Issue 27: Barnaby Smith
exhibit
‘Visual cues suggest an extreme sonic environment’
— Lawrence English on latent sound, 2016
‘I like to think of latent sound as a kind of spectral haunting’
— Lawrence English, 2020
the attendant is
reading the Qu’ran best
leave him to his
tone poem
his mood piece
his
gentle octaves
understand as you do
waterways
of the old town
& dark hills behind
as you do
rhythms
absorbed from artefacts—
artefacts go
on eating each other
then reset as cold
in proud white rooms
that buzz & cough
cough
cough
*
the act of attending:
noble if to nothing
latent sound is nothing
ignited
ignited
nothing
from studied
woman by the door
& aching feet exodus
[dilating tones]
quarrel cuddle squirm peep ignite
sigh stretch perform notate imbibe
grit house locate imagine
his
imagined
conversations with
the walls & let loudness
occur
& inhabit
deep, invisible time—
frequencies staying lost
as realities come & go—
subterranean
& remote as breath
the semantic problems of child-rearing (i-iii)
the dog died
my mother cocked her head
on an afternoon
& a year or so later
the 1990s felt like
vague heat
tangled up / it is imagined
told or guessed
last thing at night
dull lingering impressions in the country
& inescapable frequent sadness
for children, clumsy & limited
with beasts on the doorstep
haunting is the word—
the muffled squeak inside
defeated by a wandering neighbour
they’re gone & that’s all
not drowned
not drowned. but in the absence of answers
psychology grows & grows
evidence is usually better:
a wet body isn’t speculated
no questions for the empty day
indoors is well-meaning
overflowing usually
towards one reality
damaged & blurred—
the supposed
years as myth
Barnaby Smith is a poet, critic, journalist and musician living on Darug and Gundungurra land near Sydney, Australia. Recent work has appeared in journals such as Erbacce (UK), Orbis (UK), Marble (UK) and Blaze Vox (US), as well as Cordite, Southerly, Australian Poetry Journal, Australian Poetry Anthology, Best Australian Poems, and more. He is an award-winning art and music critic, and records music under the name Brigadoon, having released the album, Itch Factor, in 2020.
Copyright © 2022 by Barnaby Smith, all rights reserved. This text may be used and shared in accordance with the fair-use provisions of Copyright law. Archiving, redistribution, or republication of this text on other terms, in any medium, requires the notification of the journal and consent of the author.
