Dean Jocelin

 

Jeremy Luke Hill

 

I am he, laughing, chin up, and shaking
my head, spokes and wheels and a fire 

at the spine. My will is in the pillars
and in the high wall. I saw the pinnacle, 

an image in stone, but water invaded the graves
of the great. The foundationless pebbles stirred 

with the slow stirring of grubs, and the earth
urged them this way and that, like porridge 

coming to the boil in a pot, and the grubs
were made to crawl by it, as dust crawls 

on the head of a tapped drum, as Satan
rose out of the west, clad in nothing but hair. 

I tied my chosen ones to the sky
with bands of iron, cabled and riveted, 

but their glory bent my spine. The tower swayed
like a tall tree above the blue cup of earth.  

– from William Golding’s The Spire

 

 

Artist Statement: These poems from a series of poems entitled, "I Am What They Make Of Me". Each is written from the perspective of a character in a novel who has influenced me as a writer and as a person. The poems draw much of their language directly from the source texts, arranging and adapting them to emphasize the elements that speak most to my connection with the characters.

 

Jeremy Luke Hill is the publisher at Gordon Hill Press, a literary publisher based in Guelph, Ontario. He is also the Managing Director of Vocamus Writers Community, a non-profit community organization that supports book culture in Guelph. He has written a collection of poetry, short prose, and photography called Island Pieces; four chapbooks of poetry called Poetry of Thought, CanCon, Trumped, and These My Streets; two poetry broadsheets called Grounded and Indexical; and a series of poetry broadsheets called Conversations with Viral Media. He also writes a semi-regular column on chapbooks for The Town Crier. His writing has appeared in in ARC Poetry, The Bull Calf, CNQ, CV2, EVENT Magazine, Filling Station, Free Fall, The Goose, HA&L, The Maynard, paperplates, The Puritan, Queen Mob’s Tea House, The Rusty Toque, The Town Crier, and The Windsor Review.