Dry Stone Work

Brian Johnstone

• Publisher: Arc Publications
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781908376633
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Poetry
• Index: Literature

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The third full collection by Brian Johnstone, and his second to be published by Arc in their Poetry from the UK & Ireland series.

A grounded yet playful collection from an assured poet, flexing his muscles into newer territory. As well as the deep lineage of rural landscapes that populated previous collections, here Johnstone treats us to an extended trip to the circus, where the glitz and thrill of the big top and its stunts are peeled back to allow us into the physical and emotional rigour that forms the show's backbone. Elsewhere poems transport you more literally through music, movies and TV history, around Europe and into the distant past, again balancing between illusion and the tension that supports it in the more mundane world. And throughout, the tone and language also plays an ingenious balancing act between the structured, the rhyming and the informal. This is a personal and expansive collection, honest and exploratory.

"Brian Johnstone appears to have taken to heart, or learned by instinct and experience, Robert Frost's advice to avoid approaching a poem's subject too directly. A consequence of this is that Johnstone's poems establish their own presence, leaving room for mystery and lyricism to emerge with a convincing uniqueness. Dry Stone Work is a robust collection, packed with original strengths, delicacies, variety, and a vivid awareness of life. An impressive collection, then, not just to be recommended, but to be read and re-read." - Douglas Dunn

"The use of language is authentic and precise, and the perception of an often-hidden world fascinating and genuine." - David Morley on The Ring Cycle sequence

Born in Edinburgh in 1950, Brian Johnstone has lived in the Fife countryside since 1972. He has published two full collections and three pamphlets, as well as appearing in anthologies and other publications in Scotland, elsewhere in the UK and in Europe and the Americas.

The Ring Cycle

I

WHIP HAND

Believing in the possibility

of showtime

that the sound of circus music blaring

from the speakers on the roof

means more

than silver in my pocket, pegs to hammer home,

I stake out another pitch and flatten grass:

for what?

The cheers, the hollow gasps, the silence

as I place my head inside each

lion’s mouth.

It’s not the teeth, the jaws I fear but seeing

deep into their eyes, each pupil blank

as every pitch

we quit, lifeless as the ground we pack so hard.

II

THE DIVIDING LINE

Silence – you insist on it –

takes you by the throat,

forces you to breathe

as each step hangs you

in the balance,

draws you to the line.

From there to here

the wire divides

the air above the ring,

cuts failure from success.

No net is your style,

your small vanity, proof

of something that

your hands stretch out

to touch, grip light

in cruciform, upon the pole.

Out there tomorrow

looms up on the far side

of today. Tomorrow where

they stretch the wire again

and you step into time.

III

HEFT

Once he was the bee’s knees, the very donkey;

cock of the walk, he could wow them all,

straining every fibre till his veins stood out

like cables, hefting what he would later stow

one-handed. A struggle to feign an effort,

hauling until the prentice boys called him

for what he was – for what they all were,

faking their way from pitch to pitch, rattling

the tin. A prop apiece; his the show of strength,

the hups and heave-hos he’d let fly each night,

sly as the skin he knew had changed its spots:

the leopard’s pelt he’d slip into before the show

to take his torso – oiled and gleaming – out

into the lights. The band would play, drums

would roll, the punters loose a gasp. And he

would dare to stare distrust full in the eye.

IV

A STUDIED FALL

My feet are growing into these shoes, my hair

into this wig. More than the flesh I was born with,

red rubber becomes my nose. Douse me in gloop,

plant a pie in my face, then I’m real. Trip me up

so I fall like a fool, I’m that fool, one all the punters

dread. Ghost of their blunders, shade of their gaffes,

I’m the spectre that haunts their conceit. Spilt milk

is all I evoke in this gear, icon of mockery done up

in motley and slap. Priest at the altar, prostrate

in the ring, I’m face down in the sawd...

Table of contents

• Contents
• FOOTINGS
• Tobacco Road
• The Thousand Blows
• Reservoir
• Dry Stone Work
• Ghost Story
• The Tattie Line
• Concrete Poem
• The Ring Cycle
• Sonny Rollins on the Williamsburg Bridge
• The Method
• TRACINGS
• Dolls’ House Skies
• Making the Change
• On the Site of the Southside Joke Shop
• Surfin’ Safari for a Small Town Boy
• Storm Chaser
• Who Knew
• Lady Day’s Experience
• As From a Car
• To Live Apart
• Parable
• Codicil
• Contracted
• Blanket
• Back at Bash Street
• Askew
• HEARTINGS
• Reading the Book
• Zakros
• Source
• Tokens of Admission
• The Garment District
• Craiglockhart
• Sappers
• How Well It Burns
• A Hotel in the Bernese Oberland
• Opening Up the Bag
• A Disused Cinema in Lithuania
• Rope Trick
• An Executive Decision
• Mercenary
• Out-Station
• Wake Up Call
• Dark Matter
• COPINGS
• The Accents of Mice
• As We Watch
• Favour
• In Passing
• In the Flood
• The Bitter Fruits
• Spreading the Net
• Freeze
• Changeling
• The Jaws of Wasps
• Tree Surgeons
• One Last Breath
• History
• Behind Your Eyes
• One for the Road
• Notes on the Poems
• Author’s Note
• Biographical Note