The Republic of Ed

WTSAY Shortlisted for poetry prize.

2011-04-20T04:31:00.000-07:00

My latest Collection 'What They Say About You' has been shortlisted for the 'Scottish Poetry Book of the Year' and longlisted for the 'Scottish Book of the Year.'
Thanks to Peter and Arlene at Leamington Books for producing such a great looking book!

http://www.scottishbookawards.com/2011-longlist/

The book is available here-

http://www.leamingtonbooks.co.uk/books/Eddie-Gibbons/What%20They%20Say%20About%20You%20by%20Eddie%20Gibbons/Purchase%20What%20They%20Say%20About%20You%20by%20Eddie%20Gibbons.html

2010-12-22T02:12:00.000-08:00

WHY SHE FLEW TO BARCELONA
My new pamphlet is available here -http://www.zen39641.zen.co.uk/cwp/gibbons.htm

My Next Book

2010-04-30T12:36:00.000-07:00

I will be publishing a poetry pamphlet with Calder Wood Press, Dunbar, Scotland, in December 2010. I'd better get writing, then...

What They Say About You

2010-04-26T06:16:00.000-07:00

is the title of my new poetry collection, published by
Leamington Books, Edinburgh.

The book will be launched at the Scottish Poetry Library,
Edinburgh, on July 1st 2010.
Below is a sample poem from the book.

The Downside of Knowing a Poet

2009-01-05T00:10:00.000-08:00

Don’t write.
Don’t phone.
Don’t wait
outside my door in the rain.

Yes, I adore you.
I’d do anything for you,

except ever see you again.

Your sorrow
is so tangible
I can taste it,

but our last parting
was so perfect,
it would be a shame to waste it.

This poem was published in the December 2008
issue of Quadrant Magazine, Australia.

Shopping Forecast

2008-02-04T01:38:00.000-08:00

The Shopping Forecast issued by the Dole Office
at 1930 on Thursday 8th June.

There are warnings of Sales in Frasers,
Debenhams, Esslemont and Macintosh.

The general Shopping List at 1300:

Iceland, North Utsire, South Utsire.
10p off at Iceland, while stocks last.
Lurpak £1.06 decreasing 5 or 6p
by 1300 tomorrow.
North it’s dearer, south it’s dearer.

Faeroes, Cromarty Co-op
Fisherman’s Friends reduced
to tears. Automatic Lighthouse
on the blink. 40 watt
lightbulbs sold out.

German Bite, Biscuit, Thin as Air.
Strudels, Hob Nobs, 5p off.
Peckish, becoming famished 1 or 2.
Decreasing 3 or 4
dress sizes.
Gail, forced, ate.

Isle of Jura, Baileys, Rhum.
70p off 70cl.
Westerly, veering uncertainly.
Becoming paralytic after 6 or 7.
Occasional slurring.
Dribble.
Poorly later.

Hiking, Base Rate, Robber Bank.
Variable, becoming high.
Extortionate for a time. APR 20 or 30.
Mastercard and Visa low.
Hard rain. Overdraft increasing 100%.
Poor.

Viking, Forties, GSOH.
Low, 100 miles south of Shetland,
WLTM Siren or Silkie.
No mermaids.
Rising Northwesterly
in anticipation.

That is the end of the Shopping Forecast.

My Boss, The Sea

2007-07-05T02:24:00.000-07:00

In the grey estates of Industry
all outlooks are bleak. Windows
seldom show more than the
factory opposite, a dirty apex
of corrugated misery. Often
the scene is a drab brick wall.

But in this new job one of the
windows look out on the sea.
It is a small rectangular
blessing, a keyhole full of
weather, sending reports of
seagulls, currents and clouds.

Now and then, when I look up
from the universal oblong of
Windows 98 I can sometimes
see a tiny red ship take an age
to traverse the length of the
window ledge.

When I turn back to my screen
my boss is usually at my shoulder
branding me as a dreamer
who should pay more attention
to Autocad icons and less to
these maritime meanderings.

So I continue drawing details
on my screen. When the prints
are issued they will be sent
to the client, who will build
a huge red ship and send it
sailing, tiny past my window.

Reflection On Dalglish

2007-05-13T03:17:00.000-07:00

Empty Now Grows Every Bed

2007-05-11T15:32:00.000-07:00

What once was done
is now undone.
What once was near
is far away.
And love that lighted
on your shoulder
in some distant June
or May, has lifted now
and flitted skyward,
out of vision,
flown away.

Who once was here
is now elsewhere.
The one who held
your sleeping head
now holds another's
in its slumbers
in some distant town
instead. Like hearts
and houses, cribs
and cradles, empty
now grows every bed.

The Alaves Badge

2007-04-15T16:05:00.000-07:00

I took the smile
you wore for me
in the bright café,
your words slipping
easily from tongue
to tongue, translating
my native to your native,
and I left you only silence.

Later,
I saw you in the square,
your black hair electric
in the glinting sunlight.
I heard your singing
echo down Silberstrasse.

Later still, at the stadium,
as the time we had left became
extra and extraordinary,
I, fearful of a curse, unclipped
the badge you gave to me
and threw it to the ground.

Forgive me, Senorita.
It was my only hope.
.
.
Liverpool 5 – 4 Alaves (after extra time)
UEFA Cup Final, Dortmund, May 2001

The Downside of Knowing a Poet

2007-04-13T17:07:00.000-07:00

Don’t write.
Don’t phone.
Don’t wait
outside my door in the rain.

Yes, I adore you.
I’d do anything for you,
except ever see you again.

Your sorrow
is so tangible
I can taste it,

but our last parting
was so perfect,
it would be a shame to waste it.
.
.

Skywalker

2007-03-30T07:12:00.000-07:00

Can you fly, Philippe?

Or simply walk on air?

What was it like up there-

the wire, the wind, the twinned

towers, the grasp?

----------you----------

the gap

that thousand-mouthed gasp

(for philippe petit)

Death Shall Have No Dim Onion

2007-03-28T10:33:00.000-07:00

Shopping by woods this snowy eve,
I wonder why each word I read
gets muddled up, goes slightly mad.
How did my eyesight get so bad?

I look at poems I once held dear
and find that they do not appear
to be the same as I once read-
two phrases in, I lose the thread.

Did Robert Browsing's Duchess go
not Gentile Into That Good Night?
Was Robert Frosty in the snow?
Is Tyger Tyger burping right?

Poor Percy Shelley's really Pysshe
and Homer wrote the Ilibad.
Could Morgenstern recite his Fish?
Are Vasco Popadoms a fad?

Once Allen Ginseng's primal Owl
drowned out the waving Stevie Sniff
but Hiya, Watha! makes me scowl
like ruddy Kipling's iffy If.

Of all the joys of Muddle Age
myopia must head the queue.
I have to squint to read this page-
The Raver (Edgar Allen Poo).

(Published in Unsuitable Companions -
Happenstance Press 2007)

A Different Story

2007-03-23T03:25:00.000-07:00

The first week over, I said to my sister:
Before we know it, it will be a year.

Then we’ll be placing anniversary flowers
in the garden of his memory.

Meanwhile, there is refuge in things
beyond his compass-

I can drive to work knowing full well
that his hands never held a steering wheel.

Or sit at my computer knowing he never
caressed a keyboard with his fingers.

I have come to know the small consolations
of technology:

mobile phones, e-mails, DVDs-
all safe from any taint of melancholy.

But football scores, gunfighter ballads,
darts, snooker. The Grand Ole Opry.

That’s a different story.

Henri Rousseau meets Frank O'Hara

2007-03-21T01:05:00.000-07:00

It’s a jungle out there, Frank.

I know, Henri. Was it you
who brought all this humid
weather over from Brooklyn?

There are tigers roaming Central
Park. Don’t go there at night without
a flashlight, a pitchfork and a net.

They say you left a naked girl
on a divan, smack in the middle,
by that phallic obelisk, you brute.

Don’t worry about the girl, Frank,
the saucer-eyed lions look after her.
Say, how long is your lunch hour?

It’s fluid as a Dali dial, Henri. Museums
have their midday naps. Hell, all that
time they cram in between the entrances

and exits. Nobody’s clockwatching
in Antiquities. You fancy a papaya
and a jambalaya from Juliet’s Corner?

Papaya? Jungle juice sounds just up
my street. I’d like to do you in oils, Frank,
peeking through a bush on Seventh Avenue.

Rousseau
O'Hara

Eric Cantona meets Frida Kahlo

2007-03-21T00:47:00.000-07:00

They always put the wheelchairs
behind the goals. That’s how Frida
and I met. She was sketching me.

I was sketching his shirt. I love
the recklessness of his upturned collar.
I will use it for my next self-portrait.

We make things visible that are
not visible. I make goals out of nothing,
Frida makes many Fridas visible.

I don’t get out much. Diego does
the cooking. I cover his murals
with mirrors. I paint what I see.

Remember my kung fu at the Palace?
When the merde hit the fan
you gave me a Mexican wave.

It was a wave of dismissal. I’m bored
of petty Napoleons. Like the ball you kick,
you are just a bag of wind. Goodbye!

Au revoir to you, mon petite sardine!
Your eyebrows are like my drawing of
the seagulls that follow the trawler.

kahlo
c*ntona

Liverpool Echoes

2007-03-20T10:39:00.000-07:00

I pass an alley in a foreign town.
The wind seems to whistle a shanty.
A tang of salt coats my tongue.

A building looks the image of
the Bluecoat Chambers. I spot
an Adelphi, a Gambier, a Goree.

A dockside crane wire twangs
that first wild chord of A Hard Day's
Night and kick-starts my heart.

A poster shows a Matador, razor-
sharp inside the haze of his cape.
I recall a man in a pub saying:

Your father must have been hard
as nails to grow up in The Bullring
tenements, son. They were brutal.

A futile attempt at a foreign phrase
brings whoops of laughter. Now that's
the language I learned from my father

when trams clanked down to the Pier Head,
the big ship sailed down the alley alley-o
and the sons of Spion sang ee-aye-addio:

when I played five-a-side with Rory Storm
as Astrid Kirchherr shot the Beatles
in a basement on the Reeperbahn,

while the Quarrymen laboured at the rock face
of their ordinary lives and that mad bastard Lennon
was let loose among the lowlife and the headlines.

waterfront

In Place of Poems

2007-03-20T09:52:00.000-07:00

I recall my teacher asking the class
to write a poem about one of their relatives,
then for homework paint a picture of that person.
She called the lesson Show and Tell.

I dipped my nib in the inkwell, scrawled
a spiderweb of lines, then blotted my copybook.
At home I coloured in a drawing of my dad
going to work on his bike, dressed in orange overalls.

Tonight, instead of painting my father in words,
I'll hand to you what stood for poems in his world-
a Football Echo, bicycle clips, a clock-in card.
A freshly-machined cog dripping with soluble oil.

In The Green Room

2007-03-20T04:53:00.000-07:00

She’s washing breakfast dishes
as I sit at the kitchen table,
leafing through her copy of
Remembering Dances
Learned Last Night.
All the time she's talking-
Remember the Green Room
at the Bloomsbury?
How we scoffed those sarnies?
Guzzled that wine?

I’m trying to remember
anything I did last night.
We’ll drink this one for Michael,
she says, and pours two neat
Armagnacs into crystal glasses.

Ah, yes, I think, that’s how
I’ll always remember the two of you-
calm before the reading:
you, thrilled and slightly tipsy,
twirling strands of your hair as you spoke;
and Michael standing behind you, a shy
and gentle man, looking like a refugee
from some exiled orchestra, searching
for the safest place to practice his flute.

(for Alison Dunne and Michael Donaghy)