The Missing Links
The trouble with Will Self’s blood. * More Self: “After all, I can remember times, albeit long gone, when young women, even the occasional man, did reach for my crotch while making cooing noises. True, they didn’t tend to do it in public but it happened nonetheless”. * Did we ever stop being postmodern? * […]
Maintenant #77 – Maarten Inghels
When another magazine lauded me as the future talent, with my head on the cover and in the street, it started to get a bit scary. It’s rare that a debutant receives so much attention, and certainly for a beginner in poetry. I was overwhelmed by the chorus of praise, especially because I didn’t expect to make my debut at such a young age. But afterwards, when you’re sitting back at your writing table, it means nothing when the doubt returns. The praise is only temporary, you have to prove your worth with every new book.
In the 77th of the Maintenant series, SJ Fowler interviews the Belgian poet Maarten Inghels.
Three Poems
Everyone draws up lists at the end, also
when we, walking through the city by night, are boxers,
cry in the wind with crooked shoulders,
and have to ask where it went wrong:
the halt while we go by
never sounded so wry.
Are we swimmers on the beach,
while alertly shielding our eyes we
see the sad-eyed seals wash up,
loudly we seek our voice towards a better life.
Do we wonder whether it will all wash away
when the sea no longer knows its ebb.
By Maarten Inghels.
Summer Job
Ms. Stevens had requested that nobody be notified after she checked out. Her room was full of cellophane. It was possibly from things she got at the gift shop, like the Russian dolls and the miniature car set, but that didn’t account for the rest of it. Slithers of the stuff kept attaching themselves to me, and whenever I took one piece off, another immediately replaced it, as if they were asexual organisms hellbent on reproducing no matter what the outcome or the point.
By Cassandra Moss.