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Alan Halsey

Alan Halsey photo credit to Marianne Morris

Alan Halsey was born in London in 1949. His books include Marginalien (Five Seasons 2005), Not Everything Remotely: Selected Poems 1978-2005 (Salt Publishing 2006), Lives of the Poets (Five Seasons 2009) and Term as in Aftermath (Ahadada 2009). His reading of The Text of Shelley's Death has recently been issued on CD by Optic Nerve and his collaboration with Steve McCaffery Paradigm of the Tinctures is now available as an Argotist ebook. He ran The Poetry Bookshop in Hay-on-Wye 1979-1995 and is the editor of West House Books.

Ars Poetica for 'Gutenberg: The Movie'

Alan Halsey

Finding chocolate by echolocation
a pipistrelle would call mere trompe-l'oreille.
'I always knew Roman spelt trouble'
remarks Ahab in rehab while proving
that his prophecies for 1999 were really
only grasping the wrong end of a compositor's stick.
'Why the always wanting to finish any writing
and so end the pleasure?' Why 'always'?
Why 'any'? It takes so much distemper
to measure the ado. Query
whether goblin or globin where the quarry
is genetic or a twelve-mile tailback on a major route
across the wordland, a zodiac to you
if not zebra misbehaving in the misbegot gazebo.
'Change of mind could be costly for Halsey.'
'Presence' with the usual erratum in this
case gone missing but to an X-ray I
presumed however reprehensible apparent
and loosely translated 'Presentation'.

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