Steven Waling

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Biographical note:  Steven Waling was born in Accrington, Lancashire in 1958, and has lived in Manchester since 1980. He won the Smith/Doorstop Pamphlet Competition with his first publication, Riding Shotgun, in 1988, and also that year was a prizewinner in the Lancaster Festival Poetry Competition. He has since published four books, including Calling Myself On The Phone (Smith/Doorstop)

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EAN13:  9781844713141
ISBN:  9781844713141
Author:  Steven Waling
Title:  Travelator
Series:  Salt Modern Poets
Product class:  BB
Language:  eng
Audience:  General/trade
BIC subject category:  CTCH1
Publisher:  Salt Publishing
Pub date:  01-Jun-07
Extent:  80pp
Height:  216 mm
Width:  138 mm
Thickness:  5 mm
Weight:  120 gms
Supplier:   Gardners Books
Supplier:   Ingram Book Group
Supplier:   Inbooks (James Bennett)
Availability:  NP
Price:  GBP 12.99
Price:  USD 23.95
Rights:  World

Main description:  One day, the poet found himself with a dying poem. So, out of sheer frustration, he took a pair of scissors to it and began to cut the poem up and rearrange it, without looking at what he was doing. Suddenly, a poem that had been destined for the file marked “worthy but dull” sparked to life again, and he found himself excited by the possibilities of language again. Since then, this technique — and other uses of chance – have come to be increasingly important in his work. Constantly looking for the wonderful in the ordinary, the beautiful in the demotic, he is still essentially a lyric poet but in this book, he messes up the lyric's hair, exploring the the chances and encounters of modern life in vibrant, exploratory poems. A major section of the book are the Travelator Sonnets, inspired by Ted Berrigan’s pioneering Sonnets and the boxes of Joseph Cornell, cut-and-paste sonnets exploring nostalgia, travel and the chance encounters of modern life in 14 lines. Other poems explore his life in Manchester, his travels to Europe and Africa and his relationships, and there is a section of early poems that explore similar themes.

Meet the author:

Table of contents:
Part I Travelator: Random Sonnets
Eating Paella
My Bed
Harold Wilson
After Sappho: Fragment 31
For the Weekend
Homeless
Euro ’96
Mother
Bad Cold
Geocentric
Prospects 2
The Man Who
The All-Purpose Stars
Travelator
On the Town/ Dun Laoghaire
The Raven
Advice Column
Designer Eyewear
After Much Rain
The Call
Pinochet
Diz for Prez
Air
Part II
Ghosts on the Wall
In Bed
Three Poems About Love
From the Specials Board
Ghost
The Pole Star, for
Poem (Abandoned)
In Hitler’s Bath
Exile’s Lament
Peace Poem
The Blind Postman
Catching the 22
Every Planet Has a North
The Westerner
The Man with Blues Guitar
The Prospects
The Crocodile Opens its Mouth
Trade is Increasing
Before
Another Garage Sunday
Gabba Gabba Hey (To Punk Rock)
You Showed Us Your Row of Cups
Pound Shop
Through the White Hole
Triplets
That Summer
Short Dreams in Didsbury
The Eternal
Lazarus
Cod
Tourist Information
The Tuna Wars
From the Country of Lost Hats
Myopia
Temporary Entrance
John’s Picture
The Annunciation

Excerpt from book:  

Lazarus

He talked in feathery question-marks,
you never got the point of. Nice line
in parlour tricks: I died for real.
I like to think I’m fairly ordinary
but it’s like death follows me round.

I tend to do a lot of thinking
but can’t remember much more:
everything is in his voice:
“Come forth!” he boomed
in best stage voice. I stumbled out,

they tell me. Now half the town points:
“Can you tell us a little more
about yourself?” Dogs, parents
of children who died: Mister Miracle
they call me, from one step behind.

How much he must have loved me.
This light is essential to me
because it hurts. I stank of myrhh
tripped over bandages. Don’t look at me,
I can’t bring them back. How much

the dark keeps creeping underfoot –
though when I’m feeling optimistic
he must have needed me to live –
I’m back there wrapped in quiet,
and every night I wake in sweat.

Unpublished endorsement :  I’ve greatly admired Steven Waling’s poetry since the Smith’s were in the charts. It might seem strange in these strange days to claim a poet’s work to be enlightening as well as enjoyable but I’d say this particularly true of Steven Waling’s. And the manner in which it enlightens is precision: of perception, of language, of social morality.

David Morley

Unpublished endorsement :  The poems in this welcome new collection by Steven Waling reveal a way of entering the sacred and quotidian through a lens of generous attention, honoring both tradition and growth. Waling participates in the contemporary universe, and shares it in specific sensory detail. The warmth shown by this poet for his wide range of subjects corresponds to the vivid honesty, self awareness and humor represented in the poems.

Sheila E. Murphy

Unpublished endorsement :  In Steve Waling’s poems phrases and meaning collide in glorious moments of friction and rebound, giving new insight to and commentary on the everyday. Waling’s work is always rooted in what we know, always uses accessible and down-to-earth language, yet manages through nuance and juxtaposition, shape and form, concern and vision, to nudge us along toward new meaning, a re-creation of our world.

Rupert Loydell