V. Press is delighted to launch Bolt Down This Earth by Gram Joel Davies.
“Linguistically bold and alive to the thisness of
its moments, Bolt Down This Earth is
a debut collection of lyric energy and inventiveness, full-throated and
confident in its own power to convince. An arrival to be celebrated.” Martin Malone
“Gram Joel Davies’s first collection slips deftly
between a West Country past and the present. The poems are full of taut
observation and meticulous attention to detail. And though there is an urban
feel to many of them, the collection is brimful of nature. The poems are often
peopled with the troubled or misunderstood, and the worlds they move in are
shadowy and uncomfortable versions of those we know – almost dystopian at
times. There is often a sense of the narrator or central character being the
outsider (a boy almost drowning, two teenagers exploring a derelict hospital, a
father too fond of his drink) and there is a disquieting and almost violent
sensuality too. The complexity of the worlds these people move in is echoed by
the complexity of the way Davies puts words together – sometimes joining two
words together to create new words; weaving something rich and new that casts
its melancholy spell over the reader, but never excludes them. In these poems
the uncomfortable tinnitus of the past encroaches on the very real tinnitus of
the present. This is compounded in the powerful Tinnitus sequence that is
dotted throughout the collection − like a central column that
the other poems hang on. The cumulative effect of the layering of numerous and
various language is both troubling and stunning. These are poems whose subtle
inventiveness works its way into your subconsciousness, poems that you will
want to revisit time and again.” Julia
Webb
A sample poem from the collection can be found below.
Buy Bolt Down This Earth now using the paypal link below.
Coming Up For Air
She makes him taste of tarragon,
olive oil, black pepper.
He does not rinse his beard.
He wants to wear it
into the warm street like a lit flume.
People gull around his wake,
scenting his beard
comb the line of hers.
A man with rolled sleeves
sniffs and wants to plunge
his tongue
but, through a window, a cab driver
draws breath, tasting
how he waited on
her nipple.
In the foyer, a clerk’s hand
floats over keys,
watching lift-numbers
kiss up her ribs, back down.
The lift fills with pepper
and tarragon. He parts the way,
his beard glowing like her olive
glow, he licks spiced lips
and remembers: goes
in.
AND THERE'S MORE...
Bolt Down This Earth chosen for Other New Books in Poetry Book Society Spring Bulletin 2017
AND THERE'S MORE...
Bolt Down This Earth chosen for Other New Books in Poetry Book Society Spring Bulletin 2017
