Drawing in Ash
Drawing in Ash
by Will Stone
(April 2011 – Salt Publishing, Salt Modern Poets)
Will Stone’s powerful second collection Drawing in Ash extends the remarkable imagery and visionary capacity he displayed in his first collection from Salt Publishing, Glaciation, which went on to win the prestigious international Glen Dimplex prize in 2008.
http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/smp/9781844717965.htm
“Whilst shifting the lens slightly from the devastating surveillance of his first collection of poems, Glaciation, Will Stone’s vision remains constant, evolving a cerebral inclination for the sublime image. Drawing in Ash is a remarkable piece of time travel, roaming through the churchyards and back alleys of Europe where Stone frequently memorialises previously untapped biographical moments within extraordinary lives … The Poet adopts the guise of medium and historian in a powerful book of poems that never relents, never misses its targets.” — James Byrne
Excerpt from book:
The Extinction Plan
Moments of pain, progress driven,
the unwelcome clarity of time’s incision
enhanced by the new drug day,
where late crimes roll and bask
and suddenly woken eyes, lepers
peer in on hastening apocalypse.
The drone of no return, the settling
of old scores, of charcoal petals,
the cinder path of all that is predicted.
She who never arrived one step ahead
and all around you the embalmed
the catacombed, erect in their niches.
The extinction plan in motion,
as cut price flights steeply climb,
over Ensor’s cornered skeleton.
In order to go on, Schubert pens,
Munch paints Death and the Maiden.
Strindberg runs through the Latin Quarter
brandishing his hands, black and burned
from experiments with sulphur.
Each repeats what has gone before.
The earth can take another sack of fear,
a single life’s strict toiling,
embittered aging, the dead weight of loss,
a case of cherished photographs
and a few last sprigs of joy.
No one wants to be dust.
No one wants their love left out,
but nearly every wheel finds the rail
and follows the tramline to lust.
In one dive billions of krill find God.
Ghostly, like a low gas flame
they go on a while unseen, they exist
to explain the blue whale’s darkness.
© Will Stone.
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