One Night Stanzas

Today marks the Edinburgh launch of the brilliant Ryan Van Winkle’s first collection of poetry, Tomorrow, We Will Live Here. A recipient of the prestigious Crashaw Prize and published by Salt, the book will be launched at Blackwells book shop on South Bridge from 6.30pm. One Night Stanzas will most definitely be in attendance!

Ryan Van Winkle is currently Reader in Residence at the Scottish Poetry Library and Edinburgh City Libraries. He runs a monthly “Literary Cabaret” called The Golden Hour and is an Editor at Forest Publications. His work has appeared in New Writing Scotland, The American Poetry Review, AGNI and Northwords Now. He lives in Edinburgh but is still an American. In 2010 he won Salt’s Crashaw Prize for his debut collection Tomorrow, We Will Live Here.

They Will Go On

The western horizon is still lightning blue.
To the east, everything is side-of-the-bridge grey.
I am patient as trees and flowers, desert cacti.

The grandkids hide inside with swollen eyes
and I want the rain to come quick, slap
their pale necks. I’ve counted the summers left

and the young should take this rain beside me
as I took father’s wheat, corn, and whole bloody harvest.
I roll one more September cigarette,

Summer coughs her last cough ;
a dribble from which the children hide,
stay dry as rain loosens soil.

Praise for Tomorrow, We Will Live Here:

“This luminous collection begins with the workings of the author’s ghost and ends on a bar stool contemplation of days lived and quietly lost. In between is all the richness and wonder of things. Like a ghost, he returns again and again to concern himself with the workings of the dead, gravity, the passage of time; growing up and growing old. If he had picked up a guitar rather than a palette, these are the songs Edward Hopper would have sung. They are songs of the season past, of the waning day, of the half lived life. But there’s nothing melancholic about this book – far from it – the poems are shot through with light, with a determined joy. Van Winkle’s strength as a poet lies in his ability to focus on the quiet epiphanies that transform loss into wonder and wonder into art.” — John Glenday

(Photo by Skyroad)