Our featured publication for October is Making Tracks by Katy Wareham Morris, published by V. Press.
‘From the very first page of this pamphlet, the reader encounters a voice which is entirely new. Within this pamphlet we find interrogations of masculinity, class, manual labour, what is and isn’t inherited through different generations and, most excitingly, see how these different preoccupations can be refracted and reflected through language and the line. As there should be when searching for new ways to contemplate tradition, a fresh type of experimentation with language, its spacial arrangement and its breath, is given to the reader, but always with a solid and concrete centre of people and place. A balance is struck between the heart, and the search for a language, scientific or natural, which might be able to fully represent it. Poems such as ‘You and Him: A Venn Diagram’ give us a visual language for exploring the pamphlet’s themes, and the pamphlet as a whole brings together the insertion of the urban and natural, the historical and the contemporary. An exciting new pamphlet from a poet doing important new things with the art.‘ Andrew McMillan
‘Making Tracks uses the texture of language and collaged fragments to celebrate those people who worked at the now defunct Longbridge car factory. Wareham Morris’s father is the beating heart at the centre of these poems, it’s whose voice we hear, entrusted to her tender keeping. There is the melancholy of a way of life gone here, but also the love of a day’s work and the satisfaction of a job well done.‘ Helen Ivory
The Heart
St Modwen: “What we are doing is putting the heart back into
Longbridge.
- Attractive developments in stunning park-side locations
for first-time buyers, young families and downsizers
- creating inclusive, friendly environments evolving day
by day
- with nearly 100 businesses currently located creating
3,700 jobs across a variety of sectors since 2007
- utilising old industry and new technology, this is a
unique £300 million project
- securing the best training for young people and adults
with high quality educational establishments
- and a flagship youth centre called ‘The Factory’
offering innovative and creative activities
- on a stunning three-acre urban park with free parking
available for up to three hours
- building communities, using the rich heritage while
looking to the future
9. a stronger, more prosperous
10. place to call home
I say to the kids, whilst we eat our Marks’ sandwich, “This is
where Grandad used to build cars.”
…
Vehicle Scheduling (Fragment V)
as shells came out of the paint shop painted we’d put the order
on send to the track for trim as shells came out of the paint shop
painted we’d put the order on send to the track for trim stop
for tea walk to the urn fill the pot walk back get the sarnies out
cars come down from the roof no cars to the track cars come
down from the roof no cars to the track track runs out there
ain’t no cars
5 trim tracks 2 copies on the order take 1 copy off send to the
conveyor keep the copy in order of bodies right order right
engine right shell 5 trim tracks 2 copies on the order take 1 copy
off send to the conveyor keep the copy in order of bodies right
order right engine right shell here comes the engine here comes
the body stop
this should be an automatic he got them arse about face bastard
eating sandwiches drinking a pint as shells came out of the
paint shop painted we’d put the order on 5 trim tracks 2 copies
on the order take 1 copy off send to the conveyor send to the
track for trim keep the copy in order of bodies right order right
engine eating sandwiches drinking a pint as shells came out of
the paint shop painted we’d put the order on 5 trim tracks 2
copies on the order take 1 copy off send to the conveyor send
to the track for trim keep the copy in order of bodies right
order right engine stop
dispute meeting ain’t solved it (planned it?) right we’re off
…
Terrible Really
They were bloodying fists all the time,
you kept your cool, though your heart was
still beating all the time, you were all fighting.
People wouldn’t cope today, they’d crack up –
…………..there one day and then gone
…………..to the funny farm. You never thought,
…………..you never talked,
…………..but the pressure –
…………..blokes did crack, blokes didn’t cope.
…………..Your bloodied heart kept beating,
…………..you were all fighting,
…………..never talked.
Dog eat dog: you admit you ate anyone because
you wouldn’t go under or take the flack.
You had to keep fighting, the pressure,
you couldn’t go under.
It wasn’t all doom and gloom:
the Olympics, darts and cricket in the summer;
like the Wolf of Wall Street, you had men on your coattails.
One day a bloke, a good bloke
with only one son,
came to you and said he needed to leave.
He needed to get to Hillsborough, he needed to try
and find his son at Hillsborough. He came back but his son –
you didn’t let him crack, you didn’t let him go under.
You wouldn’t eat him, your bloodied heart
didn’t mind when he cried.
For a time, it beat and bled for both of you.
…
(re)cord
I can’t promise that this is true
or love or some kind of
or you and me immortalised
by history, writing into time
as if it makes it
I think it already was alive
still is in
more than just a story
it had an end and we
alive, in reality
matching your –
some kind of
can hitch our memory
…
Katy Wareham Morris is a lecturer in Media and Culture at the University of Worcester; she also contributes to the Creative Writing team. She has a particular interest in gender and queer studies, identity politics and digital humanities. Katy is currently working on her PhD research in literary gaming, play and post-queer politics, exploring interactive and innovative forms of digital poetics and their dynamic potentialities. Her debut poetry pamphlet, Inheritance (written with Ruth Stacey, Mother’s Milk Books, 2017), won a Saboteur Award for Best Collaborative Work. Her experimental debut collection, Cutting
the Green Ribbon, was published with Hesterglock Press in 2018.
Making Tracks is available to purchase from the V. Press website.
atriumpoetry.com 