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The Toll
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About This Book
An escaped lion roams the streets of Essex;
a lonely pensioner holds a tower block fete;, brand a young woman dreams of leaving home.Travel the unfashionable A-roads and commuter lines of England -'where industry meets marsh'- with poet Luke Wright. In his stunning new collection, discover a country riven by inequality and corruption but sustained by a surreal, gallow's humour. The Toll combines the elegaic with the anarchic, placing uproarious satire cheek-by-jowl with wild experiments in form and touching poems of parenthood.In this mature follow-up to his best-selling debut, Mondeo Man, Wright captures the strain of austerity Britain, speaking truth to power and registering the toll it takes on us all.
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The Ballad of Edward Dando, the Celebrated Gormandiser!
Hurrah! Itās me! Itās ballad time!
Hang some bloody bunting!
Now shut your eyes, sit back, weāre off
to eighteen twenty-something.
The belching Georgian after-party,
age of gout and laudanum;
opulence and dropsy spread
to all that could afford them.
The spit-roast swine, Germanic wines,
Beau Brummelās ice-cold quips,
the clash of Nashās symmetry
with Georgeās wobbly bits.
Frayed pantaloons and powdered cheeks
and boo-sucks to the prigs.
The Tory party ruled but it
was all about the wigs.
And dandies dashed in Hackney cabs
from bar to drinking shop;
a gin-soaked trail of tabs until
their foppish waistcoats popped.
And just as in our stage-school age
the slack-jawed Shaznays dream
of being auto-tuned and airbrushed
into popās hareem
so young men walked the gas-lit streets
of Londonās rotten heart
with grand ideas to take their lives
and spin them into art.
And so, our hero: Edward Dando,
apprentice to a hatter
(we donāt know what his hats were like
but they, dear friends, donāt matter).
For days spent stitching hats for chaps
sent Dando mad with boredom;
the line of dandruff decades stretched out
miserably before him.
A member of the lunar race
that history near forgot.
He might, had he been born later,
lined-up with Marxās lot,
but short on ideology
or union or committee
Dando only had a hunch
that life was sort of shitty.
While some were blessed with tails and titles
others buffed their boots
and pickled, stewed and boiled the scraps
of labourās rotten fruits.
O who will pave my grave with jewels?
O who will sing of me?
The hatters, blacksmiths, cooks and fools
all piled up like scree.
And that, thought Dando, shouldnāt, couldnāt,
be the way for him.
So he resolved to live a life
of shellfish, beer and vim.
Off then to an oyster house
with sawdust on the floor;
a pile of shells around his boots.
Our hero ordered more
ā shuck-gulp-drop, shuck-gulp-drop ā
and all washed down with porter,
the swagger of a Don Juan
with his mitts on someoneās daughter.
And when heād swallowed thirty dozen,
Dando belched and sighed,
performed a dance of pocket pats.
What rotten luck! he lied.
Iām sorry Mr Oysterman,
Iāll have to see you clear
another day, all right old boy?
Next time Iām passing here.
And had he been a gentleman
the trader would have bowed
and sent him on his merry way,
contented with this vow.
But swagger isnāt breeding and
no sooner out the door,
this whistling, cocksure hatter felt
the rough arm of the law.
They banished our voluptuary
to Brixton for a month,
where Dandoās raging hunger gave
the other lags the hump.
They shackled him in solitary
for stealing beef and bread,
where there the old screws pummelled him
and boxed his grisly head.
But when his month of gruel was up,
he found the nearest stall,
...Table of contents
- Cover
- Also by Luke Wright
- Title Page
- Copyright
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Dedication
- O England heal my hackneyed heart
- The Slow Days
- A12
- Dad Reins
- Essex Lion
- Hoax
- SPAD
- The Ballad of Edward Dando, the Celebrated Gormandiser!
- Thunder, Lightning, etc.
- Port Eliot
- VAD Hospital, Saffron Walden, 1915
- Watch
- The Pretender
- The Much Harpingon One-way System
- One Trick Bishop
- The Bastard of Bungay
- IDS
- The Toll
- Kelvedon - Liverpool Street
- The Back Step
- Family Funeral
- Sueās Fourteener
- Ronās Knock-off Shop
- On Revisiting John Betjemanās Grave
- Sick Children
- The Minimum Security Prison of the Mind
- David, at 68
- Lullaby
- Hungover in Town, Sunday Morning
- Burt Up Pub
- The Ballad of Carlos Cutting
- Swimming with Aidan, aged 4
- Essex Lion (... continued)
- When your wardrobe towers like a soldier...