If you Remember the Sixties
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Oz Hardwick’s tenth collection, A Census of Preconceptions, is published by SurVision Books. He has won countless prizes, mostly in raffles, and feels that feeling awkward is close enough to an award as makes no difference. www.ozhardwick.co.uk
Our featured publication for January and February is A Census of Preconceptions by Oz Hardwick, published by SurVision books.
“A Census of Preconceptions is a dangerously witty and uncanny masterpiece. In subversive prose poems, Oz Hardwick creates extraordinary peregrinations into the neo-surreal and phantasmagoric, where TV networks hire owls instead of people, ‘graveyards are the new shopping malls’ and volcanoes are hidden inside houses. In this searing collection, Hardwick explores language’s possibilities in lyric gestures that repeatedly break free from lyric norms. He creates achingly wistful junctures where the reader edges into ‘the narrowing space between two bodies that, like magnets, push harder away the closer they approach’. This prose poetry transforms, reinvents and marvels – it speaks as much in its haunting gaps and silences as it does in its beguiling lexicon.” Cassandra Atherton
“In this triumph of language and imagination, Oz Hardwick makes the impossible appear before your very eyes, with sleight of hand juxtapositions. He is a straight-talking storyteller, the lava lamp-bearing usher of troubling shadow theatres that have set themselves up in scuffed liminal spaces of a down-at-heel town. Go on, take the weight off your feet, here’s a brew, now let this book do its work. These poems are rare dazzling gifts – behold!” Helen Ivory
“Humane, funny but hard-edged, A Census of Preconceptions filters memory and experience through a beautifully distorted stained-glass window: there’s a wink with the melancholy and a shiver of doubt to the resilience and joy. These are poetic reports from the field with points of reference at once familiar and strange. Hardwick makes the form his own here, and as in the best prose poetry there’s a deceptive ease to the voice: it welcomes you, sits you down and begins to speak, before shining a light right in your eye.” Luke Kennard
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Awayday
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Not Fade Away
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Epiphanies for All
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Oz Hardwick is a European poet, photographer, occasional musician, and accidental academic, who has been described “as a “major proponent of the neo-surreal prose poem in Britain.” He has published “about a dozen” full collections and chapbooks, including Learning to Have Lost (Canberra: IPSI, 2018) which won the 2019 Rubery International Book Award for poetry, and most recently A Census of Preconceptions (SurVision Books, 2022). He has also edited or co-edited several anthologies, including The Valley Press Anthology of Prose Poetry (Scarborough: Valley Press, 2019) with Anne Caldwell. Oz has held residencies in the UK, Europe, the US and Australia, and has performed internationally at major festivals and intimate soirees. In 2022, he was awarded the ARC Poetry Prize for “a lifetime devotion and service to the cause of prose poetry,” though he is quick to point out that he’s not dead yet. Oz is Professor of Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University.
Copies of A Census of Preconceptions are available to purchase from the Survision website, or directly from Oz.
New Lives for Old
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Oz Hardwick’s tenth collection, A Census of Preconceptions, will be published by SurVision Books in late 2022. He has won countless prizes, mostly in raffles, and feels that feeling awkward is close enough to an award as makes no difference. www.ozhardwick.co.uk
Days of Dust
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Oz Hardwick’s tenth collection, A Census of Preconceptions, will be published by SurVision Books in late 2022. He has won countless prizes, mostly in raffles, and feels that feeling awkward is close enough to an award as makes no difference. www.ozhardwick.co.uk
Politics and Protest in the New Normal
Spontaneous combustion is just. a part of the new normal.
Passers-by, postal. workers,. newsreaders:. anyone can. go
at. any..moment,. and..it’s. no. longer. a. surprise.. It’s..an
inconvenience, of course,. if you stay in. for a supermarket
delivery which. doesn’t arrive,. and. days later. you. pass. a
looted van with a blackened cab;. and when you. finally get
through. to..the. helpline. to. claim..a.. refund,..the…stock
apologies are interrupted. by a whoosh and crackle, .before
you’re redirected to hold music. .There are. demonstrations
on. the. site. of. Pudding. Lane;.flashpoint.mobs. gathering
against government guidance, with no demands, just petrol
and homemade. explosives,. hot breath scorching the. faces
of police equipped with nothing. but stone, flint, and damp
powder.. Ministers. and. experts recommend.. spending as
much. time. as possible. under. water. –. though. they. stop
short of formalising advice into rules – and. I for .one. have
placed a tin. bath .in every room.. I often hear voices. as. if
from far away,. but I can never make out the words, and. by
the time. my ears pop. above the surface,. there is .nothing
but silence and the smell of smoke.
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Oz Hardwick’s a work has been published and performed internationally in and on diverse media. His chapbook Learning to Have Lost (Canberra: IPSI, 2018) won the 2019 Rubery International Book Award for poetry, and has been followed by The Lithium Codex (Clevedon: Hedgehog, 2019) and Wolf Planet (Clevedon: Hedgehog, 2020).
The Late Show
After midnight, stars have faces, silver
in smoke, soft-focused, indelible. We watch
the street, the shadows, the heavy, hooded eyes,
lamplit across gin-joint tables, taunting
the man with the dangling cigarette, his fingers drumming
to the rhythm of a femme fatale’s black nylon
legs whispering suggestions. There’s a drive-by at the drive-in:
Chicago pianos rattling skeleton songs,
bullet holes in swaying scenery, a blizzard
of sugar glass catching in lacquered hair,
tears welling their farewells, my lovely. But
after midnight, even the dead remain young,
their Hays Code faces fluttering, starlit,
lips pursed, winking at popcorn kisses.
Oz Hardwick is a poet, photographer and sometime musician, whose seventh
poetry collections, Learning to Have Lost, was published in 2018 by the
International Poetry Studies Institute, Canberra. Oz leads the Creative Writing
programmes at Leeds Trinity University.
Wyatt Earp Fumbles
Where once we had words, now our mouths stretch
themselves.. into… clumsy… semaphore,.. unnatural
shapes. struggling. for. meaning. Do you. remember
the card-sharp play of crafty syllables,.. verbs slipped
up. sleeves and. nestling. in. the. necks of loose-laced
boots?.. The. piano. player. stopped.. each. time. you
walked in,.. and the barman slid neat phrases down a
bar that stretched forever, saloon doors swinging like
a buzzard. eating itself... It might have. been distance,
or.. it. might.. have. been.. the.. bullet.. holes. in.. my
embroidered. waistcoat,. but. all. the. world’s a. stage
leaving a. one-horse town,. and. though my jaws. flex,
stretch and ache,. all sound lies dead in the high noon
dust.
Oz Hardwick is a poet, photographer and sometime musician, whose seventh poetry collections, Learning to Have Lost, was published in 2018 by the International Poetry Studies Institute, Canberra. Oz leads the Creative Writing programmes at Leeds Trinity University.
Our featured publication for October is The House of Ghosts and Mirrors by Oz Hardwick, published by Valley Press.
The book “Begins with an ending and keeps on subtly subverting our expectations on every page – glass houses, mermaids, a bloodshot moon, vampires on the staircase, the ‘indescribable’ breath of leaves. These are unsettling, memorable, subterranean poems that walk the line between dreams and waking, finding a language that nestles ‘somewhere / between science and sleight of hand’.” Helen Mort
“These rigorously considered, sturdily constructed, lyrically written poems contain sharp personal and social insights. They display a romantic maturity which resonates long after the book has been set aside.” Michael Moorcock
“These are poems that deal with the magical and mystical while firmly rooted in the detail of memory and history. Here are acutely drawn pictures of the ways we all manage, or fail to manage, our losses. Sad in the best way, tender and hopeful, these are poems in which we can all find ourselves.” Antony Dunn
Leaves
In that summer I discovered leaves,
explored their textures, drew in
their citrus, amber, indescribable
breath, like a lover sleeping close.
I clothed myself in leaves, weaving
too many shades to learn the names
of parent plants, dressed myself
in rippling green finer than light.
And I slept deep in leaves, nested
like a mouse, bird, snake,
the phoenix rising from burning leaves,
fire blazing behind summer eyes.
Afterparty
It was a big house, a lot of land,
and I couldn’t remember who’d invited me.
There were tyre tracks on the lawn and the carpet,
but the party was winding down, tangled
bodies on couches, on the landing,
in the flower beds, leaving just
a few of us, jittery with crystals and capsules.
Someone said Read us one of your poems
so I pulled out a couple of books and flipped
through dog-eared pages. But I didn’t recognise
any of the words, and my eyes blurred
over unfamiliar phrases, and there was
an awkward, jerky silence, until
someone said Look, are you a poet
or what? But by then my mouth was dry
as I licked my sour, powdered finger,
leafing frantically through hazy titles
I couldn’t focus on, everyone getting restless.
And all I could think of as the room spun sideways
was your smile as you’d left, hours earlier, your arm
resting lightly around someone else’s waist.
The Miracle of Flight
– for Harold Walker
As a child I always wanted to fly.
Air displays thrilled me,
promised a future of wings and winds
above the arc of the earth,
freedom from petty gravity.
In my grandparents’ room I studied
scrapbooks – you as a young man,
clear-eyed, looking to the sky
and to a future you never saw.
Too young to understand, I held your wings,
envied you the clouds, your easy confidence
in shaky crates, flying over a foreign landscape
I had yet to see, but would come to love.
I still have your photograph, your scorched diploma,
a letter from the palace. I think of you on this short hop
to Brussels that I almost take for granted – see
an open cockpit, a young man falling from the sky
like a comet to lie, unmarked, in Belgian soil.
Then I imagine you here, sitting beside me.
You tell how it felt to challenge the sky; the noise,
the adrenaline and cold air stealing
your breath, the broad grin
of knowing yourself alive.
We toast each other with complimentary beers,
share stories about your sister – my grandmother –
and then fall silent, both in the aerial moment
we dreamed of as boys, looking down
on the peaceful fields spread out below.
Ice
It’s something as simple as a January night,
hands deep in pockets, and wool
tight against your chin, echoes
of your steps marking years,
as your unthinking feet remember
shortcut lanes to old homes.
Then it’s over the bridge, barely a stride
across the beck, past the bland pub –
now boarded up – that you only visited
once, in that darkest of all winters,
with friends who gathered for the final time;
and you woke next day, surprised
by the perfect clarity of the morning and your mind.
And the ice winter air tastes
of a drunken New Year’s kiss
that never ended, and remains, still,
the most honest thing you ever did.
Previous publication credits for the poems are Visual Verse, Black Light Engine Room, The Book of Plans, Hopes and Dreams (Beautiful Dragons Press) and Reach Poetry, respectively.
Oz Hardwick is a York-based writer, photographer, music journalist, and occasional
musician, whose work has been published and performed internationally in all manner of media. He is also Professor of English at Leeds Trinity University, where he leads the
Creative Writing programmes.
Website: www.ozhardwick.co.uk
The House of Ghosts and Mirrors (Valley Press, 2017), may be purchased from: http://www.valleypressuk.com/book/91/the_house_of_ghosts_and_mirrors
Knitting
A grey woman, who should be sitting in a rocking chair,
sits instead on a straight-backed stool, her eyes closed,
knitting a scarf – yellow and blue, my first school colours.
I sit on the floor, watching as it grows, listening
to the click of the needles and the tick of a clock
echoing from an empty room at the front of the house.
She knits fast, but the scarf grows faster, billowing
in coils at her feet, crawling higher like morning mist
until it drapes my shoulders, caresses my throat.
Faster it grows, probing my mouth, snaking inside,
down to my guts, warming my belly, then nudging up
into my head, implacably pushing from my ears and nose.
There’s a gentle tickling growing behind my eyes before
it slips under my prickling lids. The needles now move
on their own, the stool stands empty. I turn to the window:
the last thing I see is the woman, framed in a small yard,
her eyes still closed, her face raised to the sun, flapping
her floral apron, casting crumbs, or seeds, to swooping crows.
Oz Hardwick is a York-based writer, photographer and occasional musician. He has been published widely in the UK, Europe and US. His sixth poetry collection, The House of Ghosts and Mirrors, will be published by Valley Press in September 2017. www.ozhardwick.co.uk
Carrying Myself Home
I breathe in mountains, breathe in sky.
From here I can see houses spread out
across time, each like a Russian doll,
with lives within lives, within lives,
each with a kernel of pulsing memory,
a grain of guilt. This town’s a lacquered box,
with a detailed scene from a folktale,
lost in retelling, an embroidery stitched
from a faulty pattern, each deliberate line
winding neatly to unintended directions,
its purpose misremembered. I was born here
and, wherever I’ve travelled, I’ve lived here
all my life. Although I can’t see them,
I know my mother and father are standing
at one of these lighted windows, smiling,
waving, waiting for me to arrive home
with whatever stories I have gathered.
I breathe in the dark river, breathe in myself,
take my first step down the dizzying mountain,
turn my back on the sky.
Oz Hardwick is a York-based writer, photographer and occasional musician. He has been published widely in the UK, Europe and US. His sixth poetry collection, The House of Ghosts and Mirrors, will be published by Valley Press in September 2017. www.ozhardwick.co.uk
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