Christian Ward: Poet in Residence at the 5th London Poetry Festival 2009

Christian Ward was born in Westminster, London in 1980. His interest in literature and writing started as a child when he was given an oversized version of Robinson Crusoe. This inspired him to write stories and he dreamed of becoming a writer when he grew up. He carried on writing until he was a teenager, when he stopped writing due to personal difficulties.

Christian rediscovered his love of writing, especially poetry, when he started a degree in English Literature and Creative Writing at the University of Chichester in 2004. He gradually honed his skills and felt confident enough to start sending out work to publishers in 2006, when he transferred to Roehampton University, where he graduated last year.

His work first started appearing in smaller journals such as Iota and Other Poetry, eventually appearing in The Warwick Review, Poetry Wales and The Kenyon Review. He was nominated for a Pushcart Prize in 2007 and was shortlisted for the 2007 Plough Prize. He was shortlisted for an Eric Gregory award this year.

He has had several pamphlets published; most recently, Bone Transmissions, from US-based Maverick Duck Press (March 2009). He hopes to eventually have a full length collection of poetry published.

Christian has also written book reviews, a number of which have been published by the US journal Rattle. He has started to translate poetry and his translations of poets such as Amado Nervo and Ramón López Velarde have appeared/and are forthcoming in Elimae, Ezra, Sojourn and Off The Coast.

Firstly, I enjoy writing it. I find shaping an idea or image into a piece an exciting process and one that I relish every day.

Secondly, it is like caffeine to me. I feel compelled to write poetry every day. If I don’t, I go mad.

Thirdly, poetry is my way of leaving my mark on the world. I think it’s incredibly satisfying (and humbling) knowing I can write something that might have an effect on someone or on a group of people.

Floods

The streets flood
with our childhood dreams.

Puddles blend into
astronauts, paving slabs, firemen.
Artists wash the pavements
in a sea of colour.

Our adult selves, thin as spindles,
watch from behind netted curtains,

holding each other as the houses
slowly move towards an ocean
of someone else’s making, bodies
quivering like fish desperate for water.

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Cumulonimbus

We must not be envious
of their brief lives,
for they suffer as much
as we do:

constantly exposed to dark,
living at the mercy
of the sun's revolving stage.
They are always open,

whilst we long to be constantly
shut. Everything appears less
real when we look at them;
their honesty, a ghosting touch.

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The Dowser

Her hands sculpt bone
and flesh out of silence.
She adds colours pulled out
of drained away sounds,
things flushed and supposedly
lost forever: a wedding ring
thrown off a bridge in spite,
a champagne bottle's broken
throat, the clink of glasses.
Her lips complete the scene,
dredging minor details
from unreturned echoes: a groom's
unravelling tattoo, flecks
of blood in a sink, the bride's
swan-dress, snapped and drowning;
notes from a type of music rarely heard.

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Copyrights @ Christian Ward

St Helier Estate

St Helier, London

People here have faces
like dimmer switches:

Brightening when they
see the postman bringing

wage slips, benefit letters.
Darkening when they catch

a glimpse of the loan shark
barking outside the front door.

I pass a group of boys playing
football in the street. They stare

at me the way lions do in zoos:
faces hidden in dark, waiting

for a slip-up, the first opportunity
to ease a paw round the cold metal

bars that separates them from us
and taste what has been missing

from their lives since being imprisoned

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The Abandoned Houses, Stamford Hill

Glimpsed before they were salted with dusk,
each like a deserted scene from Chernobyl
or Three-Mile Island: breakfast tables
abandoned, family photos left behind,
jackets still hanging on the backs of chairs.
Cutlery slowly fossilising, turning the colour
of anchovies. Their undissovable memories
chirp like Geiger counters when the street
is silent, unspooling household wiring.
Sometimes you might see patches
of dandelions in the front gardens bend,
as if in the presence of breath.

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