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Read Raw Ltd
Promoting Creative Writing in Scotland
Featured Poet
Eddie Gibbons
 Eddie Gibbons openly admits to being more Ryanair than debonair, as witnessed here-
http://scallyg.blogspot.com/
Growing up on a council estate in Huyton, Liverpool, he didn’t have neighbours, he had witnesses. Being a Scouser, he had to learn English as a Foreign Language, which made his readings inadvertently entertaining due to his weird pronunciation of werds such as bewk,
kewk and kewkbewk. In order to correct his speech defect, he defected to Aberdeen in 1980.
This did the trick – he spiks affa fine nou, ken.
Eddie works as a Draughtsman in a factory near Dyce airport, for a quick getaway.
STUFF-
What They Say About You shortlisted for the Scottish Poetry Book of the Year, 2011.
One-man Poetry Cabaret at StAnza International Poetry Festival, 2009.
Prize winner in the Inaugural Edwin Morgan Poetry Competition, 2008.
Participant in ‘The Hundred Poets Gathering.’ StAnza, 2007.
BOOKS -
 What They Say About You
Leamington Books, Edinburgh. Editors: Peter Burnett and Arlene Addison. 2010.
http://www.leamingtonbooks.co.uk/
“I was delighted by Eddie’s performance of his poems.
The changes from sad to happy, from downbeat to zappy, all one enriching tapestry.”
JOHN HEGLEY
DEATH SHALL HAVE NO DIM ONION
Shopping by woods this snowy eve,
I wonder why each word I read
gets muddled up, goes quite mad.
How did my eyesight get so bad?
Did Robert Browsing’s Duchess go
not Gentile Into That Good Night?
Was Robert Frosty in the snow?
Is ‘Tyger Tyger burping’ right?
Poor Percy Shelley’s really Pysshe
and Homer wrote the Ilibad.
Could Morgenstern recite his Fish?
Are Vasco Popadoms a fad?
Once Allen Ginseng’s primal Owl
drowned out the waving Stevie Sniff
but Hiya Watha! makes me scowl
like Ruddy Kipling’s iffy If.
Of all the joys of Muddle Age
myopia must head the queue.
I have to squint to read this page –
The Raver (Edgar Allen Poo)
INDELIBLE
Weeks after the wake,
my first dream of you.
You’re standing at the rails of a ship
on a clear blue day, sailing aboard that huge
Cunarder we used to watch from the Pier
Head; decked out for a breezy jamboree,
floating towards an improbable country.
From your stillness you turn to me,
say nothing, but your eyes speak
of fair weather and calm waters.
As the eighth bell tolls I leave you there
and swim back to wakefulness, viewing your
vast indelible smile from my far impossible shore.
 Why She Flew to Barcelona
(Pamphlet). Calder Wood Press, Dunbar. Editor, Colin Will. 2010.
http://www.calderwoodpress.co.uk/
“...If you want poetry that resonates with humanity, comedy and true sentiment, this is the poet to read.
If more poets wrote poems like this more people would read poetry.”
KEVIN CADWALLENDER
LOVE IN THE TIME OF CORELDRAW
Once I would have laid a rosebud at your feet,
sent a scented missive in an envelope delivered
by a go-between; stood beneath your window
in a blizzard of snowdrops, hoping for a glimpse
of your shadow in the moonlight.
But times have altered the language of the heart.
The lexicon of longing is no longer written longhand,
with soaring serifs scribed in ink on beds of vellum,
but by illuminated texts on Ericssons and Vodafones,
and new-millennium lovers go Blackberry picking
down lanes of pay-and-go, past Oranges and Apple phones.
Once keystrokes onto paper kept the rhythm of romance:
ribbons bled red streams of yearning, or keys rapped
out the stuttering sentiments of nervous suitors onto
scented sheets of lavender, which they sent, post-haste
to beloveds in lanes and streets and avenues.
These days my words to you are more mobile
and predictable: more to the pointer, more pithy,
more reducible, and so, my love, I offer you these tokens
on my part- my dingbats, my emoticons, my clip-art heart.
VINNOCENCE
Is it Van Goff, Van Gock or Van Go?
How do you say his name?
Do you cough it, do you choke it,
Does it set your throat aflame?
I simply call him Vincent,
like that song by Don McLean.
Vincent the innocent,
patron saint of paint and pain.
Game On!
Thirsty Books, Edinburgh. Editor: Sean Bradley. 2006.
Poems from this collection were featured in two editions of ‘Soccer AM’ on Sky Sports TV.
HALF TIME HAIKU
nil nil at the break
each team missed a penalty
empty nets both ends
ten thousand lighters
pass their flames to cigarettes
a terrace inhales
pie and bovril time
volcanic temperatures
scald our lips and tongues
the trannie’s whisper
translates into whoops and shouts
rivals are losing
toilets overflow
bursting punters face the wall
thirty waterfalls
zipped up trousers turn
scampering towards their seats
teams take to the pitch
The Republic of Ted
Thirsty Books, Edinburgh. Editor: Sean Bradley. 2003.
“...It is rare for such unpretentious poetry to be so subtle and complex, and equally rare for an elegy to evoke the person and their absence so convincingly. An articulate, powerful book.”
THE SCOTSMAN
VERNACULAR
What you notice first
about my father
is his spectacular
vernacular:
the way he rounds
his diphthongs is sound
as a pound. His diction is
guttural with a nasal twang.
That night he sang
Please Release Me
at the Labour Club
is karaoke folklore,
though at the time
he called it doing a turn.
He'll drop his aitches
at the drop of a hat,
knock his vowels stone
cold flat and build
a sentence with syllabic
slabs as thick as doorsteps
on a Toxteth terrace.
His accent is one third Irish,
one third English
and one third catarrh;
his speech sounds like
an untuned guitar.
It's hard to avoid his
adenoidal lingo
when he's ordering
bevvies down at the Bingo
or telling me jokes
whenever I phone.
His voice sounds like laughter.
His voice sounds like home.
DIRE MORPHINE (i)
I phone the hospital and speak to the Ward Sister.
He’s had a bad night but he’s comfortable now.
I’m thinking of flying down again tomorrow.
Yes, you should do that, but due to the drugs
He probably won’t know who you are.
Maybe not, but I know who he is.
DON’T PHONE FROM WORK
Don’t dial nine for an outside line
to ask the Ward Sister if he’s any better.
The only words she will utter
are prostate, cancer and pneumonia.
Then a quiet insistence to scoop you hollow –
fly down today, don’t wait for tomorrow.
Show your new face to the factory floor –
set in a grimace; wild, bewildered, raw.
DANCE THE NIGHT AWAY
Wearied by the bedside vigils,
we decided one night
to push the boat out –
to celebrate
instead of pre-mourn you.
We played your favourite
music, sang the old songs
and danced until
night became day
while the boat of your bed
drifted slowly away.
Stations of the Heart
Thirsty Books, Edinburgh. Editor: Sean Bradley. 1999.
“A vivid human achievement... I’m moved by the [poet’s] loyalties to people and places...
Portrait of Ana Dali is one of the best British poems of recent times. A masterpiece.”
LES MURRAY
PORTRAIT OF ANA DALI
Ana Dali, Salvador’s sister,
shown here in an ominous frock,
eloped with an amorous easel
to the melting apartment block.
She waves through a hole in a mirror
sewn into her brother’s smock.
As she drinks the breeze from the Pyrenees,
Time drips from the village clock.
Her pigtails stretch from her window
to Cadaques and the port of Bilbao.
Over sun-speltered Andalucia,
through measureless meadows of cows.
Her lemonade has developed amnesia.
Her maraccas engage in a row.
Her Mercedes Benz is ablaze at both ends.
She is wearing a watch that says NOW!
An orangepeel twist forms her fingers,
her mouth is a door left ajar.
The Atlantic cascades from her shoulders
where Cervantes tilts at the stars.
Her nose is the shape of the town of Cadiz.
Her cheeks form the base of a vase.
Her hair is coiffured in a whirlwind of birds.
Her eyes are Flamenco guitars.
Acrylic skies frame her figure,
painted with luminous grace.
She gazes at astral horizons
in the infinite sadness of space.
She sits in a gilded garden,
a paranoid, marigold place.
She is humming a tune
to the Catalan moon
through a veil of vermilion lace.
Three-Way Street
(With Gerard Rochford and Douglas W Gray)
Koo Press, Aberdeen. Editor: Douglas W Gray. 2004.
COUNTDOWN
You were five, ten years ago.
I held your hand up all the stairs,
counting every step to sleep.
I read you rhymes and Fairy Tales,
told you lies about the dark,
counting every step to sleep.
I numbered all the stars for you
but hid those numbers hard and true,
counting every step to sleep:
for every Prince a thousand toads,
for every smile a thousand tears,
counting every step to sleep.
I turned around and went back down,
counting my remaining years,
counting every step to sleep.
Zugzwang
(Pamphlet with Robert Guzder)
Koo Press, Aberdeen. Editor: Douglas W Gray. 2004.
THE DOWNSIDE OF KNOWING A POET
Don’t write.
Don’t phone.
Don’t wait
outside my door in the rain.
Yes, I adore you.
I’d do anything for you,
except ever see you again.
Your sorrow
is so tangible
I can taste it,
but our last parting
was so perfect
it would be a shame to waste it.
All poems on this page are the copyright © of Eddie Gibbons
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