Peter Sansom
Slightly all the time
Leicester De Montfort, from a train.
I saw Soft Machine there. 75.
Some of their tunes were fuck all
over and over, and shit hot.
The summer before I cut my hair,
too young for hippy, too old for punk
and grew a beard to suit
the desert boots and duffle coat.
It sounded better, I guess,
if you smoked the stuff that wrote it,
but they were fogeys, really,
and I needed to stay alert.
A lot of notes round simple
chord progressions, profligate
because they could. A drummer
like five hands and John Etheridge,
a guitar you never knew where
heíd go or how, but it was
the keyboards that made it. Cross-legged
among quadraphonic, kaftans were ok
though only just and people
still slept on peopleís floors
like they still do or woke in strange beds
to introduce themselves. Patchouli,
cheesecloth, The Brothers Karamazov,
Siddhartha, and Kevin Ayers
who started with the Softs before
Whatever She Brings We Sing.
The last of love, I thought then,
who knew fuck all
over and over about love,
one whole side of a concept album
with Talking Heads just round the corner
waiting to hit me like a train,
More Songs about Buildings and Food.
magazine list
- Features
- zines
- 10th Muse
- 14
- Acumen
- Agenda
- Ambit
- Angel Exhaust
- ARTEMISpoetry
- Atlas
- Blithe Spirit
- Borderlines
- Brando's hat
- Brittle Star
- Candelabrum
- Cannon's Mouth, The
- Chroma
- Coffee House, The
- Dream Catcher
- Equinox
- Erbacce
- Fabric
- Fire
- Floating Bear, The
- French Literary Review, The
- Frogmore Papers, The
- Global Tapestry
- Grosseteste Review
- Homeless Diamonds
- Interpreter's House, The
- Iota
- Journal, The
- Lamport Court
- London Magazine, The
- Magma
- Matchbox
- Matter
- Modern Poetry in Translation
- Monkey Kettle
- Moodswing
- Neon Highway
- New Welsh Review
- North, The
- Oasis
- Obsessed with pipework
- Orbis
- Oxford Poetry
- Painted, spoken
- Paper, The
- Pen Pusher Magazine
- Poetry Cornwall
- Poetry London
- Poetry London (1951)
- Poetry Nation
- Poetry Review, The
- Poetry Salzburg Review
- Poetry Scotland
- Poetry Wales
- Private Tutor
- Purple Patch
- Quarto
- Rain Dog
- Reach Poetry
- Review, The
- Rialto, The
- Second Aeon
- Seventh Quarry, The
- Shearsman
- Smiths Knoll
- Smoke
- South
- Staple
- Strange Faeces
- Tabla Book of New Verse, The
- Thumbscrew
- Tolling Elves
- Ugly Tree, The
- Weyfarers
- Wolf, The
- Yellow Crane, The