New Laurie Duggan chapbook, with cover by Baz published

See Fewer & Further Press for information about Allotments, a 30 page, hand-sewn chapbook printed on laid paper in an edition of 200 copies, 40 of which are special editions signed by the author.  The cost is $8, postpaid or by a check mailed to

Jess Mynes      121 Lockes Village Road      Wendell, MA 01379

Australia defines Laurie Duggan, as is amply clear in his great long work The Ash Range. But these days, Duggan lives in rural England, close by beautiful Romney Marsh, and he has tuned his wild Aussie heart to take the measures of its older brother.

Allotments

Slowly, quietly.  How many measures?  27 Allotments.  Embodying scraps of memory, heard or vividly seen.  Duggan is insistent: hear it here.  Include disorder. Do cut corners.  The result is a daybook focused (seemingly) on drinks and food, on scraps of chatter, on life in a countryside pub wonderfully named The Sun.

But these allotments aren’t about real estate, they are the vivid bits a poet like Paul Blackburn might see – with senses heightened by the passage of a long afternoon: The upside down peppershaker reflected on a metal table top;  the note that “the small gnats/ have ceased to wail” (the first seven words of a thirteen-word poem); and underneath a muffled drum-beat of persistent protest at the corrupt carelessness ruling so much of our planet.

We called computer memory sticks thumb drives in my office, my former office. These poems have a similar function. Portable.  Almost invisible.  They reflect, replay, compress and then call a reader back to think again.

Art is a Basil King graphic, "9 4"

  1. lori
    |

    looks beautiful!