DESIGN AND LAYOUT #7

Martin Stannard



If you are daft you will probably say the wrong thing more often than
not. Some words are difficult to pronounce unless you know how and include
reveille, segue and pneumonoultramicroscopicsilicovolcanoconiosis.
To be romantic is to be doomed. Things happen then they stop happening.
The limits to the aphrodisiacal qualities of the imagination may vary. Being
unable to name anyone that is actually present does not mean love is beyond
your reach. Keep a diary of the neighbours making curious noises.

There is nothing to see but an accumulation of events. Everything can be
explained away as something else. The Wise Man has emerged from out of
the primeval slime and will probably return to it when he’s had his say.
Do not keep what you know inside your chest. Refusing to speak to anyone
about anything worth speaking about is one way of not doing it. The girls
wandering past your window every afternoon do not exist. Even if the days
are growing longer it is still approaching the autumn and winter of your life.

If you resemble a coal miner with light radiating from his brow perhaps there is
hope yet. Don’t worry if there’s less than one person in the world to whom you can
open your heart. Other people are not everything. A stretch of the imagination
is worth more than two of anything else. Next time you are in the greengrocer’s
check to see if the conference pears are talking to one another. If there is anything
more boring than mowing the lawn it hasn’t been discovered yet. It is never too
late to be a clown. Make it known you are available for children’s parties.




Martin Stannard lives in Nottingham, England, and has been publishing poetry and criticism for some 40 years. He was founding editor and publisher of joe soap’s canoe (1978-93) and poetry editor of Decals of Desire (www.decalsofdesire.blogspot.com) (2016-17). His poetry and reviews have appeared in numerous magazines and journals, including Stride, International Times, Tears in the Fence, The North and Poetry Salzburg Review. His most recent full-length collection is Poems for the Young at Heart (Leafe Press, 2016) http://www.leafepress.com/catalog/stannard/stannard.html), and a chapbook, Items, was published by Red Ceilings ( http://www.theredceilingspress.co.uk/) in August 2018. After more than a decade teaching Literature and Culture at a university in China, he returned to the UK in early 2018. His versions of classic Chinese Tang dynasty poems have appeared in Meniscus, Litter, and Tears in the Fence, and a collection of them will be published in the UK by Shoestring in late 2019. Website: http://www.martinstannard.com/