An Otherworth | Mark Goodwin & Nikki Clayton

A Magna Park, A Leicestershire, An Earth,
A December The Ninth, A Two-Thousand-&-Twenty-Two
 

 
Infinite in its depth, the space stretches from the alcove in the childhood home
to fossilised patches of water found on planets other than your own. You stand
at the shore of this space, its immensity felt through the flesh.

– Dylan Trigg, The Memory of Place, A Phenomenology of The Uncanny
 


 
limbs &
life

at an
edge

of a
where

here’s

sap
re

cedes as

there
ung

lows its

reach
 

 
a dream
of land

ing fire
proof

gods on
far’s

off
star
 

 
to operate on
a poorly

home

pin your world
with lit

needles to
elemental

hard

cold black
ground
 

 
as ground
pulls

a flesh
of place

a body
pops
 

 
feel your
world’s

double do

not stop
to lick

frost’s
trace
 

 
he farmed
the dark

he grew its
thick

feelings

there at
the end of

then’s
road for

no
one

to
see

his barn
packed

tight with
night’s

sure old
crop
 

 
and the hutch
and the lamps

and the fenced-off
dark land

and the block of
space boxed that

will arrive to
depart to

move your

what
was
 

 
could be
a trip

to some
moon

could be
infinite’s

wiz
ened son

couldn’t be
though

a plough

man in
his cab

swallowing
his tract

or’s throt
tle
 

 
they have
yet

yes they
have got

yet’s
total shape all

wrapped up
in their

gathering’s

their-ness
& ready

to use
world

and we
frail

membranes of
memory

are left with

lift off
 

 

 

This piece links closely with The Flattening & Covering Wave, an April this 2020
first published by Longbarrow Press here.

Original photos: Nikki Clayton
Image manipulation: Mark Goodwin

Mark Goodwin‘s publications include All Space Away and In (Shearsman, 2017), Steps (Longbarrow Press, 2014), and Rock as Gloss (Longbarrow Press, 2019), acclaimed by Andy Clarke in Climber magazine as ‘An exhilarating journey through the glorious variety of UK rock, including mountain rhyolite, eastern grit, Llanberis slate… a fascinating and rewarding collection that amply repays backtracking and re-reading.’ Click here to visit the Rock as Gloss microsite for extracts, essays and audio recordings.

 

 

 

 

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