Société

Paul Batchelor

After Peter Reading

One funny thing about a university education'sthe unexpected opportunities it will afford you:in my case, middle-class girls who(now they tell me) only liked me for my vowels.One I caught on the bounce between a Crispin & a Tristramtook me home to Littlemiddleshireonly to leave me speechless & alonewith a dull-eyed eau-de-nil cushion fetishist known as 'Mum'and port-&-Stilton Daddy whowouldn't say he was prejudiced, not at all,just didn't like Asiansor Socialists — and just did like traction engines,battle reenactments, and skiffle music. 'Paul,when you say English Revolution,are you referring to the Civil War?Gosh. And is that what you write about?' StillI put up with it. It must be love.

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Paul Batchelor was born in Northumberland. His first book, The Sinking Road, appeared from Bloodaxe in 2008. A chapbook, The Love Darg, appeared from Clutag in 2014. He is Director of Creative Writing at Durham University.

Issue #22

Sheffield
England

University of Sheffield

Editors
Alex Houen
Adam Piette

Blackbox Manifold is an online forum with a slant towards innovative poetry that has prose, narrative, or sequences in its sights. That said, we don’t hold allegiance to any one poetry school or group, and we’re happy to receive submissions from established and emerging poets alike. Our aim is to present new juxtapositions of voice while using the Web’s fluid solidity to cast around for as wide and varied a readership as possible. The journal is continuingly archived by the British Library in its Web Archive.

On occasion, a current topic or event will be the focus for an issue—in bringing together poems that warp current woofs our hope is that some news, at least, may be broken. Voices that record by trembling are always welcome. But to ensure that we don’t settle into familiar patterns, guest editors will also occasionally be invited to take charge of an issue and solicit new work. Calling on a range of poets for editorial advice is fundamental to our own collaborative approach.

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