Slam at Beat

for Roy Fisher 

abstruse with fingers & figures – 

chords alive with feeling 

& beats up against it all, 

yeah spiral it sweet; 

thinking of the jagged edges 

running by smooth complexities 

of mind – nonchalance & a nod 

to all the objects in the room. 

It’s a long way home from where 

you are, can you just about 

touch the printed surface 

that hosts your absconding 

voice – and on axe hill 

dream on shapeshifter of jammed 

air 

Adam Piette teaches as the University of Sheffield and co-edits Blackbox Manifold with Alex Houen. He is the author of Remembering and the Sound of Words: Mallarmé, Proust, Joyce, Beckett, Imagination at War: British Fiction and Poetry, 1939-1945, The Literary Cold War, 1945 to Vietnam.

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