George Ttoouli
George Ttoouli is an Honorary Teaching Fellow for
the Warwick Writing Programme and Education Projects
Coordinator for the Poetry Society. He has had short
stories, poems, reviews and articles published here
and there, some of which he is very flattered by. He
is grateful to everyone who has taken the time to read
his work, especially the ones that flayed him alive.
He co-edits Gists and Piths with Simon Turner, an experiment
in poetry e-zining.
Passing Newport
Houses surrounded on all sides by houses
cars parked outside houses, concrete spread
between houses, blocks and bars of houses,
no gardens between houses that back onto
houses; I miss home like dreams miss sleep.
The river a warm snake Ganges-tanned
between the mud and the warehouses,
the flood verge all sludge, jetted and flotted
with storm-fall, branches muck-draped,
a pantheon of tribal idols weird-carved
by the bone sunlight; I dream of home.
The
bridges back over railway tracks,
like mediaeval, like Spanish chocolate,
chilli in egg whites, sienna-peppered.
The fields with calves and bulls, just that
season when house martins scribe the air,
spit kindling and fallow meadows
by the villages, tractor-tracked, stubble
combed into spirals, a sleep like death
on a summer-rocked houseboat.
The concrete lick of a bridge in the muddy littoral,
a clay demigod beneath with an accent like ewe’s milk
and coal for eyes, slating the morning with choirsong
mustered of gravel, barking into the urban drone:
trees and fields and mud, trees and muddy fields and hills and houses;
you’re surrounded by houses and you’re miles away from home.
In praise of Francis Egginton and Matthew Boulton’s
method for the staining of glass
The plummed French secrets weren’t for any old homme
de terre to find – English berries lacked
chestnut or the Chinese blossoms’ edging –
fine if you could get them, but the trade routes
were closed – most couldn’t think what bastard bloods
they put in their dyeing, Italian grapes spliced
with guano – batshit to us across the Channel.
And Francis: he thought he knew what foreigners were like,
how their hot suns taunted a more virgin red
out of their petals. Not our dun ramblers,
our conker shades – we tried to match their vulgate
scarlets with cherries and straws – every berry
you can think of, dipped, mushed and boiled. Useless.
Nothing mixes when the principles won’t bind;
so he returned to what he knew: hard cycles,
pane and painting, singe, bake; pane
and paint, singe, bake, repeat, repeat;
he tied the colours to glass with fire and graft.
You don’t drink Bier D’Alsace in a Brummie pub –
we make our own blood when asked; and for all
we care they can keep their orthodox staining.
lies, its stars pure fiction.
© 2008
Salt Publishing Limited 
