Glasfryn Project

Click on the green page number to link to required page. Page 1 Editorial Fran Lock: With my Protecting Angels I Navigate Hell Pierre Joris: This Afternoon Dante Steph Goodger: Inferno Ellen Dillon: Seeking Dantist Allen Fisher: Proceeds in the Garden; after Dante Eléna Rivera: Speak Robert Hampson: Piazza dei Signori Philip Terry: Purgatorio Canto XI Beth Greenhalgh: Lethe Peter Hughes and David Rees: Let's Dantz   Page 2 David Annwn: Dantesserae Lee Duggan: from 'Navigation' David Rees Davies: for Dante montenegrofisher: Dragonflies Rebecca Chesney: To the Uncommitted Ian Brinton: Canto V of Inferno, plus Dante and Beckett Stephen Emmerson: circles Susan Adams: The Ha Ha Man Tom Jenks: Spiral Texts Penny Hallas: Elevator Robert...

Welcome to the Junction Box Dante 700th death-day edition. When I first mooted the idea of a special issue, I had an inkling that there might be a certain degree of interest, but I was genuinely surprised and delighted by the size of the response. Dante, it seems, is still news, still a living irradiative cultural cell, still exciting writers, artists, musicians, dancers. For me, re-reading the Divina Commedia and then re-re-reading it for the occasion, has been both a joy and an eye-opener. I'd forgotten how adhesive that narrative can be, how startling and at times electrifying the imagery, how often how cutting still the moral and ethical calculations (after a bit of temporal-cultural transposing), how relevant, how sane. When I say 'sane', I mean clear-eyed in its enumeration of the...

I well, i died, and how nearly early 2000s of me. virgil like some knowitall sat-nav says do not pass go. and what is death but a soft pink hell of my own mouthing. or the other thing, come to that. and yet, there i was, in the vulgate maundy midlife of things, astray from salvation, spending money i did not have on a splintery tea and dresses that would billow as i walked. a bad few years, or whatever that means. a leopard, a lion, and a she-wolf walk into a bar. that loser was ambient cancer and all over everything. the cats on the lean-to roof do a dead-eyed and ritual licking. lie down for an hour, turn on the bed like a tap: naked and futile, neutered and fake in eternal pursuit, the poets. when the big man started to speak, his face was a clock, stripped of its hands. II dead girl,...

This afternoon Dante will be ex- pelled from Florence — a good thing as how could he have written so well on the far-away imaginary ex- ile of the comically divine realms had he not known what it meant to walk over a cold January day’s ground frost, clod- breaking, heart beating, from one city to another — to come to this: that exile is but the next step you take the unknown there where your foot comes down next, in heaven or on earth exile is when you can still lift a foot exile is when you are not yet dead. Originally published in Barzakh (Poems 2000-2013), Black Widow Press, Boston 2014     Pierre Joris has moved between Europe, the US & North Africa for 55 years, publishing over 80 books of poetry, essays, translations & anthologies...

The Inferno is not an infinite realm, Dante is very clear about its geographical limits. Yet it is eternal, going around and around, producing, and sustaining its own energies, its fires and winds, its regions of boiling heat and freezing cold. The punishments themselves are based on eternal repetition. There is no peace, no hope, no rest. The Inferno has no exterior, no source of light apart from the burning of its many fires. What do we see in their flickering warmth? The green pastures of Limbo, the rivers, rocky paths, figures in the swirling winds, the deep red of boiling blood, the bright yellow of burning sand, a dark, dense wood, and the high walls of the City of Dis. Below Dis are torch-lit trenches, presided over by demon guardians, and finally, the cold tones of Lake...

To Read: Seeking Dantist   Ellen Dillon is a poet and teacher from Limerick. Her most recent book, Morsel May Sleep, was published by Sublunary Editions in June 2021, and Butter Intervention is forthcoming from Veer 2.  Other books and pamphlets include Heave(Smithereens Press, 2018), Sonnets to Malkmus (Sad Press, 2019), Achatina, achatina!  (2019, SoundEye Press) and Excavate (Poems after Pasolini) (2020, Oystercatcher Press). She also edited the Free Poetry Irish Anthology (Free Poetry, 2017) and her essays and reviews have appeared in Jacket 2, Zarf, Golden Handcuffs Review, Hix Eros and the Journal of British and Irish Innovative Poetry. She teaches English and French in a secondary school in south county Limerick.   Click here to go back to: Contributors...

Allen Fisher proceeds in the garden, after Dante’s Paradiso ix, xi & xvi, 2019-2021       ix       xi      xvi   The upper images are from watercolour, oil pastel, graphite and layered collage, 2021 The lower images are from watercolour, oil pastel, graphite and collage, 2019 These images will be the verso and recto pages of the book proceeds in the garden to be published in Spring 2022. The text across ix reads: the look suggested thoughts had passed elsewhere, returning to the wheel from the first a flat slick of water gives way to a muddy strandline at low tide The text across xi reads: the harmony between these two, their tenderness and care, their love,...

To read the poem: Speak   Eléna Rivera’s new book of poems, Epic Series, is just out from Shearsman Books. Her third full-length collection of poetry Scaffolding (2017) was published by Princeton University Press in the Princeton Series of Contemporary Poets. She received a National Endowment for the Arts Literature Fellowship in Translation and was a recent recipient of fellowships from MacDowell (2020), Trelex Paris Poetry Residency (2019) and the SHOEN Foundation (2016).   Click here to go back to: Contributors and Links to Pages 1 - 4  

(Top Dog 3) Piazza dei Signori   I think Beatrice has stood me up again blame the juice blame the hip-hop beat blame the bells of the Torre dei Lamberti never doubt my faith nor my mournful steadfastness the sentence of death set upon my exiled head the ladder that offered access to paradise the statue erected at mid night in the square these possible futures evaded or fulfilled the sick man changes his posture to ease his pain may misfortune befall all those who serve tyrants my lines are free why should all end at Ravenna a new life beckons the new world calls come hangmen come vultures tomorrow I’ll write my liturgy of love in the Chelsea Hotel   Robert Hampson was Professor of Modern Literature in the English Department at...

Lethe Says something Awaits response Recall, says something, you remember how it went…. ‘And then, start, and then,’ Laugh ‘And then,’ sigh ‘It’s sorta got these like two heads, two heads. And then…. Looked like…. Moving along, and erm, there was a chapel in the sky and all the trees are pointing in the same direction, guiding you home. Which is helpful…. You gotta remember to take a deep breath and just go with it It’s been a while…. And then… it like sorta turned to stone…. They all face the same way.’ Melodic notes match the tone of the river. Sharp glitches a fragmented reality of something that may have happened. “riverrun, past Eve and Adam's, from swerve of shore to bend of bay“… A moonlit journey on the banks of the Lethe -...

“Our first mover, who relates to another in a Way mirroring the relationship of father and child, Living as resident in the revolving spherical Shells in which, according to ancient Astronomy, the celestial bodies are set, Not forced by imposed stricture there to live But freely choosing so to reside because of your Undying affection for your first creation, those spiritual Beings usually depicted as being winged, Venerated be the phrase designating your person, Venerated the authority and influence you have Over others, by all created beings, for it is Appropriate to the situation to make an expression Of gratitude to your animating principle Inducing that one of the four basic taste sensations Typically triggered by sucrose. Let the state Of tranquillity of the...

  1 half way through a Leopardi rewrite David Rees came to me in a vision manning a mobile karaoke booth that featured sparkling astral projections of one Pan’s person after another in the lockdown lukewarm London night I nearly spilt my tsai in the abyss & spasmed to a Francoise Hardy song so I knew it was time to reload with Stone’s ginger wine & an Aldi speyside single malt loaf pressed against each ear then head along the path up through Braichmelyn (which certain locals say is not called that) emerge upon a gorse shelf in the sky     2 under the sign of the blue square halo the river of death jogs on I think it’s in E? most of the air we breathe is memory a picnic & swim on Ynys Llanddwyn a bit of Polish pork...