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3rd March, 2023

Friday Poem: ‘Antipodes’ by Glyn Edwards


This week’s Friday Poem is ‘Antipodes’ by Glyn Edwards from his new collection In Orbit.

This cover shows a water colour illustrations of the 6 phases of the moon as drawn by Galileo. The text reads: In Orbit Glyn Edwards.

Glyn Edwards’s new collection In Orbit is a sustained narrative of love, loss and longing. Using a variety of innovative forms, these poems explore grief and how we come to terms with losing someone close to us. The natural world offers sustenance and a new perspective in the face of intense emotions as a man struggles to come to terms with news of a beloved teacher’s death.   

Antipodes We are waiting in your shrunken classroom, warming our wet shoes on the growling pipes below the windowsill, drawing cocks in the condensation until you come in, later than usual, shake yourself dry like a damp dog and stare at a computer screen. Did you hear about the earthquake, Sir? You nod, though your eyes don’t nod. The tremors, says a voice, desperate to rescue you, set off car alarms in London – the other side of the world. You are silent, so close now to the monitor that when you stir it’s as if you’re butting your forehead against the glass. You are wearing yesterday’s clothes. Slowly, you stand and unpin two huge maps from the display boards, deliberately, like a general collapsing a failed campaign. You line up one upon the other as a bedsheet on a mattress folding the countries like bodies, so that the arm of America holds the waist of India, so the Atlantic bathes Australia. They’re not diametrically opposite, your voice is all wrong. If we went down, down, through the centre of the world, we’d surface and sink somewhere in the Pacific. You’re searching the stunned space for something and clench at a shining metal from the desk. You gauge the maps again, lift them like a flag and stab them through with the shaft of a pen. Soon, you are shuffling across the yard in the rain, your coat still on your chair. We take the maps away. Your fountain pen is splintered. Your computer screen blank.

In Orbit is available on the Seren website: £9.99

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Join us at Providero Coffeehouse in Llandudno on Thursday 16th March for the launch of In Orbit. Register for free here www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/549134123947.

Book Launch. In Orbit by Glyn Edwards. Thursday 16th March from 6:30pm. Providero Coffeehouse, 112 Upper Mostyn Street, Llandudno LL30 2SW. Poet Glyn Edwards launches his new collection In Orbit alongside guest readers Laura Satterthwaite, Gareth Culshaw and Ness Owen. Free to attend but please register via Eventbrite in advance.

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