salmonpoetry.com | This London by Patrick Hicks

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Finding The Gossamer
June 2008

This London
Patrick Hicks

ISBN: 978-1-907056-27-7

Page Count: 88

Publication Date: Sunday, February 14, 2010

Cover Artwork: Building Time | © Fabrizio Argonauta | Dreamstime.com

Patrick Hicks reads "After the First Performance o... play

Patrick Hicks reads "Outside the British Library" ... play

Patrick Hicks reads "The Poet of Liverpool Street ... play

About this Book

Two thousand years ago a tiny village was founded on the marshy banks of the River Thames. Since then, this outpost of a crumbling Roman Empire has become an international city, a magnetic intersection between cultures and histories. London was once the capital for millions of colonized people around the globe, including—for nearly 200 years—a land that would eventually become the United States. For good or bad, our tongues move with words and ideas that bubbled up from this mighty city. In this new collection, Patrick Hicks explores connections between history and place, colonialism and language, visiting and belonging, and he points out the hidden streets and personalities of a city that changed the world.

Author Biography

Patrick Hicks is a dual citizen of Ireland and the United States, as well as Writer-in-Residence at Augustana College. He is the author of several poetry collections, including Finding the Gossamer (Salmon, 2008), and his work has appeared in scores of journals such as Ploughshares, Tar River Poetry, Glimmer Train, Virginia Quarterly Review, Natural Bridge, Indiana Review, Nimrod, and many others. Aside from being a Visiting Fellow at Oxford, he has been nominated several times for the Pushcart Prize and he is the recipient of a number of grants, including one from the Bush Foundation to support his first novel, which is about Auschwitz. After living in Europe for many years, he now enjoys thunderstorms rolling across Midwest America.

Sample Poems

At the Globe with Shakespeare

What would he make of our metal birds in the sky,
the large ones that rumble smoky plumage?
What would he say about our living tapestries,
those things we call “movies” and “television”?
Would he listen to Mozart or the Beatles?
His earring would still be en vogue,
so too his long hair. His ruff,
however, would have to go.
His speech would be of interest to linguists,
and he would surely applaud
the printing press on everyone’s desk,
but if he could watch his plays, here,
what stage directions would he give?
Maybe he would rather read
about the development of drama,
sip a latte, then scout across
the borderlands of the dispossessed.
There he would take out his notepad,
marvel briefly at the ball-point pen,
and he would begin to scribble,
his cell phone turned off, his ears open,
his hand fluttering like mad.

Copyright © Patrick Hicks 2010