WORDCAGE - NEW POETRY MAGAZINE
Fraser Grace of Wordage
Wordcage is a bright and so far brilliant babe, born of lockdown. Playwright Fraser Grace found - yes you guessed it - not very much work for darkened theatres and desperately failed- to -be -furloughed actors in the drear days of Covid 19. But you can’t keep an enterprising writer down and Fraser set up his literary shed - it’s getting to be quite a thing as Simon Armitage has one on the steep Holmfirth hills near Huddersfield and Fraser’s is at the landscape polar opposite , a Fen based functioning home for poetry and poets. Wordcage - join online with ease - aims to release new words into the wild. So far there have been three guests interviewed in the Shed, including me, the other two are lyrical poets.André Mangeot for July and Andrea Porter for June - you can sample their wonderful work here. And on Fraser’s fabulous web pages you can hear them too. Welcome to a well stocked shed of delights .
https://wordcageonline.wordpress.com
Below are some poems and insptirational landscapes from the three poets already published by Wordcage.
Shuck roamed here freely, once: no-one
noticed. So far from paths, he scared only
owls. Only they
saw his wolfish shape,
his one red eye, heard Shuck growl as he
drank from midnight pools, and slavering,
sniffed the cold night air.
If only he had taken a child, the locals
mutter,
we’d have stories of him this far west.
But no child will pass this way at night,
nor any woman, nor any man
who isn’t dogging.
For in our modern world one, two fields
from the road is
terrifying wilderness.
Hungry, Shuck begins to slink back east,
to the Fens, dreaming of the
flesh he likes the best.
But look: the plans are drawn.
Trams are coming – a canned people
deliveroo, driving
new paths through this virgin space.
Shuck pricks his ears, turns back, licks his
lips, and drools, and waits.© Fraser Grace
The Shed of Poetry about to become an Instituion in Cambridge culture
Trouble with Herons
No one told the Heron about gravity;
how a creature formed from piling old grey raincoats
on a tangle of coathangers
shouldn’t even dream it could fly.
Nor did anyone point out that a bird as heavy as a lifetime of regret
should really nest close to the ground:
Ignorant of physics, the heron builds its heronry at the highest point of the tallest tree
and rocks with the wind, flapping to stay balanced and so
heronish young are born into a lifetime of jeopardy -
vertigo
dropped like a stone into every fluttering heart.
At Birds of Prey breakfasts, the heron feels an imposter
at gatherings of farmbirds it doesn’t belong (too long).
The heron is a gawky, unbalanced, shifty outsider,
stands too still for our comfort, with its thousand-yard stare;
the kind of bird celebrities should be wary of
- get ready with your injunctions!
If you’re a fish, by the way, you are gone. Fraser Grace
The Great Level by first Wordcageby first SHED guest Andrea Porter
The fen knows flat so walk with me
into the low hum of the Great Level.
Nothing between here and the Urals.
Nothing to tip the north-east wind
above the briar line, the thorns.
Walk with me on the Great Level
before this earth is flooded in night
and nothing rises. Nothing rises
except a breath, each wisp
leeched of any nub of fire.
Pace the stretch of the Forty Foot,
measure out the Great Level
in rods and links and chains,
until this effort is a memory
of moving from and having been.
Move through the Great Level,
the sedge, the shrunken land,
the black ploughed furrows.
Feel how it slips down to the sea,
falls away from under your feet.
Lean into its sky, the hundred cuts
of rain and accept this Great Level,
how it takes nothing by surprise
except us; horizons, slow seep,
the long knife edge, all predictable.
Andre Mangeot July guest at Wordage,celebrated poet and author of Blood Rain
Bellwether from André's collection Blood Rain
At first it was nothing – a thought, a cough in a gale
then just a voice, then another, till none could be heard
but all spoke as one. And some called it chatter
and some called it rumour. And soon came a leader
who cut through the babble to what we were saying,
told us why and to who, and now we were more
than the sum of ourselves. Some called it bigotry,
others theology. On you led till nothing could
touch us, till each glance we caught looked away
and no challenge came. Loyal to a fault we pressed on
in your wake. To some a messiah, to the rest a base liar,
we were all on a bandwagon now and – hazard or bluff,
right to the brink – some called it hate, some called it love.
Hotel Corridor by Andrea Porter
This is a season of small insanities.
The hotel heaves with constant activity.
Guests arrive and check out without notice,
just a note propped on the bedside table.
One guest has changed from a double
to a single and then back to a double
in less time than it takes me to polish
the lobby, dust out my pigeon holes.
It rains continually and some guests
tap the barometer in hope of change.
I wipe their fingerprints from the glass.
Late at night I answer their calls for ice.
I check who wants waking with morning tea,
which newspaper they need to start the day.
I walk the corridors, eavesdrop at doors
for the sounds of laughter, sighs and weeping,
conversations, the click of a suitcase
being closed for another moonlit flit.
In my back room I tune in the radio
to the weather and a late-night quiz show.
There are no questions that I can answer.
The front desk requires a new black biro.
Better during these strange times
to write in light pencil in the register.
