The Visitor's Book

The Visitor’s Book

Penniless Press Publications
August 2014
Paperback 6″ x 9″ 65 pages
£5.99
ISBN 978-1-291-96018-1

Mark Ward’s debut collection Thunder Alley was a semi-autobiographical account of the diversity and divisions within his hometown of Blackburn. The Visitor’s Book expands on this theme, exploring the relationship between people and their environment. It collates and chronicles the overlooked, the ordinary and the remarkable: the things that pass and those that endure, into a rich seam of narrative poems. “Vivid, sharp, memorable observations of the places that have touched Ward’s eye and heart; the tone is characteristic of the man; poems worth reading!”
Jack Mapanje

The Photograph

Sunrise skims the distant ebbing tide.
Hunched figures at the waterline revealed,
as cockle-gatherers with suction boards,
that pad the spongy sand and tease
the creatures out from underneath.

The man, who stakes his nets by ancient right.
A farmer of the sea, and not the land.
Drives out to haul his catch in from the night.
The pier’s exposed backbone rattles
out across the sand.

Deckchairs lashed to railings, shuttered booths.
A solitary gull gives out a cry; and
passing hangs her lyric on a bar,
which holds the note suspended in
an empty hollow sky.

Then stillness, but for occasional gusts;
clattering cables, loose on poles and boats.
Slowly though in unison,
landladies loose their charges, from
their gaily painted fronts.

Now all the town’s awake – yet I’m alone.
A memory, on this ghostly promenade.
The youngster in the fading monochrome:
holding a monkey, with his brothers at his side;
on holiday in Morecambe circa 1965.

Stamp Collecting

I was never an enthusiast as such.
Couldn’t get excited over first-day covers.
As an anodyne to rainy days and boredom,
I took up stamp collecting with my brother.
Chiefs, presidents, and fierce braided generals:
girls with garlands; palm trees by the sea.
A world within a 20p assortment
of used stamps from the former colonies.

Jamaica, Honduras, St Helena:
The Christmas Isles; New Zealand, Tanzania.
Exotic names – we’d board our ship in Blackburn,
embark, and moments later we’d be there.

Saw an Empire where the sun never set.
Returned as it descended on the West.

Outcasts

Prolific: profligate,
they emulate the stars in their boldness
and intensity.
Unsung by poets, persecuted by gardeners,
the wrong type of flower
they stand defiant on the lawns and pathways
mid-Spring.
Outcasts, banished to the edgelands of our
towns and cities; flourishing on the sidings
and embankments: empty back-streets,
and the decaying monoliths of our industrial past.
Bouquets for the homeless.
In time the brash flowers transform
into opaque seed-heads: light, delicate
they await the breeze to stir.
Dandelion clocks.
Pluck one; take a breath and blow.
Count the hours – spread the joy.
Come Spring there’ll be another starburst on the lawn.

Haymaking

Blue sky, yellow field,
grey gatepost, red tractor,
green trailer.
Three laughing children:
six legs dangling.

Grey sky, blue field,
three tractors, green children,
five legs;
red gatepost, red trailer:
yellow scream.

Stamp Collecting

I was never an enthusiast as such.
Couldn’t get excited over first day covers.
As an anodyne to rainy days and boredom,
I took up stamp collecting with my brother.
Chiefs, presidents, and fierce braided generals:
girls with garlands; palm trees by the sea.
A world within a 20p assortment
of used stamps from the former colonies.

Jamaica, Honduras, St Helena:
The Christmas Isles; New Zealand, Tanzania.
Exotic names – we’d board our ship in Blackburn,
embark – and moments later we’d be there.

Saw an Empire where the sun never set.
Returned as it descended on the West.