Laurie Duggan
Laurie Duggan was born in Melbourne in 1949. He moved to the UK in 2006 and currently lives in Faversham. His most recent books are Crab & Winkle (Shearsman, 2009), a new edition of The Epigrams of Martial (Boston, Pressed Wafer, 2010), Allotments (Wendell, Mass., Fewer & Further, 2011) and The Pursuit of Happiness (Shearsman, 2012). Forthcoming are The Complete Blue Hills (Puncher & Wattman, Sydney), and Leaving Here (Light-Trap, Brisbane).
Allotment #33
life in the margin:
spring, still winter-like
old men in trainers
walk on bunions
Allotment #34
back at The Sun
(beyond the . . .
I graph all this, with flattened accent
(drawn but not glottal)
(the test: ‘This is Illyria, lady’)
(I myself am a bracket,
a footnote
but this is as it should be
the smudge of a glass
set down on paper
this this this
Allotment #35
the impression of a bottle cut into a wall
above it a trophy (a crown or a hand,
hard to tell in the half-dark
Allotment #36
a morning frost, bent stems
then a clear sky,
ongoing chores
Allotment #37
shadows in the window
seeming people,
spaces between
a flame’s reflection
nails not quite hammered in
a rattle of cutlery
the mechanics of a worn philosophy
my work irrelevant as
an immense puzzle, lifelong