Mark Goodwin

Mark Goodwin writes & speaks in various ways.

His first full-length collection, Else, was published by Shearsman in 2008. A second volume with Shearsman, entitled Back of A Vast, is planned for 2010. Mark’s work will also appear in The Ground Aslant: Radical Landscape Poetry, edited by Harriet Tarlo (Shearsman 2010).

An exquisite hand-made box-chapbook and audio CD, entitled Distance A Sudden will be produced by Brian Lewis of Longbarrow Press (winter 2010).

Mark has a poem in Rupert Loydell’s Troubles Swapped For Something Fresh (Salt 2009), an anthology of manifestos and unmanifestos about poetics. http://www.saltpublishing.com/books/anth/9781844714711.htm

Another full-length, entitled Shod, is due out with Nine Arches Press in late summer 2010 –  and could be described as a version of The Gospel that focuses on shoes!

Being a keen climber & mountaineer with an agricultural background some of Mark's work deals with climbing, nature, wilderness, and landscape. He is particularly interested in the spiritual/psychological/religious aspects of landscape and the human world at large. However, his writing encompasses a broad range of themes and subjects, as well as a broad range of styles. A great deal of his work, either blatantly or through subtext deals with imagination and creativity, particularly relating to writing creatively.  Mark’s poetry and 'fiction' is increasingly becoming linguistically inventive - he is very keen on playing with forms and styles of written and spoken creativity. He enjoys fresh mainstream as well as risky otherstream literature.

Walk

The blue mountains are constantly walking.

If you doubt mountains walking you do not know your own

walking.

                  - Gary Snyder

Put

a foot on a rock. Choose

one route through millions of pebbles. Follow

clearly seen, sometimes pain-filled paths, or abandon

people's spoor and artefact. Wander.  Smell

peats' waters. Sniff

dry limestone's,

     rhyolite's, granite's, or grit's

                        dusts as ground's scuffed. Inhale

subtle or pungent sap sprays as plants are squeezed. Flex 

leg-flesh. Side-step. Skip. Scamper. Mould

rough world through soles. Drum

never-the-same rhythms of picking places to balance

on along shattered ridges. Kick

into cold; wade

water's white crystal form, or through see-

                                                through rivers. Leap

from friction-patch to

            friction-patch amongst algae-coated boulders rounded

by mountains' blood. Step

and step in time to flow

vibrant meat-encased bone over

soil and stone. Without knowing

know.

                                              first published by Fire

Borrowdale Details

soft larch needles    I sniff wish     thin dangling larch twigs hold

raindrops    christ & pagan wrapped to tinsel    autumn light

has projected Borrowdale’s matter    a work crafts growth    I

peer    at a twig’s knuckles    a needle’s green edge   a tiny globe

dissolving landscape    Borrowdale is a    mass    of details full

a vastness of minuscule    high    resolution beauty    immense

numbers of bits    of leaf-frames pebbles daddylongleg claws

for an instant I spread    let    a moment explode    as I climb

through woods by crags    every detail of me    follicle bone-cell

grease    shatters or slicks    amongst     Borrowdale’s infinite

tiny details    one    of my gasps stretches wetly with the beck

others entwine with white fibres of gills    unravelling    gravity

the calcium atoms of my teeth    jumble     along drystone walls

moss green-gleaming    my meal     of Herdwick meat    passes

through my gut whilst Borrowdale’s    details    digest my soul

first published by Shearsman