New Book!

The Car 

Republished in a new illustrated edition after 21 years.

A series of twenty-eight Shakespearean sonnets describing the human condition in terms of the workings of a motor car.

An owner’s workshop manual for servicing your life.

My Canine Excuse

Walking the dog at night,

the realms of scent and sight

flow from this lamppost and your house.

There’s freshly-coded news to sniff,

and a curtain only partly-drawn

shows me your light-blue TV world.

Suddenly you look out –

we see each other

like photographers caught in each other’s picture.

A world opens on this moment,

so huge its power rushes down the leash and

tugs me to your door.

Stuart Larner

(first published Every Day Poets).

first published, as a delicious meal of poetry on EveryDay Poets:

The Five Course Reunion 

i)

The melon crescents were served

Back to back like a frown.

When ours were collected afterwards 

They had been turned over into a smile.

ii)

The soup darkens as we stir,

Reds and greens arise then sink.

The stop and go of us these years.

Boundaries split, natures mix. Catch

Them in our spoons, rediscover

The recipe for what we were.

iii)

Choose a wing with me.

If they are from the same bird

It will fly again .

  

iv)

Let's halve this Emmental, you said,

Though in our hands at first

The cheese knife curved away

Nervous at slicing so deep into

Fermented joys we'd sealed up tight.

But then we saw ourselves,

Heart valves, moon craters,

Half-formed question marks,

Caverns echoing our answer.

v)

After so long you`ve opened it again

To seek some biscuit bits,

Edges smoothed in the jostling jar.

Once fresh with flavour at first snap,

Now old and soft and taking on

The crumbs of ones they`re kept with.

Like you and me, a match can`t now exactly be

Rejoined at where it broke, the art is to agree

Two pieces can taste about the same.

Stuart Larner

This poem, originally published on Every Day Poets, takes its inspiration from a 1931 creative map (produced by artist Edward Bawden) which now hangs in Scarborough Library.

Looking at a Print of Scarborough

This picture reminds me of the smell

of seaweed in cliff gardens at low tide,

when sunshine felt like a warm new suit all over,

and the open-top bus ride tousled our hair.

On the beach, eating ice creams,

we stared deep into donkeys’ eyes

to see their souls, sure they sensed ours

in the quiet tide beneath everything.

Lying on our stomachs, watching the sea,

I kept you safe like the castle keeps safe

its bay with rocky shoulder and encircling arm.

I touch the glass that separates the print from me.

There’s a slim airspace between today and yesterday.

I know I can always reach you there.

Stuart Larner