Birds

Fisher, Allen (2010) Birds. Oystercatcher Press. ISBN 9781905885169

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Abstract

The writer has not been homeless for more than ten years, but in a situation of living an ‘in transit’ existence between a potential home and a room in a college orchard, in and surrounded by a culture that has almost died from its own self-congratulation, its own internet support for a mixture of the mediocre and nonsense, its own contribution to rubbish. Proposals, a sequence of 35 emblems each comprised of a poem, an image and a commentary, started in this climate and burn-out. BIRDS brings together 10 poems from Proposals. The subjects move from burning and wasted energy to the desolation of an environment in Crewe, the 150-year-old railway town, and the routes from there to London, Manchester, Stafford, Birmingham, Glasgow and Cardiff. In particular the routes through rubbish tips, wasted landscapes and wealthy estates. BIRDS, extracted from Proposals, lifts from this melancholy of existence and its partner mourning, for an unrecoverable and false celebration towards a set of modest and local observations.