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Adam Strickson -
An Indian rug surprised by snow.
This book is about people today
Focussing on the poet's surprising and life-changing encounters in the North-West, Yorkshire and Bangladesh,
this collection is a careful listening and a gentle plea for a more shared humanity.
Adam Strickson writes about Kurdish refugees, Pakistani women,
Van Gogh, Sidney Bechet and the inventor of hydraulics with equal love and attention.
An Indian rug surprised by snow is a serious, wise, funny and joyful book, a powerful poetic statement about
how this writer has embraced the time and society he lives in.
'To say that Adam Strickson's work is provocative is to beggar understatement. What he proves is that you can perform a real social function
without sacrificing the imagination and the art.'
Playwright David Edgar.
'Emotive, articulate and amusing. Vastly entertaining.'
The Stage.
'A potent blend of Indian and English influences. Unusual and captivating.'
Manchester Evening News.
'A breath of fresh air'
Asian Leader
'Zest, fun, passion and colour'
The Metro.
'Fascinating, unpatronising and fresh'
BBCi.
Five boards waiting
It's true, the simplest things
last, like trades or undone business.
We'd been talking wood, the linen boxes,
how wood becomes jewels and miracles
when all the trees are gone, how wood is
hidden in the blood, how wood is a dance.
There'd been a catalogue of deaths:
the end of piano duets, a coma in Crete,
a slip from a cliff rope, two cancers.
*
Five boards, he said. Five boards -
I sent them to the wheelwright Chipping Norton way,
told him to use copper nails. That way I'll last longer.
He'd stepped out of 'The Norman Knight'
the day before the dance, on his way to ninety,
curry sauce stains on his shirt of old man blue,
drips in his white beard, goose grass on his cuff
but still sharp, still the thing we're all after.
I've had the best crop of wheat ever so I sent
five boards - one extra, just in case.
It's thirty years since I cut down the oak.
It was in the way. You couldn't do that now.
I knew him as a singer first, farmer second.
I knew him when he told his wife to scarper,
took up with his secretary, kept things tax efficient.
I'm still a working farmer, born in those trees.
I've built my land piece by piece. My grandad
was a farm worker. I'm worth three million,
still a working farmer, so no inheritance tax.
A man in both sheep and arable, a hare
who can see what lies around the bend.
I'd like, he said, some nice requiems.
I'd like, he said, some Handel or Verdi:
there's plenty of money in the kitty.
Wool from these hills was carried
to the high, rose cities of Italy. The woolpacks
carried jewels and miracles, the thing
they were all after, the Gloucester fleece.
It was, he said, the softest in the world.
It was, he said, the gold that built the churches,
the gold which bought the merchants of Campden
some nice requiems.
He's off to America, to stay with a daughter
I'll get my fiddle down from the loft.
I've got cats for strings, a horse for the bow.
I'll play a tune, fiddle my way towards those
five boards. Tomorrow, I'll dance on the Green.
He has no undone business to speak of.
Adam Strickson
An Indian rug surprised by snow.
Wrecking Ball Press
ISBN 0-903110-25-4
