbooks.co.uk

Sam Read Bookseller (Grasmere)
samreadbooks.co.uk

Wivenhoe Bookshop (Essex)
wivenhoebooks.com

The Woodstock Bookshop
woodstockbookshop.co.uk

Further information about her work, collaborations and reviews at http://www.mariastadnicka.com.

Join us on Zoom (you will need to register for a ticket in order to receive the pass-code):-

https://zoom.us/j/93290445542

Dial in to join by phone if you wish:-

+44 330 088 5830
+44 131 460 1196
+44 203 481 5237
+44 203 481 5240
+44 208 080 6591
+44 208 080 6592

Find your local number: https://zoom.us/u/aeg9xXpiad

15th June 2020

Black Talks

Urban Afterlife / Week #9 Midlands in Lockdown / United Kingdom

	Maria Stadnicka on An Everyday Project(July…
	Frances on An Everyday Project(July…
	Mark Mawer on An Everyday Project(July…
	Maria Stadnicka on An Everyday Project(July…
	Gravantes on An Everyday Project(July…

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