Robert Hampson is the author of a number of works including seaport (pushtika, 1995; Shearsman, 2008), an explanation of colours(Veer, 2010) and reworked disasters(KFS, 2014), which was long-listed for the Forward Prize. Stride published Assembled Fugitives: Selected Poems, 1973-1998in 2000. He was Professor of Modern Literature at Royal Holloway, University of London, where he taught with Redell Olsen on the MA in Poetic Practice, and is currently a Research Fellow at the University of London Institute for English Studies.
earthborn
we have taken control of the airport
though runways & terminals are destroyed
& bridges across the river collapsed
there’s spare capacity in the eastern camps
& with an easement across private lands
the mismanagement of water supplies
provides perfect vectors for infection
how much pain must any person suffer
flash-floods delays & cancellations
the clean power plan the climate action plan
food goes to waste while foodbanks multiply
fashions an index of the nation’s wealth
what we are doing is keeping them safe
with chopsticks to pick bones out of the ash
hit list
a snakecam from the apartment next door
rented unseen under another name
the transmitter inserted down the spine
sucks the information out the airwaves
perhaps an unexpected delivery
an indistinct shape in the hallway
darkness the other side of the door
who knows what passport he had in his pocket
the watchers watch all the stars are aligned
small-calibre semi-automatic
the soft sound like a pat on the head
& always the question: ‘you know why we’re here,
don’t you?’ the professionals double tap
positional asphyxia
sirens wail the tv hangs off the wall
nothing is fixed except the fakery
while our true rights are termed a poet’s rage
& art made tongue-tied by authority
bankers & businessmen fall to their knees
filled by grace of quantitative easing
professors of ethics with dirty hands
click like dislike monetize their eyeballs
mature green assets once were known as trees
we don’t need no education
underfund devalue then privatise
that is the grammar of possession
humanity condensed into a sugar cube
we feed the meter & watch the credits
deictics
4 nancy gaffield
whether honey gall vinegar or salt
refined & refined & then again refined
more lasting than Memphis or Babylon
& wherever Roman power extends its sway
not the casual record of the day
the massage parlours & dodgy nail-bars
the bookshop closures & housing market
impacts of peer-to-peer rental sites
not the cry of a particular voice
that claims to harness for its own purpose
the basic power of the universe
& makes itself a motley to the view
these lines hold up what is not written yet
this points this shows this stakes its legal claim

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