Review of Robbie Coburn’s The Foal in the Wire

This review originally appeared in the Brazen Head, July 2025.

Robbie Coburn’s The Foal in the Wire (Lothian, 2025, 121 pages) 

 

Set in rural Australia The Foal in the Wire is a book length narrative of short, individually titled poems. 

 

The story is told by Sam, an adolescent boy. One night he finds a foal caught in a barbed-wire fence. He and his neighbour’s daughter, Julia, save the injured animal. As they help it regain its health, they draw closer together. Sam’s parents’ marriage is falling apart; he’s bullied at school, and Julia’s father is an abusive drunk. Some things are resolved: some can’t be. 

 

Australia has a tradition of narrative poetry that shows how rich and varied the ‘verse novel’ can be. The three best known, Dorothy Porter’s The Monkey’s Mask, Les Murray’s Fredy Neptune, and Alan Wearne’s The Lovemakers, demonstrate different ways a writer could approach ‘narrative verse’. They are all book-length stories, their lines don’t go all the way to the right margin, and they are marketed as poetry. Their differences are greater than these similarities. Porter’s narrator, Jill, is the literary granddaughter of Raymond Chandler’s Philip Marlowe. Told as a sequence of short, free verse poems, Porter’s lines and images create a modern, laconic private eye. Fredy Neptune is a masterclass in controlled rhythm, and the story, progressing through tightly controlled eight-line stanzas, reads like a picaresque novel. Wearne’s The Lovemakers, with its huge cast of characters, written in a variety of verse forms, reads like nothing and no one else and at 800 pages is one of the longest verse narratives.

 

At the same time, staying in Australia, there’s a tradition of verse novels aimed at what is now described as the Young Adult market. Pioneered by writers like Steven Herrick, whose A Place Like This still reads well after thirty years, these books range from Herrick’s teenagers trying to find their place in modern Australia to work as different in both form and content as the dystopian science fiction of Lisa Jacobsen’s The Sunlit Zone.[i]

 

The Foal in the Wire, aimed at the YA market, sits comfortably in such company. It would make an excellent short story. The question anyone writing narrative poetry is forced to confront, sooner or later, is why not write the story in prose? Part of the answer, as suggested above, is that there is a range of techniques for organising words and creating effects with words which are available to someone writing verse.

 

Coburn has chosen to make little use of those resources. If organised sound is the essential characteristic of poetry, there’s little poetry in the book.

 

The Foal in the Wire opens:

 

As I run down the veranda steps
in the dark

I can still hear them screaming
at each other
inside the house.

 

he doesn’t love her
and she doesn’t love him
but they stay. 

                                    ‘Foal’

 

Read aloud, I can’t hear a significant difference if the lines were written out as prose. 

 

As I run down the veranda steps in the dark, I can still hear them screaming at each other inside the house. he doesn’t love her and she doesn’t love him but they stay.[ii]

 

It is very popular stye of verse. The internet is awash with poets who write declarative sentences chopped into short lines. Some of them have had astonishing commercial success.[iii] For anyone brought up on this kind of poetry, and that includes many of the current YA market accessing poetry outside of school, Coburn’s style is going to be immediately familiar and comfortable.

 

In short poems, the style has very little to commend it. It sounds like a clumsy effort to plunk ‘Three Blind Mice’ on a Stradivarius which has recently been used by a virtuoso to play Bach’s Solo Partitas for violin.

 

However, as Coburn’s poem in the Brazen Head for Spring 2025 suggest, style here is a choice, a balancing of possible loss and gain, and such a plain style has definite advantages when used to write narrative verse.  

 

No one speaks in poetry but it’s easy to imagine someone telling this story. If Sam were speaking in iambic pentameter or tightly controlled Spenserian stanzas, littering his story with clever literary allusions, he would not sound like a lost teenager in rural Australia.[iv]

 

The other major advantage is pace. The story moves with the inevitability of a folk tale or a parable. Like a folk tale it can deal with cruelty and loss without romanticising or sensationalising either.  

 

Like a folk tale there is a characteristic blend of the general and the specific. Small details give the story credibility while there is an absence of details that would identify where and when the story takes place. The Foal in the Wire  is located somewhere in rural Australia, on two properties that run horses. There is little to fix when the story happens. Having moved away, Julia writes a letter and sends it through the post. Although she and Sam take the bus to school, they don’t use computers or phones to communicate.[v]

 

Balanced against this is a careful use of detail making the story believable :

 

Sam sneaking out at night:

 

making sure to stay on the clover

lining the sides of the path

to avoid the potholes and depressions

left in the ground by horses.

                                                      (‘Furtive’)

 

tells us he’s done this many times. Both children, having watched their fathers, know how to help the foal. 

 

Julia has bought another bottle of formula

and I have a bundle of hay

I gathered

from inside the shed.

 

dad won’t notice.

whenever hay is lifted

stalks fall from the bale

and gather on the floor. 

                                    ‘Waiting’

 

Style allows the story to become its own metaphor. The foal is both a particular foal, and a symbol of those who are damaged and survive. None of this needs to be underlined or emphasised. 

 

It would be a brave writer, especially in a first book, who trusted the reader enough to let the story do all the work. And ‘story’ isn’t everything. The book has a therapeutic potential. It’s offering its readers a realistic message of hope. Coburn occasionally gives those readers a gentle nudge towards the preferred reading as the narrative unfolds but comes close to labouring the point at the end. 

 

The story ends at ‘After’, which concludes:

 

I want to write down everything

about my brother and Julia and the foal

 

I am no longer ashamed of who I am

and where I come from.

 

I can hold on and be anyone.

 

Two poems follow and both make the same point without adding to the story. The last piece, ‘Wounded Animal’ ends: 

 

Maybe this 

scarred and haunted body 

is enough--

 

the wounded animal

is capable of survival. 

 

If this seems to be restating what was already obvious, it is in keeping with the narrator’s character in a book aimed at adolescent readers and dedicated ‘for those who are wounded and surviving’. 

 

There is a contemporary tendency to read poetry through the life of the writer. To claim that the writing is ‘authentic’, ‘raw’[vi] or ‘based on experience’, can set up a defence which  frames any criticism as cruel, irrelevant or a personal attack on the writer.[vii]

 

But as made art, published and offered to strangers, what should matter is the quality of the product. No matter how intense the experience, or the emotion it engenders, once it’s written down and offered to a stranger, it is an unpleasant fact that even trauma is a cliché of life and literature. The more literate the reader, the greater the chance they’ve read versions of this story before. As humans we sympathise with people who suffer, but readers deserve something more for their money than a stranger telling them how bad their life was. 

 

In the wrong hands The Foal in the Wire would be a string of YA Fiction cliches: a family disintegrating after the death of a child, a narrator lost, isolated, contemplating suicide, bullied at school; first love; first sexual experience; a drunk abusive father; some form of reconciliation. 

 

What is therefore most impressive about Coburn’s handling of his material is that at no stage does his book read like a string of clichés. ‘First Time’ is that rare piece of writing, a description of a first sexual encounter that doesn’t sound coy, crude or clinical. It manages to capture the baffling nature of the experience:

 

like holding a body

and cradling a ghost

at the same time. 

 

Bunting’s injunction: ‘Emotions first- but only facts in the poem’ might be too austere for a modern audience, but Coburn’s book comes close. There is no self-pity, no attempts to exaggerate the horror of the situation and no unrealistic Hollywood ending in which everything is made good and Sam and Julia live happily ever after, running their  own shelter for abused horses.  

 

Whether or not the story is based on lived experience, Coburn’s triumph is to make it believable.

 

---

[i] The list of book length narratives could be extended, but these five examples give some idea of their variety. Verse novel is no more a genre than prose novel. 

[ii] This review was written with an uncorrected proof copy so quotations may vary in the final, published version. In the version I used sentences within poems consistently begin without a capital letter.

[iii] Why readers buy books containing poems they themselves could have written while they were still at high school is one of life’s mysteries. 

[iv] This is not to suggest that there are no literary teenagers in rural Australia. One of the criticisms levelled against Fredy Neptune was that its central character was too eloquent. 

[v] There are possible reasons for a lack of phones and computers but their absence adds to the effect.

[vi] Although it seems I’m in the minority, ‘raw’, when applied to writing, is not a compliment. It suggests a lazy chef slapping uncooked food on the diners’ plates and leaving them to do his or her job. 

[vii] The other version of this is to dismiss the writing without reading it because ‘everyone knows’ the writer is guilty of unacceptable behaviour, beliefs or opinions. Both popular extremes tend to ignore the actual writing.

Shackleton's Grave (A WIsh) Poems I have written #8

Shackleton’s Grave

(A Wish)

 

There will be peace and an end to traveling,

the colour of ocean under a polar sky,

solid as mountains, to bear the brunt

of storms that can no longer trouble

the sleeper in the wind-raked earth.

Time will be glacial, patient as icebergs 

where no rumours whisper, no duty calls,

the strong heartbeat of spring and its flowers:

the tides’ turn, the snow’s fall.

This poem ends Rough Spun to Close Weave which is still available on line. Further samples and signed copies from www.Liamguilar.com. 

The Haunting of Borley rectory. The story of a ghost story by Sean O'Connor.

 

The Haunting of Borley rectory. The story of a ghost story by Sean O'Connor.

In my tattered, because old and much read, ‘Folklore Myths and Legends of Britian’ (Reader's Digest 1973) , Borley rectory has its own substantial entry under the title: ‘The most Haunted house in England’. With a half page picture of the building ablaze, and a small reproduction of the ‘Ghostly writings’ that appeared on the walls, the entry relates the ghostly goings on and after a description of the fire at the Rectory, and the burial of some bones found there, ends ‘the nun is still occasionally glimpsed near the site of the rectory and Borley churchyard’. 

 

Sean O’Connor’s book tells the story of this story, which is far more interesting than that entry suggests. Because he doesn’t just relate the odd goings on at the rectory but traces the lives of those involved, he offers a perhaps unintentional insight into just how difficult it is for anyone to establish ‘the truth’, either in retrospect while writing a book, or while living through the events the book describes.

 

Borley rectory achieved its notoriety in the years between the First and Second World Wars. As O’Connor notes, in England at the time, most old houses had their ghosts. The 19^th century is the great age of the literary ghost story and Borley had a dead nun and a ghostly carriage. When the rector, Eric Smith and his wife called in Harry Price in 1929, ‘poltergeist’ activity suddenly became violent. The story became sensational news, and the rectory almost immediately became a target for sightseers. 

 

As this book proves, what made Borley famous was not so much its ghostly occupants but a strange tangle of intriguing characters, who might have had different reasons for publicising or even faking the hauntings; local tensions; underlying racism and conservatism; complicated tangles of professional jealousy, and showmanship bordering on fraud.

 

O'Conner deftly contextualises the story, implying that whatever happened at the Rectory, this story gained the attention it did, because of when it happened.

 

 

While O'Connor leads the reader through the story, something has gone missing. It's the story of a story. But was Harry Price, Ghost Hunter, a fraud?  Or was his reputation tarnished by those who resented his success? Were successive rectors and their wives manipulating local stories for their own ends? Were the locals playing tricks on the rectors to get rid of them. Was there ever a nun, let alone her ghost? 

 

By the time the book reached the 'Afterword' I expected O'Connor to offer his opinion. He’s raised all these issues. Instead, he tries to be impartial and even handed. A little this, a little that, possibly some of the other.  

 

This is probably inevitable, but it is ironic.  

 

As O’Connor’s narrative details, the end of the 19th century saw a rise in 'spiritualism' in Britain. During and after the mass slaughter of the ‘Great War’, interest in Spiritual Mediums seemed almost inevitable. At the same time, between the wars, there was a growing attempt to put ‘psychical research’ on to a scientific footing. Humans had believed in an afterlife for centuries. If the reality of ghosts and poltergeists could be scientifically proven, then they were indisputable proof that there was some kind of existence after the body had died.

 

As O'Connor makes clear, Borley rectory was a test case for ‘the scientific method’. Price had made a name for himself ‘debunking’ fake mediums. If the hauntings at Borley could be documented and analysed; if human fraud could be ruled out; if Facts could be established, then the findings would be beyond dispute.

 

However, for the scientific method to work, the question ‘Do Ghosts Exist’ must be a binary proposition. As O’Connor’s narrative amply demonstrates, it could never be.

 

If you wanted practical examples of the idea that  the observer affects the observation, or knowing about the observer undermines the observation, this book is full of them. O’Connor’s biographical approach casts doubt on the reliability and objectivity of almost everyone in the book.  

 

The chapter devoted to details of Marianne Foyster's life after she left Borley, doesn't add anything. She was the wife of the second Rector in the story, and their relationship was strange by anyone's standard. Price initially thought she was guilty of faking the phenomena. She insisted she wasn't. Knowing how many men she had sex with or how many children she adopted and passed off as her own to snare lovers and husbands, doesn’t prove either right. Her story is strange, it undermines her credibility as a witness, just as Price’s biography undermines his, but it doesn’t solve the argument either way.  

 

Price, the man who did more than anything to make Borley famous was accused of faking some of the ‘Poltergeist’ activity. His biography, as presented here, details his desire for applause and recognition, and an early attempt at fame based on forgery. By the time his story arrives at the rectory, he has been portrayed as an unreliable attention seeker.  He was guilty of fudging details to make his books more interesting. He made claims he knew to be false. His scientific methods simply were not very ‘scientific'. Where there were rational, mundane explanations for almost everything he ignored these in his published work. But does any of that mean there were no unexplained phenomena at Borley?

In a fictional ghost story the unreliable characters or the unreliable narrator might undermine the credibility of the narrative. But the effect, in real life, is less clear cut. Does someone with a history of lying never tell the truth? 

 

So was Borley rectory haunted? If you want an answer to that question, then this book will not provide it. It can’t. It will tell you who thought it was, and who doubted. It does tell a fascinating story about the characters involved and demonstrates how untidy, inconsistent, and irrational people are.   With their own ambitions, needs and desires, ranging here from the mundane to the extra ordinary, they can’t be reduced to the simplicities of fiction that would bring the story to a satisfying close.  

1217 The battles that Saved England by Catherine Hanley A review of sorts

1217 The Battles that Saved England. By Catherine Hanley. Osprey 2024

 

1217 tells the story of a siege and two battles; one on land, one on sea, that ‘saved England’.  As a story it has a great plot and a fascinating cast of characters. But while Hanley writes with the skill of a novelist, her story is true and grounded in a careful use of the available sources.  

 

Background.

 

By 1215 King John and his barons were at an impasse. He had been forced to concede what later became known as Magna Carta, but he had placed England in the hands of the Pope. In a radical about face, the Pope moved from excommunicating John and putting England under Interdict, to declaring the Charter null and void and threatening to excommunicate anyone who rebelled against the rightful King.  In response some of the barons invited Louis, the son of the French King, Phillip Augustus, to become the King of England. 

 

The first French contingent landed in December 1215. Louis set sail with a small invasion fleet in 1216, landed unopposed in May, and was proclaimed King of England on the second of June 1216. Proclaimed, but not crowned. Hanley suggests this was a crucial error while accepting that as an excommunicate he couldn’t take part in a church service.

 

John died in October 1216.  Hanley sees this as the best thing he could have done to help his cause. To anyone placing bets it looked like the Angevins were finished. Large parts of the country were in rebel hands and John’s son, Henry, only nine years old, and surrounded by a shrinking group of royalists. However, while John had often seemed to go out of his way to alienate everyone, Henry was surrounded by a small group of exceptionally capable men. Their acknowledged leader was William the Marshall, ‘Europe’s greatest Knight’. His loyalty to the royal family was both famous and so unshakeable that it could be described as pathological. 

 

 

1217

Hanley tells the story of how those loyal to Henry  staged an improbable military comeback to insure that an Angevin King would stay on the English throne. It is far more entertaining and interesting story than most fictional ones set in the Middle Ages.

 

How much was at stake in 1217 is hard to see in retrospect. For the 90 percent of the population living below the nobility, would it have mattered if a French (Capetian) or a French (Angevin) king were ruling them? 

 

However, Hanley presents the events as crucial in the development of a sense of Englishness. She frames the sea battle off Sandwich as an English fleet defending England against a French invasion. The defeat of the French fleet is compared to the later, more well-known destruction of the Spanish Armada, with Hanley arguing the latter was of lesser consequence.  Hanley also suggests that throughout the war there is a definite shift towards a sense of ‘England vs France’. 

 

At the time, however, nationality might not have played a decisive role: it may have seemed clear cut. Henry was the King’s son. The royalists risked everything and stood by him.

 

Not all the rebels stood by Louis. As the war went on there was significant wavering in their ranks. This may have had little to do with nationalism either. Men who had hated John had no reason to hate his infant son and if successful Louis would be obliged to reward his French followers, but at whose expense? 

 

Hanley has a healthy scepticism about some of the leading players. Without denying the Marshall’s role in the war, she acknowledges his failure to protect the citizens of Lincoln and notes his acquisitiveness.  The Marshall’s flattering biography is one of the chief sources for the period: Hanley avoids both uncritical acceptance and uncritical dismissal. 

 

Likewise, while acknowledging Hubert de Burgh’s essential role in the defence of Dover, her description of his actions at the battle of Sandwich, often claimed as his great victory, doesn’t make his participation a deciding factor in the battle.

 

IF 1217 has a great plot, it also has an outstanding cast. At the centre, though missing from the action for obvious reasons, is Henry III, a nine-year-old boy whose father was disliked by almost everybody, overwhelmed by his coronation. William the Marshall, ‘Europe’s greatest knight’, who at 70 was given the task of regent and the job of saving the Angevin line, enthusiastically charging into battle at Lincoln. Eustace the Monk, renegade pirate who had turned his coat so many times no one knew which was inside or out anymore, leading Louis’ fleet. Wilkin of the Weald, a commoner who led a ‘guerilla’ war against the French; Blanche of Castille, Louis’ wife who could be described as formidable without any exaggeration.

 

Hanley’s contribution to the story is to bring others into the limelight. Phillip D’Albini, who may have been as responsible for victory at the battle of Sandwich as De Burgh. Nichola de la Haye, who in her sixties held Lincoln for the Royalists, held her nerve throughout the siege, and was rewarded by being removed from her post so William Longespee, who had swapped sides during the war, could be rewarded. Hanley describes the regency’s treatment of Nicola as ‘one of the most astonishing acts of ingratitude imaginable’ but adds in a footnote that it was Nicola who ‘had the last laugh’. 

 

If one of the advantages of a book like this is it gives 254 pages to events that are covered in one paragraph of David Carpenter’s biography of Henry the Third, some characters still seem inscrutable. 

 

Louis is a shadow in the narrative. His father had refused the military and financial support that would have given him a formidable invasion force. His campaign stalled first in front of Dover Castle, and then came to a halt when, after the defeat of his army at Lincoln, the reinforcements sent by his wife, Blanche, were destroyed off Sandwich. He wasn’t present at either of the two decisive battles. Hanley’s narrative suggests one of the contributing factors to the French defeats was that no one seems to have been in overall command at crucial times.

 

Floating through this, as invisible as usual, is Isabella of Angouleme. John’s marriage to her in 1200 had been politically disastrous. In 1207 she had given birth to John’s first legitimate child, Henry, and had then given birth to three more children.  She was offered no part in the regency. This seems strange but so was her response. She returned to France at the end of 1217, leaving her son a crowned King, but a child surrounded by advisors. 

 

Because of the limitations of the evidence, there are always questions that will never be answered, but the book also shows history as a series of accidents. Dover did not fall to Louis because it was a strong fortification held by a commander who held his nerve and Louis didn’t have the manpower he needed. But the battle of Lincoln was lost by the French when an inexperienced commander miscounted the oncoming royalists and instead of going out to meet them, where superior French numbers might have won the day, decided to stay inside the city walls. There’s also the secret entrance no one seems to have noticed which would be considered a unacceptable flaw in a fictional account. If the wind had been in the right direction when the French relief fleet originally sailed, then the English would have struggled to meet it, and the reinforcements might have landed. If …

 

1217 surprised me. I don’t like writers who use the first-person plural. Although it used to be common in factual writing it has become corrupted by politicians using it as an invidious positioning technique. But Hanley returns it to its courteous usage. Her style is that of a well-informed, capable guide, and while the tour goes round the usual places, she paces it carefully and stops to provide useful background information. She is very clear in her discussion of the sources. 

 

Books about the Middle Ages that focus on battles tend to misrepresent the period. There’s so much more to Edward III’s reign than Sluys, Crecy, Poitiers and deeds of daring do, but in this case the siege/s of Dover castle, the battle of Lincoln, and the sea battle off Sandwich are crucial events in a pivotal year.  There are times history swings on a hinge and at the end of 1216 a King of France on the throne of England was a distinct possibility. 1217 as a date would then have had had the same prominence in collective memory as 1066. Hanley’s excellent book, ironically, explains why this isn’t so.   

 

 

Peeping Tom to Lady Godiva. Poems I have written #7

Peeping Tom to Lady G. 

Why should I not desire to hold you in the dark? 

To trace, moon lit, the line from shoulder down to hip,

to leave my lonely fears behind, 

a winter coat now summer’s here.

 

Why should I not desire to make you smile

for me, and me alone; to see you naked,

taste the salt truth of your beauty, 

share your body’s unembarrassed joy.

 

Why should I not desire to know your secret heart:

the self you run from in the name of duty? 

Oh lady, with all reverence,

why should I not desire to hold you in the dark? 

----

From Lady Godiva and Me. Copies of the second edition are available from Lulu.com https://www.lulu.com/shop/liam-guilar/lady-godiva-and-me/paperback/product-14qg5qqv.html?q=lady+godiva+and+me&page=1&pageSize=4

signed copies from www.liamguilar.com

Lady Godiva and Me was originally published by five arches press in England. The second edition was published in Australia. 

Gwydion and Uther's stories. from The Fabled Third

 

Gwydion the storyteller 

steps into a version of himself.

The smoky hall lined with iron men,

bright, shiny, awkward,

dreaming a glorious future: 

fame in battle, marriage 

their own estates and children. 

Or rusting to the benches. 

Bent, battle scratched, 

stale veterans going sour 

watching their time leaking away 

like spilt ale down a long hill, 

no longer believing in a future, 

their chances fading like their hair. 

Don’t patronise them.

We are born into stories we did not write.

Happy the men and women at home in theirs.

 

Uther Pendragon, at the high table,

surrounded by his court officials,

attendant lords, and a woman 

with hair the colour of midnight in a cave

laughing with the man beside her.

 

Uther comes towards him,

with the shambling swagger

of a horseman after an epic ride,

shouldering his way through an imagined crowd.

He stops in front of Gwydion,

toe to toe, inspecting him. 

‘I need a bard. Heard you’re good.

Had the last one thrown off the roof.’

 

He smiles, his head to one side,

‘I like that. You didn’t ask me why.

Because you know I’m going to tell you.

He told a story about the House of Brutus,

how The Thin Man had my father killed

then manipulated my brother’s bodyguard

into killing him as well.’[1]

 

He turns towards the muttering faces. 

They’ve all heard that story.

‘Well that’s utter bollocks init.‘[2]

His hands throwing words across the room.

‘A disgruntled servant knifed my dad.

I made enquiries.’ Four syllables, loitering

unpleasantly. Something to be avoided. 

 

‘I fought with Huns. I mean with them 

and against them. Allans, Goths, Lombards. 

I know tribal warriors. These aren’t Romans

who switch loyalties faster than you refill your cups.

It would take some kind of deviant Christ

to pull that miracle; to make 

a tribesman turn on his ring giver.’[3]

 

He saunters back to Gwydion.

‘My court needs a bard. Tell me three stories: 

one now, here, for the drinkers at the benches;

one for my officers in my room;

one for my lady in her chamber. 

Job’s yours if they’re good. If they ain’t, 

we’ll throw you off the roof 

for claiming to be someone you’re not.’ 

 

The storyteller bows. 

 

‘But first, I’ll tell you one.’

 

The drinkers at the benches settle.

The night loses its edge.

Pendragon, chief of warriors;

they admire, respect, adore

although he terrifies them all.[4]

 

‘My brother, the King of Britain,

by right of conquest and inheritance,

decided the British Lords

who’d died on Salisbury plain

deserved a fitting monument.

 

So he holds a great council,

and everyone chips in. 

 

Like all councils, no one can agree.

 

Merlin walks in. The fiend himself.

I’ll get you a monument, he says.

It will stand for eternity.

 

Where is it, asks my brother.

In Ireland, says Merlin 

and we all laughed at him.

 

Except the king, who sends me,

with an army, to get this Giant’s Ring.

The locals pissed themselves 

when they heard why we’d arrived.

They thought it was the best joke, ever.

So we taught them not to laugh at us

and finally arrived on this god-forsaken,

wind-raked hill in the middle of a great green nowhere.

There’s stones. Huge, upright stones.

And we just stood and stared at them.

 

Try moving them, says Merlin.

We dug and pulled and pushed all day. 

The stones stayed put.

Then Merlin mumbles some words 

and did that thing with his hands,

like he’s tying knots in the air.

 

Try now, he says, so to humour him, 

we pushed a stone, and it fell over.

Stone turned to feather!

We hauled them to the coast,

watched by the astonished locals,

then sailed and dragged them

all the way to where you see them now.

A monument to British lords

slaughtered by Hengist and their own stupidity.

 

Now,’ he says to Gwydion, ‘top that.’

 

 

3

 

 

He will not try, 

not knowing how Uther may react

to being beaten here, in this game. 

They will not ask, why this story?

He can only throw the pebble in the pond

He can’t predict how far the ripples run. 

 

‘After The Great Slaughter,[5]

when the tribes were broken 

and the Great Queen died in despair, 

a prince was struggling home. 

 

He’d lost his weapons, 

retainers and horse.

Hadn’t eaten for days.

He stumbled along the valleys,

staggering up and over the hills.

His life could only get worse. 

 

He knows the Romans will steal his cattle 

burn his farm, enslave his kin.

If he gets home, he can’t stop them;

if they find him there, they’ll kill him.

But he keeps on: beaten, not broken.‘

 

Rumbling approval betrays their interest.

Been there; done that.

 

‘It was a dark night, no moon, no stars,

and he’s stumbling along through the trees 

in the valley below Maen Llwyd. 

At the point where the path forks,

he sees in front of him a darkness, 

darker than darkness, and as he watches 

it grows even darker, a shimmering shimmering, 

and the Devil on horseback blocking his path.

 

Down on your luck warrior?

No luck left to be down on. 

Well, says the Devil, 

offering him bread from his bag,

 

I do deals on nights like this, 

with desperate men like you. 

I have nothing to bargain with says our man.

But my friend, says the devil, you do.

 

Seven good years without effort or pain,

safe from your enemy’s eyes, 

wife and children growing old 

with the comforts that money can buy.

 

At the end of those years, 

bring a beast from your farm, 

if I name it, you serve me in hell.

if I can’t, you won’t be harmed, 

and you’ll have been richer as well.’ 

 

He pauses, to let them consider 

if they’d take such an offer.

Even if the devil speaks English

how could he lose?

 

Seven years of pleasure

for an eternity in hell?

The muttering subsides.

They’re waiting to see 

what this warrior will choose. 

 

‘He’d seen the sacred groves in flames.

The druids and their people slaughtered,

the tribes broken on that red, Roman line.

How could Hell be any worse? 

 

So he agreed. Home to his wife. 

They watched the Roman army trooping past. 

 

Seven years to the day, as the sun was setting, 

he said goodbye to his daughters and sons.

What’s ails you husband, have you gone mad?  

She nagged him ‘til he confessed what he’d done. 

 

What an idiot’s bet, but leave it to me,  

the Devil’s a man and men can be fooled.

Put your life in the hands of God and your wife

as every sane husband should do.

 

Bring me bird lime, as much as we’ve got 

and the feathers we pulled from the birds. 

 

Stripped naked, they smeared her with stickiness 

‘til she was covered from navel to head. 

Then she tipped out the feathers all over the floor 

and she rolled and she rolled ‘til she’d covered herself.

Now lead me to your devil with a halter round my neck.

 

At the place where the path splits

the Devil was waiting, 

a gloating darkness. 

He looked at the beast: 

a daughter of Eve 

from her navel on down, 

but the strangest of fowl 

from her navel on up.

 

By my tail, he said, what a terrible sight!

What perverted mating produced such a bird?
I'll be damned if I know what it is. 

Thank you. I’ll take it to hell.

 

That wasn’t our deal!

 

What I said, and I quote:

If I name it, you serve me in hell.

If I can’t, you won’t be harmed, 

and you’ll have been richer as well. 

 

I didn’t mention the beast.

Or your family. Or your farm. 

She’ll make a fine addition 

to the freak shows of hell.

 

The halter was gone from his hand.

 

That sound on the breeze?

It’s my favourite tune.

A Roman patrol, 

with your daughters and sons.

 

Before he could scream, 

take me instead,

he was alone on the road

with the flames of his farm

lighting the way home.’

 

After the silence that followed

Uther is calling his name.

‘This ring is yours.

If the other two are as good

I will be honoured to have you as my bard.’

 

‘My Lord is very generous. 

It would be my honour to serve,

if, at the end of my service,

you will grant me one request.’

 

‘As long as it is in my power,

does not diminish that power,

compromise my honour

or endanger my life or those near to me. 

And that is my promise 

in the hearing of these witnesses.’

 

He can only throw pebbles in the pond.

 

The Fabled Third is published by Shearman and available from online booksellers. Samples, background information and signed copies can be found at www.liamguilar.com

Clicking on the link will open a new window, 

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[1] The Thin Man is Vortigern. 

[2] Geoffrey, Wace and Laȝamon narrate the murder of Uther’s father by a disgruntled servant. Pages or lines later, all three have Aurelius state, as a fact, that Vortigern murdered him. 

[3] Throughout this book, Uther’s knowledge of late Imperial history is ‘uneven’ by modern standards. He also seems to know some stray facts and sayings from earlier Greek and Persian times.  

[4] Geoffrey of Monmouth seems to have misunderstood Pendragon and linked the name to a dragon banner made in imitation of a comet. It’s more likely that Pendragon meant chief or first warrior. The story Uther tells is Geoffrey’s explanation of how and why Stonehenge was built. 

[5] This story was suggested by Martin Carthy’s singing of ‘The Devil and the feathery wife’. I’ve changed everything except the terms of the deal and the wife’s solution. The ‘Great Slaughter’: defeat of Boudica’s rebellion at least four hundred years before this story takes place.

Testimony of one of Sir John Franklin's Officers. Poems I've written #6

 

Testimony of One of Sir John Franklin’s Officers.

 

When I was a child I was promised the ocean:
a trip to the coast, so we rode down to Hastings.
The clouds sagged like a dirty tarpaulin. 
The waves rattled the shingle. The sun 
bradawled a hole though drifting grays
to spotlight the place where sea became sky.

Nanny’s screams were baffled by the wind
but shifting pebbles under stubby legs 
betrayed me to strong hands before the water’s edge. 
Not safe, not saved, restrained. Returned 
to Nanny where I howled. Her voice: 
You big girl’s blouse: big boys don’t cry.

I have forgotten much; first this, first that;
things I should remember. But I do not forget
the sea and the sky and the line where they met;
or that need to stand where the light fell
and peer over the edge of the world. 

 

Franklin and his quest for the North West Passage fascinated me for years. At one time I was seriously considering following his first overland trip down the Coppermine river to the Arctic Ocean.  I began writing a version of the story which I never finished. This surviving piece, which is obviously fictitious, was published in an Anthology of Australian poetry by Bonfire books. 

'Just once' and 'The decorator admires his predecessor's work' Poems I have written #5

 

Just Once.

 

On winter evenings coming home,

the fire was my concern.

If it were dead

I’d have to bring it back to life

before my dad’s return.

 

Often the process failed.

The paper burned the wood, 

the coke refused to catch.

By the third attempt, 

I knew it was no good.

 

The doorbell and the sound of shoes

scraping on the mat. He’d see 

me on my knees, the rubbish in the grate: 

You put the kettle on.

Leave this to me. 

 

I’d watch him do what I had done

and see the flame, promisingly frail

grow 'til the coke was glowing as it should. 

Just once. Just once

I’d pray, while making tea

just once, please, let him fail. 

The Decorator Admires His Predecessor’s Work

 

That’s genius that is. You won’t find many

can do that today. Do what, she asked

wanting the old fashioned wall paper removed.

Craftsmanship. The man who hung that paper

knew his trade. Worked for the thrill of a job

done well. Proud of a skill that proved itself

when no one noticed it. Me, I would give

anything to be that good.  And

 

how long will it take you? Years, Missus.

Study, practice, victories, defeats. This job.

Sorry. Two days. First we strip his work

pull down that old stuff, slap on undercoat

than wallop on the paint you chose last night.

I’d like to take the time to do it right,

then both of us could…By the hour?

Quick, Slick and Outta Here. That’s me.

Whoever hung this paper loved his work.

 

 

Both poems  are from Rough Spun To Close Weave, (Ginninderra press 2012).  Signed copies available from www.liamguilar.com