Spine Volume One : Issue One

 

Welcome

 

For the first issue, Spine is delighted to present work from three new British writers Stephen Emmerson, Chris Stephenson and Alison Faulds and also new, exclusive and previously unpublished work from Dan Fante and August Kleinzahler.

 

 

Stephen Emmerson

 

Stephen Emmerson's  work has most recently been published in Great Works, Poetry Salzburg Review, and Jacket. He worked with Michelle Scally Clarke on her last album She Is which was published by Route  alongside a book of the same name.

Stephen has worked as a cook, a chef, a picture framer, a labourer, a soldier, a welders mate, a telesales ‘executive’, a customer service rep, a door to door salesman, an order picker, an admin assistant, and a receptionist. He has also worked at an abattoir, a recycling plant, and a bottle factory.

 

 

Chris Stephenson

 

Chris Stephenson lives in Leeds where he works on most of his poems on the bus everyday to and from work, using his mobile phone. Recently he has been unable to work out whether to laugh or cry.
 
He is influenced by all sorts but especially Charles Bukowski, Raymond Carver, William Burroughs, a few scandalous Zen monks, Bill Hicks, Derek and Clive, Oasis, The Stone Roses, The Verve, late nights listening to Thelonious Monk with the rain on the window and Everton Football Club.
 
One day he would love to hit the road and travel across America north to south, coast to coast, discover an undiscovered Rimbaud manuscript in a trunk somewhere, and he hopes that sooner, rather than later, he will get the chance to escape again to that cabin, by that lake, in that forest not too far from Helsinki.

 

Alison Faulds

 

 

Alison Faulds lives on a high and windy hill with the Badgers and the Hares and the Owls.

She once nursed a female Yellowhammer back to life after it had been hit by a car.

 

 

 

Dan Fante

 

Dan Fante is from Los Angeles  and is the son of the author John Fante, the legendary novelist who Charles Bukowski came across one day in the L.A. public library and would later, in the preface to the novel Ask The Dust, declare “Fante was my God!”

 

If you haven’t come across Dan Fante before you are in for a treat.

 

Booze filled binges, blackouts, cheap motel room rage and madness…biting humour, anger and sadness, blazing hot cab ride confessionals, the pain of loss…

 

...this is life with all the mistakes left in...

 

…writing that is according to Uncut Magazine “a violent lyrical blizzard”

 

...and for a taster of some of the most heartfelt, searing, honest, purgatory bound, rollercoaster ride writing through the dirty underbelly of American life check out the exclusive poems from new collection 'Kissed By A Fat Waitress'.

 

After that it should be pretty self explanatory, we can’t thank him enough, and it’s quite simple! Follow the links, get Fante added to your collection and check back here again soon for more poems.

 

 

 

August Kleinzahler

 

 

August Kleinzahler was born in Jersey City, New Jersey, but has lived in San Francisco, California, for over twenty years.

 

He has received honours for his writing from the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation (1989), the Lila Acheson-Reader’s Digest Award for Poetry (1991), and an Academy Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters (1996). In 2000 he was awarded a Berlin Prize Fellowship and in 2004 he was awarded the Griffin Prize.

 

Richard Wilbur writes that 'The most dazzling thing about Kleinzahler’s writing is the way his diction successfully combines slang, highfalutin words, mimicry, technical terms and plain talk, in such a way as to play the whole instrument of speech',

 

Kleinzahler’s subject range is vast and intriguing, displaying an incredible attention to detail. Descriptions of light falling, baseball games and futon factory fires, vultures, trees just in bud, how much meat moves around a city at night, references to Japanese paintings.

 

Ideas flow into one another, leading you forward, suggesting, and swirling, like musical registers shifting, sometimes surreal, sometimes eccentric, always articulate and fascinating. There is wit and humour, a toughness, grit and clarity, a kind of, impossible to quite pin down welcome familiarity.  Klienzahler's writing is proof, if indeed you need any, that there is an America out there without pretence or artifice, an America that is complex and is dazzling, still very much connected to the world and vitally interesting. It exists, and if only you could put your finger on it…

 

Spine is delighted and incredibly lucky to be able to present new and exclusive poems from his new book, ‘Sleeping It Off In Rapid City’ and we are convinced that once you have had a taste you will want to read more.

 

So, once again it’s quite simple, go out and grab any of Kleinzahler’s books, pick any poem, pick a first line and open the page, we guarantee it will be worthwhile.