The International Literary Quarterly
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February 2010

 
Contributors
 

Rose Ausländer
Charles Bernstein
Amy Bloom
Jean Boase-Beier
Carmen Bugan
Moira Burgess
Larry Butler
James Byrne
Jim Carruth
Neil Charleton
Ronald Christ
A.C. Clarke
David Dawnay
Patricia Delmar
Des Dillon
Anne Donovan
Gerrie Fellows
Cheryl Follon
Ronald Frame
Hazel Frew
Rodge Glass
David Goldie
Jane Goldman
Martin Goodman
Siobhan Harvey
Beatriz Hausner
Kusay Hussein
A.B. Jackson
Kapka Kassabova
Velimir Khlebnikov
David Kinloch
Micaela Lewitt
Zhimin Li
Gerry Loose
James McGonigal
Gerry McGrath
Donal McLaughlin
Kate McLoughlin
Andrea McNicoll
Willy Maley
Peter Manson
Laura Marney
Ernst Meister
Lina Meruane
Edwin Morgan
Ewan Morrison
Laura Muetzelfeldt
Hom Paribag
Mario Petrucci
Clare Pollard
Sheila Puri
Claire Quigley
Elizabeth Reeder
Alan Riach
Dilys Rose
Suhayl Saadi
Sue Reid Sexton
Bina Shah
Yasir Shah
Jim Stewart
Zoë Strachan
Chiew-Siah Tei
Valerie Thornton
Anthony Vivis
Marshall Walker
Zoë Wicomb
Xu Xi

40 Glasgow Voices

Volta: A Multilingual Anthology
(One poem: 82 languages)

Issue 10 Guest Artist:
John Hoyland RA

Founding Editor: Peter Robertson
Deputy Editor: Jill Dawson
Art Editor: Calum Colvin

Consulting Editors
Marjorie Agosín
Daniel Albright
Meena Alexander
Maria Teresa Andruetto
Frank Ankersmit
Rosemary Ashton
Reza Aslan
Leonard Barkan
Michael Barry
Shadi Bartsch
Thomas Bartscherer
Susan Bassnett
Gillian Beer
David Bellos
Richard Berengarten
Charles Bernstein
Sujata Bhatt
Mario Biagioli
Jean Boase-Beier
Elleke Boehmer
Eavan Boland
Stephen Booth
Alain de Botton
Carmen Boulossa
Rachel Bowlby
Svetlana Boym
Peter Brooks
Marina Brownlee
Roberto Brodsky
Carmen Bugan
Jenni Calder
Stanley Cavell
Hollis Clayson
Sarah Churchwell
Kristina Cordero
Drucilla Cornell
Junot Díaz
André Dombrowski
Denis Donoghue
Ariel Dorfman
Rita Dove
Denise Duhamel
Klaus Ebner
Robert Elsie
Stefano Evangelista
Orlando Figes
Tibor Fischer
Shelley Fisher Fishkin
Peter France
Nancy Fraser
Maureen Freely
Michael Fried
Marjorie Garber
Anne Garréta
Marilyn Gaull
Zulfikar Ghose
Paul Giles
Lydia Goehr
Vasco Graça Moura
A. C. Grayling
Stephen Greenblatt
Lavinia Greenlaw
Lawrence Grossberg
Edith Grossman
Elizabeth Grosz
Boris Groys
David Harsent
Benjamin Harshav
Geoffrey Hartman
François Hartog
Molly Haskell
Selina Hastings
Beatriz Hausner
Valerie Henitiuk
Kathryn Hughes
Aamer Hussein
Djelal Kadir
Kapka Kassabova
John Kelly
Martin Kern
Mimi Khalvati
Joseph Koerner
Annette Kolodny
Julia Kristeva
George Landow
Chang-Rae Lee
Mabel Lee
Linda Leith
Suzanne Jill Levine
Lydia Liu
Margot Livesey
Julia Lovell
Willy Maley
Alberto Manguel
Ben Marcus
Paul Mariani
Marina Mayoral
Richard McCabe
Campbell McGrath
Jamie McKendrick
Edie Meidav
Jack Miles
Toril Moi
Susana Moore
Laura Mulvey
Azar Nafisi
Martha Nussbaum
Sari Nusseibeh
Tim Parks
Clare Pettitt
Caryl Phillips
Robert Pinsky
Elena Poniatowska
Elizabeth Powers
Elizabeth Prettejohn
Martin Puchner
Kate Pullinger
Paula Rabinowitz
Rajeswari Sunder Rajan
James Richardson
François Rigolot
Geoffrey Robertson
Ritchie Robertson
Avital Ronell
Carla Sassi
Michael Scammell
Celeste Schenck
Sudeep Sen
Hadaa Sendoo
Miranda Seymour
Mimi Sheller
Elaine Showalter
Penelope Shuttle
Werner Sollors
Frances Spalding
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak
Julian Stallabrass
Susan Stewart
Rebecca Stott
Mark Strand
Kathryn Sutherland
John Whittier Treat
David Treuer
David Trinidad
Marjorie Trusted
Lidia Vianu
Victor Vitanza
Marina Warner
David Wellbery
Edwin Williamson
Michael Wood
Theodore Zeldin

Associate Editor: Jeff Barry
Associate Editor: Neil Langdon Inglis
Assistant Editor: Ana de Biase
Assistant Editor: Sophie Lewis
Assistant Editor: Siska Rappé
Art Consultant: Angie Roytgolz

 
Click to enlarge picture Click to enlarge picture. Two Poems by David_Kinloch  

 

 

The Hangingshaw

Then you sleep again and wake, begin the day.
Walking past the Hangingshaw, you notice
again how provisional the grass and bushes are

since they cleared the 'Prefabs' so we could build
nothing there, how the space is still mapped out
in little plots where enamel sinks and mangels stood.

'Hay bab-a-ree-bab, Ma mammy's got a prefab'.
The rhyme doesn't linger but a man is lying
some way off in a patch of sunlight.He's too far

away to tell what's happened, but his suit
is visible and he's stretched out, arms by his side,
attention-like, right in the centre of a box shaped green.

He seems peaceful and at home. Once, before
the prefabs, an anti-aircraft gun pounded the sky
from here; earlier still the Hangingshaw was just

a wood clinging to a hillside giving shade
to travellers. And historians dispute its
spelling for maybe it was Hagginshaw instead.

'Hay bab-a-ree-bab'. Later, in the night,
there is a dream with a friendly scuffle
in which your opponent suddenly turns

and embraces you: there is no pressure
of desire or want but an absolutely even
acceptance of you as you of him.

'I love you', you say, the cushie-doos
return: 'Hay bab-a-ree-bab', 'Hay bab-a-ree-bab'
and you don't need to know what it might mean.

 

Note: a ‘cushie-doo’ is a Scots pigeon
 

 

Sailing to Torcello

A Doge of work! The scrolls, the endless
parchments of middle age! Applications and appeals
blot out the throb of bells, suppress
the smell of dust and hot cow hide, the peals
of youthful laughter and dismiss
the fact that rose gold sky is still held up by angels.
He doodles briefly, sighs; only a fresco, a cartoon
by Titian could show all flesh sinking in this salt lagoon.

A glorified skivvy with a pointy hat, he tackles
the intractable while all the others trade and trade
even though each year the ramshackle
world they hedge and bet is weighed
in balances by bankers whose chuckles,
crackles, heckles are commissioned and ignored.
And so he takes the Vaparetto
to the holy island of Torcello.

Meter Theu! Mother of God! No Doge can save
you, long, sleek and blue in your high iconostasis.
Gabriel hastens but is not quick enough; Eve
kneels, is not forgiven. Even, especially, this oasis
is the first to go: apostles in the nave
of meadows, trampled poppies in the still mosaic.
The boy locked in his almond shell will have to swim.
Cloth for earth is in the Doge's hymn.

'Star of the seas!', he prays, 'Epitome of virtue';
the skies are starless and a severed peacock's tail
floats by, fans out its single iridescent eye to view
mens' wisdom, giving up on God. Soft braille
of feathers, drowned lions, is it true
that heaven only lay beneath us among the kale
and sandbanks? The canals all run with fire.
Gold endures but we are out of art and nature.