Andy Philip
Andrew Philip was born in 1975. His first full collection of poetry, The Ambulance Box (Salt Publishing, 2009) was shortlisted for several prizes, including the inaugural Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for Poetry. A Shore Poet from 2004 to 2008, he was instrumental in establishing the annual Mark Ogle Award.
The deid breakfast quait-like
at wir table.
They tak their saits afore
we’re waukent,
waitin
sounless on a taste o warmth.
They cleek us by wir airms
tae talk aboot
the afairs o
daith, strauchlin tae fin
a caller
vyce. We hae nocht tae say
tae the died — nocht or ower
muckle:
mair nor a bodie can
bear tae speak oot
mair nor a
word or a life can haud —
syne we sit an listen day
efter day
ettlin for the wee bit
word that’ll gar
the stounin in
wir herts devaul,
an the deid
bide anent us in wir
kitchen,
their whisperin vyces
a souch o pain,
a seasonless
smirr on the gless.
from The Ambulance Box (Salt Publishing, 2009)
What like was it
this abundant world
where nothing was not —
no neat ring
shackling us to absence,
no way not
to count or be counted —
where everything
filled without this
empty nest of a number
perched in the mind,
everything swerved
its wide white oblivion;
and could we,
given the state of our knowledge,
live with the lack of it
unable to quantify
certain populations
in the wild, the exhaustion
of our reserves,
the number and intensity
of cries in the night?
from The Ambulance Box (Salt Publishing, 2009)
