Faber & Faber

Faber New Poets 3: Heather Phillipson

Synopsis:

Funded by Arts Council England, Faber New Poets aims to identify and support emerging talents at an early stage in their careers. Through a programme of mentorship, bursary and pamphlet publication, the scheme offers four poets a year the time, guidance and encouragement they require to help in the development of their work in the longer term.

Heather Phillipson was brought up in London and Wales. She was awarded the Michael Donaghy Poetry Prize from Birkbeck College in 2007, and received a commendation in the Troubadour Poetry Prize and won an Eric Gregory Award in 2008. Heather is also an artist and exhibits nationally and internationally. She has a doctorate in Fine Art practice, works as a Visiting Tutor in Art and Theory at UWIC, and is currently Artist in Residence at the London College of Fashion.

 

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German Phenomenology Makes Me Want to Strip
and Run through North London

Page seven - I’ve had enough of Being and Time
and of clothing. Many streakers seek quieter locations
and Marlborough Road’s unreasonably quiet tonight.
If it were winter I’d be intellectual, but it’s Tuesday
and I’d rather be outside, naked, than learned -
rather lap the tarmac escarpment of Archway Roundabout
wearing only a rucksack. It might come in useful.
I can’t take any more of Heidegger’s dasein-diction,
I say as I jettison my slippers.

When I speak of my ambition
it is not to be a Doctor of Letters
or to marry Friedrich Nietzsche, it turns out,
or to think better.
It is to give up this fashion for dressing. 
It is to drop my robe on the communal stairs
and open the front door onto the commuter hour,
my neighbour, his Labrador, and say nothing
of what I know or do not know, except what my body announces.

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