It Comes With a Bit of a Song

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Author photo © Nick Wills
	David Grubb It Comes With a Bit of a Song
	Search for a word or phrase in this book … Biographical note: David Grubb has been published widely and has established a reputation for highly original work acclaimed by John Fowles, D M Thomas, Ronald Blythe, Selima Hill, Adrian Mitchell, Peter Redgrove and Jon Silkin over the years. His poetry collections include The Memory of Rooms, Selected (Stride 2001), The Elephant In The Room (Driftwood 2004), Out Of The Marvellous (Oleander 2006). He has received many prizes, most recently 3rd Prize in the 2006 National Poetry Competition. He has also published three novels and an autobiography and edited Sounding Heaven and Earth (Canterbury Press 2004), and An Idea of Bosnia (Autumn House 1999). David Grubb is Creative Writing tutor at Reading University, the River and Rowing Museum in Henley and at Norden Farm Arts Centre. He also runs a mentoring scheme for individual writers. He has read his poetry and prose at arts centres and literary festivals. Much of his work has been influenced by working in conflict zones and areas of extreme poverty such as Bosnia, Kosovo, Rwanda, Haiti and Albania. BIC Basic EAN13: 9781844713356 ISBN: 9781844713356 Author: David Grubb Title: It Comes With a Bit of a Song Series: Salt Modern Poets Product class: BB Language: eng Audience: General/trade BIC subject category: CTCH1 Publisher: Salt Publishing Pub date: 15-Nov-07 Extent: 80pp Height: 216 mm Width: 140 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	See larger image HARDBACK 20% off at the UK Bookstore! ~~£12.99~~ £10.39 20% off at the US Bookstore! ~~$23.95~~ $19.16	Short description/annotation: A book about voices, about silences, about things we do not say. Voices to and from the living and the dead, the poor, those on the edge, dream voices and stolen narratives. Nuns ice skate, Monty Python meets his mother, J G Ballard enters Heaven, lions and tigers and pigs prowl the pages, you can travel to places that no longer exist and listen to maverick minds and wake up with a boy who has been asleep for 400 years. Surprise yourself. Main description: This is a book about voices; voices of people and places and how we live our lives. It is also about silences and things we do not say. The voices of poverty and those caught in war, the living and the dead, the voices of real and invented people, dream voices and stolen narratives. There are poems about extraordinary moments when nuns ice skate and Monty Python meets his mother, when Bud is silenced by poverty and its relentless grip. J G Ballard enters Heaven, lions and tigers and pigs prowl across the pages, Grand Central Station takes you on another journey;there are shocks and surprises. The reader can travel to places that no longer exist and places that never existed, listen to maverick minds, wake up with a boy who has been asleep for 400 years, tumble between the real and the surreal. These poems are original, musical, important and every so often they bite back. Table of contents: PART ONE Voice Notes on a Work in Progress Monty Python Meets his Mother Bud Fields and his World It Comes with a Bit of a Song Be Very Afraid Books In – Books Out Why We Do In Case the Distance do not Meet Poem Beginning with a line by Jenny Joseph The Reverend Robert Walker Takes his Skates Off The Quiet Light Padstow The Glovemaker's Son Lost Histories and the Uses of Silence Here Go the Words Door Travels to Nowhere Last Days of John Clare Short Stories Letter to Alice Sebold Nuns Skating At Smollensky's We Set Out Why Monks Should not Hit Each Other Dirty Dancing How Often Can We Say the Gypsies Come to Malvern? Blue Noise When the God is not the Trees Pig Days PART TWO After Terrible Things I Remember Not Meeting this Man Sometimes Quietly Startling Moments A Man Goes Out to Steal a Horse And Men Do Rise Chasing Stars Doctor Clock and the Lord's Prayer Father's Day Letter to John Clare Letter to Ronald Blythe And Slew a Lion in a Pit on a Sunny Day Cento Angeli Tiger in Daylight The Boy Who had Been Asleep for Four Hundred Years JG Ballard Entering Heaven Donkey Flaying on the Quantocks The New Yorker The Man Who Swallowed Watches I Wanted to Make a Circle Mrs Wiseman is not in Today Radio Grand Central Station Pig Days in Bedfordshire Excerpt from book: Pig Days 1 When it is mean it doesn’t move at all; stranded in a density of pulp and apples, the mud like bark and the eyes frozen until you lift the latch and it reassembles into a meat machine. 2 Having devoured the rhubarb it is now going to shit itself to death; red-eyed like a Russian empress, the skin tightening into a barrel, the snout already blue as a bruise. 3 The final one shoots out, hits the wall and she sits on it. Otherwise its been a good birthing and by dawn the piglets are sucking strong, persistent, ready for rain and rats. 4 In a world of white she leads five of them across the yard to the pulp. They don’t stop for the dead cat. The farmer calls them little buggers as they slip and skid as if snow scalded. 5 Rector is called in to bless the pig, spit and shine shoes already sinking; what’s he going to say about pigs and prizes after that there cooked breakfast; bacon butties and prodigals? 6 This little pig went to market and this little pig was stoned by yobs and this little pig stepped on a land mine and this little pig bit the farmer’s bum and this little pig fed and entire army. 7 And I say unto you witness the pig who adores mud and grass and greets the day adoringly and praises all things in this way and when he bites the wound is sometimes shaped like a rainbow. 8 Mr Paul looks into the sty and the pig stares back. It is a game they play. Count to ten. Mr Paul will then throw in some nuts only this time he leans heavily against the latch and slowly slides, is sliding to the ground and they can no longer see each other. Rain again. Previous review quote: David Grubb’s poems sing out so lustily and irrepressibly … steady, bright, humane. Selima Hill Previous review quote: David Grubb is a poet who brings together in achieved poetic form conscience and sensuous response. Jon Silkin Previous review quote: Passion, vigour, insight, sensuous authority are to be found everywhere in David Grubb’s work. Peter Redgrove Previous review quote: The poems of David Grubb are exhilarating as a waterfall. They have the clarity of a glass of water. And they shine with a light which is, unmistakably, human love. His poems will move you, delight you and sometimes shake you. He is one of our finest writers. Adrian Mitchell Previous review quote: Vibrant, sometimes surreal images enliven extensive literary and metaphysical concerns. Martyn Halsall Church Times Previous review quote: A sense of love and appreciation of people in this world. Judy Gahagan Ambit Previous review quote: Here is an author writing and watching and listening all the time, someone with the past and the landscape flowing through them, constantly inspiring and challenging him, just as his poems challenge and inspire the reader. ”Out of the Marvellous” is truly marvellous. Rupert Loydell Stride Magazine Previous review quote: An acute sensitiveness to human life and problems, religious mysteries, joy, suffering and the pilgrimages of life make these poems gripping, inescapable, creative of a human world. B M Hill Pennine Platform Previous review quote: There is a WOW factor in David Grubb’s poems, whether it be the sheer extraordinariness of what he’s describing or in a poem that takes your breath away. Michael Henry Newsletter Review Previous review quote: A distinctively unusual yet strikingly honest and evocative autobiography. John Fowles