CUSP By Graham Mort
Su Andi | January 3, 2012CUSP By Graham Mort
Publisher Seren ISBN-13: 978-1854115485 £8.99
Can you identify a man by his art? I think not. Mort is a local lad born in Middleton with the deadpan humour that Mancunians are known for. This is also a man who defends human rights and freedom, even if it meant the loss of his own liberty
His aura is one of the guys in the pub telling stories taken from family dinners or from strangers on trains then noted to memory with a point scheme for their punch lines..
Mort the poet is far more complex for here you quickly discover that his writer’s eye has the ability to note the smallest detail, the change in light, the movement of the air dispersed by a bird’s wing.
He forces you to hold your breath so that you travel with him along the intricate placing of each line. Moreover, the word “line” does not credit how he styles each stanza so they appear on the page perfect in their form
In your mind, it is easy to “see” Mort hanging out a hotel window seeing a view for the first time. Or shielding his eyes from the sun as he becomes accustomed to the inhumanity before him.
Black Crow
/…. Black Crow it’s murder on the
Hard shoulder….
airborne litter sad bum highway trash…/
He has an eerie ability to position himself in the poetic body of his subject.
/a hazel fork rearing his fists,/…
/he never had a job, paid cash or pension;
He loved the ferret smell of cash…/
His final work I defy any reader not to read again and again, faster and faster like a surge of electricity travelling to make light.
Electricity
/You always knew I was well-connected
Didn’t you? Negative or positive/ AC/DC?
Fascist or freedom fighter? Oh! That
Decadent androgyny of mine!…/
