These Days, Days Like This
By Adrian Manning and John Dorsey
Concrete Meat Press – Leichester England-February 2015
First Edition – 28 pages
.
Review by g emil reutter
.
In this limited edition, John Dorsey and Adrian Manning carry the torch for the Meat Poetry Movement. This masculine collection is tempered with an odd gentleness of remembrance. These Days, Days Like This is dedicated to the late poet and publisher of Open Wide Magazine, James D. Quinton. This collection expands on the Meat Poetry form with strong imagery such as this from the poet Adrian Manning:
.
Days Like This
(For JQ)
.
It’s days like this
I want music without sound
A book with blank pages
And art with no shape,
Line or colour
.
It’s days like these
I want the clocks to stop
The roads to empty
And the sky to be clear,
Cloudless and blue
.
Nothing to disturb me
So I can stretch out a hand
And try to reach you
Wherever you are
.
At each turn of the page the reader alternates between the well-crafted poems of Manning and Dorsey. John Dorsey steps up to the plate with this poem:
.
these days
for marlon harris
.
i peel skin away
from the sun
like a ghost
devouring a blood orange
.
we are nothing but smiles
and our credit scores
.
age is just a ring
inside the heart
of a dying elm tree
.
hawks circle
and count to ten
before pumping their fists
in the air
.
i blink
and you
.
disappear
.
Manning and Dorsey are poets who are always searching for redemption in the stark realities of life. They bring to us the familiar ghosts at times in that unsettled and wondering manner. Of doing just enough in the back of an Irish bar to feel whole and bring us to one of those rare moments, never closer; our hearts never more honest.
.
You can find this collection at: http://www.concretemeatpress.co.uk/these_days.htm
.
g emil reutter is a writer of poems and stories. He can be found at: https://gereutter.wordpress.com/about/
North of Oxford 