Amanda will be reading with Matt Howard and Sarah Holland-Batt at Ilkley Literature Festival on Sun 13 October. The joint online launch for Fantastic Voyage now on...
She’s at the pictures with her dad or maybe she’s at home watching tv with her mum or on her own, and she’s shrunk. Wherever she is and whoever she’s with, she’s definitely shrunk and she’s inside the submarine diving at terrific speed through saline, heading straight into a circular abyss. She shuts her eyes and waits to die but when she opens them the submarine is floating in a watery wonderland and Owens says you may unfasten your belts so she does. Or maybe she stretches her legs on the old settee or takes a Malteser from the box dad bought at the kiosk and it tips – Maltesers rolling under the seat of the boy in front and the woman in front of him. Or maybe there are no sweets, but the submarine is definitely pulled off course again and her stomach definitely tugs and flips and all this happens at once and she thinks What if the submarine is inside me? What if it is? What if it never gets out of her or she never gets out of it? If years from now she’s lying on a table watching a screen as cameras prod her gut, her heart, her brain, searching for a miniature child still bathing in extracellular fluid, trapped in a shrunken submarine?
*
from Notes on Water
Today the water sings. Today I walk the bank
with someone else’s dog on a lead.
And it’s like the river’s saying Yes? An ordinary day. Nothing doing here.
I watch a wagtail wagging stone to stone,
even the living-statue heron’s there,
powdered grey, and I ask the dog
if we should give it a coin for its trouble.
There’s a sycamore down and some branches
on the path but nothing like the fallen army
ripped apart that day in Ardnamurchan,
that defeated battlefield of trees
enough to make you weep. Then the dog
says flow and I say fucking hippy dog
and the river says I’m thinking of the man who will leave in winter.
I am thinking of David Nash’s Wooden Boulder,
that great ball of oak, slipping downstream,
stuttering for months, coming to rest
in the estuary until the heavy rains, high tides,
dislodge it again and again and it’s gone.
I am thinking of David Nash gently searching
for years, how he said It hasn’t vanished.
I just can’t see it.
And the dog says That’ll do. Think that.
Hasn’t disappeared. You just can’t see it.
*
Nights I Squat
I hesitate to tell you but for years
I’ve been sheltering in your ear at night,
mostly quiet, curled between
the creak of tomatoes ripening,
the owl’s occasional screech.
Sometimes you’ve heard me as rain
on the roof or an echo of the words
that swim inside your head,
keep you from sleep.
I apologise. I was the roar at 3am
that had you going down with a torch
and knife. I was the squeak you thought
was the old shed door. Don’t be alarmed.
My song will not enchant you,
there’s no need to tie yourself to the mast
to save your life. I have no wings,
don’t play the harp. Think of me
as a touch of tinnitus that will pass.
Still, I can’t forget the night when
half-awake you pressed your fingers
to your ear. Was it a minor itch, an ache?
Or did you know I was there?
You touched me and something whispered
in the dark. Did you hear?
Contents List
9 Fantastic Voyage
10 Belly
10 Takotsubo
10 Gut
10 A Ghost Story
11 Look Inside!
12 When Andrea was 7
13 Auntie Irene says
14 One day I watch
15 Andrea’s father
16 One day I ask
17 Mum says Nancy Gardiner
18 Janet Bradley says
19 One day I go for a colonoscopy
20 Peter B says
21 Aged 9, Andrea doesn’t know
22 One day, I was sawn in half
23 Notes on Water
39 Haunts and Apparitions
41 Nights I Squat
42 Magic
44 December 1979
45 Three Hauntings
45 1 Pelican
46 2 Girl in White with Trees
47 3 Man Dressed as Bat
48 Missing
49 The Vegetable Lamb of Tartary
51 like a tree
53 The Possibility of Fog
54 Ten Signs of Possession
54 1 Superhuman Strength
55 2 Knowledge of Previously Unknown Languages or Speaking in Tongues (glossolalia).
56 3 Unnatural Body Movements
57 4 Appearance of Wounds that Vanish as Quickly as They Appear
58 5 Paranormal Capabilities
59 6 Living Outside the Rules of Society
60 7 Being Persistently Ill, Falling into Heavy Sleep and Vomiting Strange Objects
61 8 Being Troubled by Spirits
62 9 Being Uncomfortable, Ugly and Violent
63 10 Making Sounds and Movements Like an Animal
