John Stammers
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John Stammers was born in Islington, where he still lives. As a teacher he has been associated with two Cambridge colleges as well as King's College London, of which he was appointed an Associate after reading philosophy there as an undergraduate. Like Isobel Dixon and Olvia Cole, if making a later start, he was one of several gifted poets who gained from the tutelary example of the late Michael Donaghy, but again like them he has found his own path: in his case, the path of the unexpectedly erudite urban cowboy with a frame of reference ranging from the scabrous to the desolately chic, as if Tristan Corbière were trying to get over an affair with Angelina Jolie. His first collection, Panoramic Lounge-bar, won the Forward Prize in 2001, and immediately attracted a battalion of highly qualified admirers. Slower on the draw, I first encountered his work through a second collection, Stolen Love Behaviour(2005), in which all the poems invaded my memory with their finely cadenced Higher Grunge imagery, several bowled me over, but the one that left me flattened was “The Other Dozier”, the best recent example I know of, from either side of the Atlantic, of Mythical America transmuted into solid magic —a box of tricks with everything that opens and shuts.
Guardian review of the John Stammers collection Interior Night Cressida Connolly interviews John Stammers for The Telegraph |
House on the Beach
The shadows mediated by the slats of the venetian blind
stripe the silk finish ceiling;
I am reminded of the sheen on the ocean
of glossy horoscopes I so deprecate,
am I not, after all, a logical and serious-minded Virgo?
Apparently, Venus is poorly aspected in Pisces
or something. I am practically nodding off at this point.
I expire across the bed with its sails full of disquietude,
its balsa-wood hull dipping and rising
on queasy unconsciousness like some Kon-Tiki
out to prove to me, as if I needed it,
that I am not new,
that I cannot get away from it all,
that it is all there is, and that my slumberings
retain the tell-tale signs of you
with your female body
and mouth full of explanations.
I fetch up onto this morning,
so strangely bright with exotic birds and fruit
but still with its hoard of old stone heads.
But just how did it get here, this place -
in the margins of buying and selling
or from somewhere in the veneered wardrobe
between sharp suits or materials
pre-weathered in the cutting room?
My new denim jacket had sand in its pockets,
that's how they distress them, you told me,
perhaps that's what the sand has done to me.
I am in distress, I had said, in body language
by rubbing the back of my neck, I am sand-blasted!
Or did it float up amongst all the debris?
It could have bobbed in on the cusp of beach and sea,
replete with the tactfully blanched flooring
and these hard little shells
that virtually stab your feet to death,
but that would be so hackneyed,
surely a place like this would be more original.
And another thing, who was it that said
don't build your house on sand?
Some old deity I think.
But rocks erode away into sand
and, like Thales said,
isn't everything just water anyway?
And he should know, having fallen down a well
trying to read the future in the stars.
And when everything is liquefied and clean,
wouldn't he be pleased, the old prognosticator,
if he himself hadn't already melted?
I strain to hear your breathing in almost the wash
of the water's edge and the lisping of the shingles
as they deliquesce into the sea;
I am asphyxiated with desire
to stroke the fine hairs of your body
and, as the sea runs over driftwood on the beach,
follow the subtle undulations of you.
I am filled up like an inflated tear
whose surface tension is so taut
that one more image of you with your poise -
your bare arms, your hands lightly crossed in front of you -
and I will break and shower into droplets like the waves
as they smash into the old wooden tide-breakers
and annihilate themselves in the air.
stripe the silk finish ceiling;
I am reminded of the sheen on the ocean
of glossy horoscopes I so deprecate,
am I not, after all, a logical and serious-minded Virgo?
Apparently, Venus is poorly aspected in Pisces
or something. I am practically nodding off at this point.
I expire across the bed with its sails full of disquietude,
its balsa-wood hull dipping and rising
on queasy unconsciousness like some Kon-Tiki
out to prove to me, as if I needed it,
that I am not new,
that I cannot get away from it all,
that it is all there is, and that my slumberings
retain the tell-tale signs of you
with your female body
and mouth full of explanations.
I fetch up onto this morning,
so strangely bright with exotic birds and fruit
but still with its hoard of old stone heads.
But just how did it get here, this place -
in the margins of buying and selling
or from somewhere in the veneered wardrobe
between sharp suits or materials
pre-weathered in the cutting room?
My new denim jacket had sand in its pockets,
that's how they distress them, you told me,
perhaps that's what the sand has done to me.
I am in distress, I had said, in body language
by rubbing the back of my neck, I am sand-blasted!
Or did it float up amongst all the debris?
It could have bobbed in on the cusp of beach and sea,
replete with the tactfully blanched flooring
and these hard little shells
that virtually stab your feet to death,
but that would be so hackneyed,
surely a place like this would be more original.
And another thing, who was it that said
don't build your house on sand?
Some old deity I think.
But rocks erode away into sand
and, like Thales said,
isn't everything just water anyway?
And he should know, having fallen down a well
trying to read the future in the stars.
And when everything is liquefied and clean,
wouldn't he be pleased, the old prognosticator,
if he himself hadn't already melted?
I strain to hear your breathing in almost the wash
of the water's edge and the lisping of the shingles
as they deliquesce into the sea;
I am asphyxiated with desire
to stroke the fine hairs of your body
and, as the sea runs over driftwood on the beach,
follow the subtle undulations of you.
I am filled up like an inflated tear
whose surface tension is so taut
that one more image of you with your poise -
your bare arms, your hands lightly crossed in front of you -
and I will break and shower into droplets like the waves
as they smash into the old wooden tide-breakers
and annihilate themselves in the air.
Weather Report
Sea Vista fluoresces like luminous eels;
someone painted this place cream
and never touched it again.
You can't get that colour anymore,
just cream, you say;
flakes detach from the facade
and join in the general descent.
The tint of the rain drops' perpetual concerto
misses, by about none,
the lilac of the waltzes of the tea room.
So much liquid, is it all required?
Take cappuccino or lip gloss,
those suspensions of our age,
or the actual rain:
clouds, mauve semblance of what is,
accumulate as if instructed by old masters.
And when you think about it, El Greco's wrist
did live its life inches from the very threshold
of creation:
the canvases like culture mediums
spread with florets of grim hues and him
drawing out the grand designs into being
through the tip of the brush.
But as if to prove conclusively
that there is madness in Methodism,
the sign outside the mock-gothic hall says:
In the Midst of Life we are in Death
but you, you wear the ludicrous sea-side hats
of self aggrandisement, as if the gust
that tossed the last one into the sea
was your own idea: not content
with wrapping yourself up
in love, only love, love,
you do no more than write an epigraph for us
on the back of the old hotel
with its seen better days
and panoramic lounge-bar:
THEY CAME THEY SAW THEY CAME
Ha Ha Ha, you went.
Don't perpetrate mirth like that,
you spray-can El Greco,
I said, and I noticed
the soft flesh of your wrist
and wanted you again.
someone painted this place cream
and never touched it again.
You can't get that colour anymore,
just cream, you say;
flakes detach from the facade
and join in the general descent.
The tint of the rain drops' perpetual concerto
misses, by about none,
the lilac of the waltzes of the tea room.
So much liquid, is it all required?
Take cappuccino or lip gloss,
those suspensions of our age,
or the actual rain:
clouds, mauve semblance of what is,
accumulate as if instructed by old masters.
And when you think about it, El Greco's wrist
did live its life inches from the very threshold
of creation:
the canvases like culture mediums
spread with florets of grim hues and him
drawing out the grand designs into being
through the tip of the brush.
But as if to prove conclusively
that there is madness in Methodism,
the sign outside the mock-gothic hall says:
In the Midst of Life we are in Death
but you, you wear the ludicrous sea-side hats
of self aggrandisement, as if the gust
that tossed the last one into the sea
was your own idea: not content
with wrapping yourself up
in love, only love, love,
you do no more than write an epigraph for us
on the back of the old hotel
with its seen better days
and panoramic lounge-bar:
THEY CAME THEY SAW THEY CAME
Ha Ha Ha, you went.
Don't perpetrate mirth like that,
you spray-can El Greco,
I said, and I noticed
the soft flesh of your wrist
and wanted you again.
The Day Flies off Without Me
The planes bound for all points everywhere
etch lines on my office window. From the top floor
London recedes in all directions, and beyond:
the world with its teeming hearts.
I am still, you move, I am a point of reference on a map;
I am at zero meridian as you consume the longitudes.
The pact we made to read our farewells exactly
at two in the afternoon with you in the air
holds me like a heavy winter coat.
Your unopened letter is in my pocket, beating.
etch lines on my office window. From the top floor
London recedes in all directions, and beyond:
the world with its teeming hearts.
I am still, you move, I am a point of reference on a map;
I am at zero meridian as you consume the longitudes.
The pact we made to read our farewells exactly
at two in the afternoon with you in the air
holds me like a heavy winter coat.
Your unopened letter is in my pocket, beating.
Between a Rock and a Hudson
He steps out of the standard lamp's narrow stardom
into the shade that dare not speak its name.
Brylcreem and the immaculate swank
of pink-piped pyjamas and silk His bathrobe
set off linebacker shoulders.
Doris sings in the shower,
sings high in the plashy ecstasy of wet hand and sud:
Que sera, sera ...
She has peeled off Day for the day and left her
a crumpled body stocking of apple pie on the tiles.
She is doing her own thing for once,
singing a wet tease for the habitual scopophiliac of the lens.
The zoom drive whirrs itself to a close up:
the soap down of the girl next door
who has forgotten to pull the blinds
just for fun.
From out the left
Hitchcock is casting himself
against type onto the shower curtain--
everything has had bubbles in it so far, after all.
Botticelli might have styled her as reaching out
for the long, blue slab of the soap,
made to catch her rise or bend to cup her breasts
beneath the lick of the water's multitudinous tongues.
Rock's away with the Forty-Niners ,
the pectorals gleaming like trophies from ancient Greece.
While inside the flickering peepshow of 35mm
Doris is bathing mid-frame,
caught on the half shell of the shower tray singing
whatever will be will be...
married, cinematographically, to a man who wants a man,
filmed by the outline of a cameo,
the future's not ours to see...
watched by us. Cut!
into the shade that dare not speak its name.
Brylcreem and the immaculate swank
of pink-piped pyjamas and silk His bathrobe
set off linebacker shoulders.
Doris sings in the shower,
sings high in the plashy ecstasy of wet hand and sud:
Que sera, sera ...
She has peeled off Day for the day and left her
a crumpled body stocking of apple pie on the tiles.
She is doing her own thing for once,
singing a wet tease for the habitual scopophiliac of the lens.
The zoom drive whirrs itself to a close up:
the soap down of the girl next door
who has forgotten to pull the blinds
just for fun.
From out the left
Hitchcock is casting himself
against type onto the shower curtain--
everything has had bubbles in it so far, after all.
Botticelli might have styled her as reaching out
for the long, blue slab of the soap,
made to catch her rise or bend to cup her breasts
beneath the lick of the water's multitudinous tongues.
Rock's away with the Forty-Niners ,
the pectorals gleaming like trophies from ancient Greece.
While inside the flickering peepshow of 35mm
Doris is bathing mid-frame,
caught on the half shell of the shower tray singing
whatever will be will be...
married, cinematographically, to a man who wants a man,
filmed by the outline of a cameo,
the future's not ours to see...
watched by us. Cut!
Prairie Rose
Inside my dream the towns fall by us one by one:
Laredo, Rocky-Neck and Sprute.
I am asleep beneath the jury-rigged tarpaulin
in the night cot of your cousin's mobile home,
the air thick as corn soup.
The tire noise slackens as we pull in at
a drowsy joint called Maria Eleana's.
Her jukebox sings dobro and Hank
and an outfit called The Tuscaloosa Boys.
The intricate needlework on your boots
twinkles like pinpricks in black card
and the liquefaction
of your denim bolero
as it sidles to a blue-grass waltz
hits me over the heart like a high calibre round.
'Wake up, wake up,' you shook me,
'there's a tornado headed this way.'
And I saw that Satan's index finger
doodle devastation along the highway.
'Kansas this aint, Rose.' I explained,
'and there's no way home.'
'But we are home.'
Laredo, Rocky-Neck and Sprute.
I am asleep beneath the jury-rigged tarpaulin
in the night cot of your cousin's mobile home,
the air thick as corn soup.
The tire noise slackens as we pull in at
a drowsy joint called Maria Eleana's.
Her jukebox sings dobro and Hank
and an outfit called The Tuscaloosa Boys.
The intricate needlework on your boots
twinkles like pinpricks in black card
and the liquefaction
of your denim bolero
as it sidles to a blue-grass waltz
hits me over the heart like a high calibre round.
'Wake up, wake up,' you shook me,
'there's a tornado headed this way.'
And I saw that Satan's index finger
doodle devastation along the highway.
'Kansas this aint, Rose.' I explained,
'and there's no way home.'
'But we are home.'
Nom de Plume
The bunch of flowers in the vase, what are they called?
I'll call them Anstruthers for no other reason
than that. Someone has set them there
in a drastic pose, an attempt to let them impose
their one iridescence on the view. Those Anstruthers,
I know I'll recall them, their fine pointed petals like scalpels,
the way the powder and near-navy blues leak one into another
and the discreet green of their stiff stems and leaves.
I'll see them in my mind's eye (that odd concept
that always makes me feel like Cyclops) one day
shopping for toothpaste or maybe even doing something
quite mundane. I'll look at them in the plastic time
that holds such memoirs and long after the implacable in-rush
of others into the room, none of whom will say
'How beautiful the Anstruthers are, despite everything!'
I'll call them Anstruthers for no other reason
than that. Someone has set them there
in a drastic pose, an attempt to let them impose
their one iridescence on the view. Those Anstruthers,
I know I'll recall them, their fine pointed petals like scalpels,
the way the powder and near-navy blues leak one into another
and the discreet green of their stiff stems and leaves.
I'll see them in my mind's eye (that odd concept
that always makes me feel like Cyclops) one day
shopping for toothpaste or maybe even doing something
quite mundane. I'll look at them in the plastic time
that holds such memoirs and long after the implacable in-rush
of others into the room, none of whom will say
'How beautiful the Anstruthers are, despite everything!'
Impression
There you are in the headlights
on that January late-afternoon in the park.
You are on one leg scraping the dogshit
from your shoe, the collar of your big grey coat up
and leant back against the trunk of the plane tree
to steady yourself.
I have put on my lights so you can see
what you are doing.
You simply noticed the smell
and stepped back out of the car to remedy it
like a good mother must have done
many times with the kids.
These tender expertises are foreign to me.
How unlike the usual sort of date
where neither one of you wants to say anything
about those quotidian embarrassments;
I feel I could fart in front of you
and you would just say
Silly boy, or something wonderful.
I can't bear how beautiful you are there,
like a Degas ballerina,
still scraping, with the occasional grin
to let me know how you're getting on.
This picture at least, is all mine
and, for the moment, entirely licit--
look at your smile, doesn't it shine!--
and the evening is falling.
on that January late-afternoon in the park.
You are on one leg scraping the dogshit
from your shoe, the collar of your big grey coat up
and leant back against the trunk of the plane tree
to steady yourself.
I have put on my lights so you can see
what you are doing.
You simply noticed the smell
and stepped back out of the car to remedy it
like a good mother must have done
many times with the kids.
These tender expertises are foreign to me.
How unlike the usual sort of date
where neither one of you wants to say anything
about those quotidian embarrassments;
I feel I could fart in front of you
and you would just say
Silly boy, or something wonderful.
I can't bear how beautiful you are there,
like a Degas ballerina,
still scraping, with the occasional grin
to let me know how you're getting on.
This picture at least, is all mine
and, for the moment, entirely licit--
look at your smile, doesn't it shine!--
and the evening is falling.
Furthermore the Avenue
Furthermore the avenue recedes,
all the tables set out for le déjeuner,
tiny crabs are spots of cochineal on saffron rice,
their one pink day is going well so far.
Platters of sea bass, gambas and trinkling glass
do nothing but vie with the C-sharp of Lambrettas
that dopple off down the street to G.
Your features etch an outline in the noon UV,
your profile against the duck-egg blue sun blind— such a line!
Would you like more of the salade d'épinards we ordered? -
espèce de folie! espèce de grandeur de salade! - less is off the menu.
Vague clouds run their hands through their coiffure,
bring their lips together in a moue.
A look from you on this cours provençale,
a smile from you in this air - itself warmed with aromatic herbs -
a word from you could introduce a certain À propos
across the reticent white tablecloth.
The day turns, a turn of your head
and a glance along the avenue.
all the tables set out for le déjeuner,
tiny crabs are spots of cochineal on saffron rice,
their one pink day is going well so far.
Platters of sea bass, gambas and trinkling glass
do nothing but vie with the C-sharp of Lambrettas
that dopple off down the street to G.
Your features etch an outline in the noon UV,
your profile against the duck-egg blue sun blind— such a line!
Would you like more of the salade d'épinards we ordered? -
espèce de folie! espèce de grandeur de salade! - less is off the menu.
Vague clouds run their hands through their coiffure,
bring their lips together in a moue.
A look from you on this cours provençale,
a smile from you in this air - itself warmed with aromatic herbs -
a word from you could introduce a certain À propos
across the reticent white tablecloth.
The day turns, a turn of your head
and a glance along the avenue.
The Other Dozier
Two Hollands and one Dozier. But I have here
a faded promo bill that names a second Dozier:
Lamont's cousin Montal. He's the one
who had nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide
his systemic abreaction to soft gospel and pop discography,
who couldn't get a witness at any price, just couldn't take
the break of Soul or the ache of Tamla to that old heart of his,
like the one gun-shy Earp or the only flying Wallenda
with vertigo. Turns out he had a tin ear
for everything except irony,
so his lyrics all emerged as modern verse:
reworked tales of Bathsheba in a cool style that exploded
to no one, a murky, uncharted Petrarch,
while his cuz and his two best buds cruised the Detroit streets,
inside a petrol blue, stretch limousine
glazed with rain.
So much depends
on which ending you favour, which of the many
that may or may not have befallen this extra man
whose name was written in square brackets.
There's an old guy with a corner tobacco shop
who plays nothing but Rachmaninov and Mahler,
who'll tell you, if asked, yes, he does know
what the word Tamla actually means
and who the fifth Top was, or that he had a poem,
one time, published in the Midwest Express .
Of an autumn night he sits on a small balcony
high above the motor city--
the urban inversion, the gasoline wall of sound--
writing poems of loss to a Vandella.
a faded promo bill that names a second Dozier:
Lamont's cousin Montal. He's the one
who had nowhere to run to, nowhere to hide
his systemic abreaction to soft gospel and pop discography,
who couldn't get a witness at any price, just couldn't take
the break of Soul or the ache of Tamla to that old heart of his,
like the one gun-shy Earp or the only flying Wallenda
with vertigo. Turns out he had a tin ear
for everything except irony,
so his lyrics all emerged as modern verse:
reworked tales of Bathsheba in a cool style that exploded
to no one, a murky, uncharted Petrarch,
while his cuz and his two best buds cruised the Detroit streets,
inside a petrol blue, stretch limousine
glazed with rain.
So much depends
on which ending you favour, which of the many
that may or may not have befallen this extra man
whose name was written in square brackets.
There's an old guy with a corner tobacco shop
who plays nothing but Rachmaninov and Mahler,
who'll tell you, if asked, yes, he does know
what the word Tamla actually means
and who the fifth Top was, or that he had a poem,
one time, published in the Midwest Express .
Of an autumn night he sits on a small balcony
high above the motor city--
the urban inversion, the gasoline wall of sound--
writing poems of loss to a Vandella.
Breakages
There is a short film of Garbo,
somewhere in the reels and rushes
of preserved monochrome that no-one knows about,
somewhere in the last cabinet that Doctor Caligari
would ever look in, right at the back,
seared in black and white, in which, unawares,
she throws her shoulders into laughter, the sky goes dark
and all the glasses on the drinks table shatter to pieces.
I know this because I have seen the remake
as you look across at me when I say that you
could be a big-screen idol,
postmodern Ninotchka, and you laugh
with a laugh that could put broken glass back together,
if you wanted to, that is; I wish I'd never met you.
somewhere in the reels and rushes
of preserved monochrome that no-one knows about,
somewhere in the last cabinet that Doctor Caligari
would ever look in, right at the back,
seared in black and white, in which, unawares,
she throws her shoulders into laughter, the sky goes dark
and all the glasses on the drinks table shatter to pieces.
I know this because I have seen the remake
as you look across at me when I say that you
could be a big-screen idol,
postmodern Ninotchka, and you laugh
with a laugh that could put broken glass back together,
if you wanted to, that is; I wish I'd never met you.