Launch of Seam Magazine’s latest issue: Tuesday 27th February

Readings from contributors to the latest issue of Seam: Frank Dullaghan,
Daniel Healy, Stuart Henson, Martin Figura and Helen Ivory. Introduced by Anne Berkeley.

8pm in CB1 Cafe, Mill Road.

Entrance £3 / £2 concessions.

Frank Dullaghan is Consulting Editor of Seam. He has been widely published in magazines including The Honest Ulsterman, London Magazine, Magma, The New Welsh Review, Poetry London, Poetry Review, Poetry Wales, The Printer's Devil, Quadrant (Australia), Reactions, The Rialto, The Shop, Smiths Knoll, Thumbscrew, Verse. His first collection is due from Cinnamon Press. He works in Dubai.

A Walk in a Field
For Thomas

I remember you telling it -
home from the Leb, wife in the other room -
how your friend stepped on a mine,

how he froze, knowing not to move,
his scarecrow shadow stretching
while you followed your footprints back

to gather rocks, piled them round his feet
adding pressure, back and forth,
each placed gently like gifts for a king

until the second click gave warning -
seconds to move: sprinting, shouting,
diving as the ground ripped open,
the world folding over you, raining.

Frank Dullaghan

* * *

Martin Figura is a photographer. His second collection Ahem (Eggbox) was published in 2005. He has just completed an MA in Writing The Visual at Norwich School of Art and Design.

Silesia

A wife and three children; then
you can visit. It's twenty years
and there are still bomb holes
in the road. You bring back

Polish crystal for the cabinet,
brass inlaid wooden boxes, tankards
carved out of coal, a thousand
photographs; one of a fallen horse
being flogged, not making a sound.


Martin Figura
(from Seam 26)

* * *

Daniel Healy was born in 1972 in Wales. He lives in Cambridge. He's had
poems published in a variety of magazines: The Journal, HQ, Chimera, The Rialto, Envoi, etc. He works in a bookshop.

Thaw

Black ice
in white snow
uncovered in the rain

unable to stop
the gaze returning

to that jagged line
of footprints
tracing the way.


Daniel Healy
(from Seam 26)

* * *

Stuart Henson is widely published. A selection of his work appeared in
Oxford Poets 2002 (Carcanet). His most recent collection is A Place Apart (Shoestring 2004).

Theatre of the Absurd

The cushions have begun to multiply like fungi,
propagating quietly there on the sofa, against
the backs of chairs, the chaise, the ottoman -
The rugs lay traps. In the bathroom, a tap drips
insidiously, the shower lies to him that hot is cold.
At night the fridge groans with its heavy breathing,
the curtains open and close at the moon's whim.
Mirrors have started to conduct interrogations.
All he can do is laugh like a maniac and trim his nails,
write finely worded letters on the backs of bills.
The paintwork crackles like a glacier and when
it rains a yellow stain spreads down the walls.
The telephone withholds his number when he calls himself.
Outside, white bottles pile against his door
like graveyard skulls.

Stuart Henson
(from Seam 26)

* * *

Helen Ivory's second Bloodaxe collection, The Dog in the Sky, was published last year. She is Academic Director and teacher of Creative Writing for Continuing Education at UEA.

Shelter

A grid of windows
rises up to be counted
above the frozen street.

Rooms like empty boxes
wait for a heartbeat
to shiver inside them.

The woman in the bus shelter
waits, and is waitng.


Helen Ivory
(from The Dog in the Sky, Bloodaxe 2006)