The heart, the border
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Bibliographic Information
The heart, the border
Bloodaxe Books, 1990
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Description
The poems of the The heart, the border were written first while Ken Smith was writer-in-residence at Wormwood Scrubs prison, continuing his exploration of the territory of Wormwood (1987), and then while he was living in Berlin writing a book about the Wall when the Wall come down. It was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation.
He writes how he was at a kind of midpoint with this book, on the border with his baggage in order, coming back to tell the border tales: "These are communiques from border states between the Kingdom of Pity and the Republic of Terror: poems made from the debris of separate moments brought in the poem into some kind of credibility, some sort of continuity, some sort of a life, some kind of a journey. As ever it is a journey chiefly urban and uncertain, and as ever it is shadowed by childhood. Indeed there are several voices, most of them imprisoned: Brady the childkiller and Bamber the murderer of his entire family, Jack the anonymous lad, Harry who serves his time and emerges into the larger prison of himself, and the man who retires to Herculaneum just as Vesuvius is about to blow up. These poems travel the distance between the prison wall and the Berlin Wall, they confront one prison to confront a further prison, they break away from the press of many voices and other personae into a single clear voice."
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