When I asked you what song reminded you of me,
you sent me one about a love curse—
about loving someone dearly and missing them,
and when I messaged you some joke about it,
not about the love curse but about the language,
wanting to clarify but not wanting to be direct,
you responded in what almost looked like nerves.
Neither of us brought up the love curse,
but you didn’t say anyone else made you think of a love song;
am I reading too much into it?

I lay,
Soft head in soft pillow.
Floating.
Fabric against porcelain skin.
Heart spread wide open.
Floating.
Gentle stream filled with warmth,
The hush of one thousand voices
in my mind,
Silenced.
And even through the ceiling is dark,
I can feel the gentle warmth of the
Sun
above.

Selection Criteria

We seek a person showing an authentic engagement with the culture of language. The applicant needs a broad appreciation of linguistic form and an inclusive approach.

Essential:

• Two good honours degrees from a top performing university - Or relevant experience as an autodidact or dilitante.

• A willingness to appreciate and engage in other people's expression of poetic form.

• Openness to the ways in which language is multimodal and able to blur the distinction between word, voice, sound, body and image, whilst being able to draw upon the conventions of each mode.

Desirable:

• Colourful life-history, and a keen eye/ear for human and natural dynamics, and the capacity to dissolve the distinction.

Please submit sample below:

There was a tree. Indeed, there was a tree... that night we played with Gertrude or some girl or boy or some other echo or other.

Had she not mentioned the issue with the fragmentary interjections by candidates? The capacity of evocation is lost with this fashion for modernism [Golden light of blue buzzard and some such and wot not before azure cream in winter time and  crystalline glaze] and its reflexive interruptions. Perhaps she should start again. [Does it even need to be a word? And what is this anyway?]. Re: Start again - good lord we are forced to read some nonsense [in the steam rows and the bath cabin], often with a similar flow. What about the art of pleasing our palate? We bump our heads against the brackets, elliptical conjurings and compound punctuation: -

Oh! ... Out of time? Battery low? Well, this will have to be the submission then. Good luck.

I’ll admit
I’m a bit romantic.
With theories and opinions
On why and how people love.

I’ve always been a bit clueless
When people have tried to confess
Anything indirectly said
Tends to go over my head.

My mind tends to fantasize
Everything all the time.
Things that are impossible
Or unfathomable

But I’ve learned as time goes
Though there is much i dont know
That when feelings occur
I should get to know the person first.

To wait and to understand
Quirks and habits and traits piling up like sand.
To know a person before getting together
Makes a relationship a lot better.

So off my brain goes
While i research the soul.

Wounds heal but they'll always leave a scar. A little keepsake of memories. We may always lope that these wounds may heal without scars, that everything would out perfectly, despite us knowing that is very unlikely. It is reassuring that after time passes most will wear them with pride as a badge-like battle scar. Though I seem to fall into a hole of turmoil and confusion seeing as I'm not like most, I've always been different and found it hard to fit into the crowd. A blessing and a suede it may be but it is who I am and I promise you I'll always be your little "nerd" regardless of your desire.

You're so alone
and I know exactly why.
I had to hate you
but I couldn't even try.

This miserable sod had become
a stupid **** who thought after doing.
But this stupid **** wouldn't be free
and now it's me he's pursuing.

Did this man really have it all?
Was I his only one?
I don't think he knows that with me,
He's won.


N. Hedges

This sore saviour keeps a straight-faced stare
Lips pressed tight, tongue wedged in teeth
While watching indolence twist in haste
To reach the next refuge

Revulsion that we two symbols share
That same motion-sickness fear
One of action, the other of consequence
Or lack thereof; without / within