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Richard Parker

Richard Parker

Biography

Richard (R.T.A.) Parker was born in 1978. He received his D.Phil. from the University of Sussex in 2010, after completing his thesis on Ezra Pound and Louis Zukofsky. From 2012-2014 he worked as an Assistant Professor of American Literature at the University of Gaziantep in Turkey. His poetry has appeared in Onedit, Signals, The Rialto, Great Works, Freaklung, Naked Punch, Glitch, Brand and The Wolf, and he has read at various reading series, including Crossing the Line, Chlorine, and Desperate for Love. He is the editor and printer of Crater, a hand-bound and letter-pressed poetry pamphlet series based in London and Brighton.

Recordings

QMUL recording studio

This recording was made at QMUL's recording studio on 16 May 2014 by Kester Richardson-Dawes.

Bibliography

Publications

 

99 Sonnets About Evil is forthcoming from Canary Whoof.

 

Sample Text

Well the  |  transmiss  |  ion tubes

 

Were housed,  |  below  |  the bridge,

 

Away  |  from staff  |  quarters,

 

 

 

Had lain  |  unused  |  for a

 

Thousand  |  million  |  years, but

 

Now were  |  unpacked,  |  called out

 

 

 

For a  |  duty  |  of great

 

Import  |  ance, &  | danger.

 

The nine,  |  in their  |  one line,

 

 

 

Stood straight;  |  mili  |  tary

 

& yet  |  nervous  |  of this

 

Likely  |  fatal  |  moment.

 

 

 

*

 

 


When once  |  we trave  |  elled ’pon

 

The once  |  temperate  |  Earth, did

 

We not  |  remark  |  the blue

 

 

 

Sky &  |  clouds strange  |  still &

 

Moving  |  — charged red  |  briefly,

 

Or in  |  transport,  |  & gone,

 

 

 

As lost  |  as grey  |  files filed

 

In great  |  grey cab  | inets

 

Or sheathes  |  of old  |  poems

 

 

 

Locked up  |  in beech  |  armoire —

 

Did we  |  not sense,  |  when in

 

Movement,  |  more of  |  what is?

 

 

 

& the  |  wide u  |  niverse

 

Travelled  |  by trav  |  ellers

 

Shorn both  |  of hearth  |  and Earth,

 

 

 

Might this  |  pano  |  rama

 

Glimpsed through  |  rounded  |  porthole

 

Of huge,  |  unnat  |  ’ral barque,

 

 

 

Might find  |  new con  |  sciousness

 

Etched black  |  on the  |  climeless

 

Black of  |  deep space?  |  Or could

 

 

 

Mankind,  |  as one,  |  ignore

 

Such stark  |  rumi  |  nations,

 

Contin  |  ue as  |  blinded?

 

 

 

& had  |  other  |  starborn

 

Races  |  looked on  | the Earth

 

As we  |  now did  |  the great

 

 

 

Celest  |  ial  |  city?

 

It would  |  be the  |  scuttling

 

Clouds known  |  to trav  |  ellers,

 

 

 

The Kent  |  greensward  |  once rushed

 

Over  |  & once  |  under

 

That’d  |  seem arch  |  etype

 

 

 

Of our  |  forlorn  |  planet’s

 

Being,  |  places  |  now shelved

 

Fore  |  ver &  |  longer.

 

 

 

Vari-  |  greened grass  |  meadows,

 

Worked fields,  |  deerparks  |  & banks

 

Of Kent,  |  now scorched  |  of grass,

 

 

 

Would ye  |  present  |  so bold

 

A face  |  as here  |  th’golden

 

Many  |  layered  |  city?

 

 

 

& lorn  |  we at  |  far post,

 

Would we  |  know the  |  strangeness

 

Of our  |  frightened  |  stronghold

 

 

 

To those  |  foreign  |  faces,

 

Peering  |  past a  |  new moon

 

Of fresh  |  commun  |  ion?

 

 

 

& would  |  they stop  |  to think

 

On the  |  strangeness   |  of things

 

Famil  |  iar  |  to them,

 

 

 

Just as  |  Western  |  hanger,

 

Ashford,  |  Tonbridge  |  had been

 

To green-  |  loving  |  Earthmen,

 

 

 

As our  |  million  |  year ship

 

Thrusting &

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