The

Bath BurpJuly 2011 Issue 4

Editorial

Two months off this time, and many of you will be

assuming that what with the Fringe Festival, Bath

Music Festival (ha) and Glastonbury, I didn’t

deliver you your monthly feeding of the arts because

Burp towers was too busy covering all that lot. Nope.

I’m just real lazy, which is why I got into music and

poetry meself.

Fortunately, there be a plenty ‘o people who aren’t

lazy in this tiny city, cos it took no time at all

to drum up this months mag, and no, it didn’t come

out like a mish mash of whatever we could gather

together, it’s, yet again, bloody brilliant.

Love you all

Dave Selby

Damned Fool

Thanks again to Jo Harbutt and Amanda Jones at

Realworld Records for letting us duplicate our CD’s

there.

Front cover image by Bob Shaw

mattbobshaw.deviantart.com/gallery

why not visit him, he’d visit you.

Art Contributions:

Pages 6 and 7 by Vicky Card

Pages 14 and 15 by Sam Fawcett

Pages 18 and 19 by Ashley Shiers

ON THIS MONTH’S CD

1. You say you miss me

Dexter Selboy (www.dexterselboy.blogspot.com)

A touching love poem by The Bath Burp’s very own editor.

2. La Heist

CBKS (www.myspace.com/cbksofficial)

Bath based soul, RnB outfit give our ears a track from

their new EP, available soon through qualifide.co.uk

3. When I forget

The Duckworths (www.myspace.com/duckworths)

Pop from the parallel dimension – music to forget past

lovers to.

4. Kings and Queens (live @ The Royal Oak)

Gren Bartley (www.grenbartley.com)

An astonishing fingerstyle guitar player. See him play on

the 8th August @ The Royal Oak.

5. Script Girl

The Blood Choir (www.myspace.com/thebloodchoir)

Formed in Bath in 2007, this track is hot off the press,

wonderfully epic.

6. John’s Mermaids

INU (www.inu-music.com)

Arguably Bath’s biggest name in traditional and

contemporary folk, with one of their own, a track from

their album, ‘The Thousand Mile Journey’.

7. Too long away

Two Oak Sons (www.myspace.com/twooaksons)

An original folk tune from this new Bath-based guitar duo

8. When you go (live by a roadside)

Dexter Selboy (www.dexterselboy.blogspot.com)

Ok, so this is a happy love song and the best ending to a

CD ever.

Condensation

I left the heating on, I forgot to open the window.

So the air around us was still as we rolled, pulled

and threw each other around the bed. I pinned

your wrists, you pushed my shoulders down.

You clawed at my back, I squeezed your arse,

we humped our groins together – fully clothed

in a breathless, dry fuck.

Now, in my lone, shallow imprint I watch

the ceiling glisten, and breed fat droplets of dew

where our heat meets the cold of the attic.

This is your breath, I think, that is the warmth

Over my cheek the moment before we kissed again.

That is the pain I gasped out as your nails

dug tracks down my spine.

The droplets fall, taking their time, separated

by the intervals of almost falling asleep.

I rock gently, rolling my hips and shoulders,

shaking the headboard against the wall.

The fall becomes steady, I rock and rock

and the rain comes and I throw myself up

and down I crash and down

the full water of the sky falls.

© Andrew Turner 2011

Leon goes to Work

I walk along the river to work.

Leon cycles, but Leon stops

every so often, so I overtake

three or four times on the way.

Sometimes Leon leans his bike

against the back of a bench,

takes off his shoes, throws them

across a small park by the path.

Then he rolls a fag without a filter,

smokes it without ever

plucking it from his lips;

then fetches his shoes and carries on.

He’s just fast enough to pass me,

I hear the click of uncertain gears

at my heels, as he backpedals –

the cyclists answer to treading water.

As he passes I see he has one hand

held out in front, fingers rolling.

When I first saw it I thought

he was texting, but he’s not –

every morning Leon picks up

two stones, or two conkers,

or two milk bottle tops, or pennies,

two of whatever he finds.

And he worries at those two,

pushing them round each other,

eroding flakes of skin and sweat

from the well of his palm.

And that is how Leon copes

with going to work. He sells

the Big Issue in town. Leon

Isn’t his name – I gave him it:

because I’ve never spoken to him to ask,

because one name is as god as any other,

and because watching his routine

helps me cope with walking to work.

© Andrew Turner 2011

© Vicky Card

BOTTLED UP

a very very short story by Francis Comberti

The pier is stirring. Everything glistens at midnight as

the moonlight trickles down onto the wooden boards. During

the day, people natter and fuss and shuffle while the

buildings remain unmoving, resting. Now, they are alive

with the night; their souls alert, taking in the bitter

chill and the moon’s attention.

I watch them from a distance as they whisper the occurrences

of a day gone by and breathe in the essences of the people

they’ve seen. It’s wonderful how some, like the chip shop

or the ice cream parlour, bounce up and down with delight,

just as some, like the little ticket shack or the fruit

stall, quiver and quake. There is no-one to see it, but me.

I lie on my side as the first drops of rain arrive – each one

chiming off my glassy body – and I remember the afternoon. I

was squeezed between the Cokes and Sprites when a little boy

bought me from a vendor across the road, where the ground

is concrete rather than wood, and sipped me slowly; his

smile bigger after each one. I smiled in return, although

he couldn’t see, but I knew that the bubbles in his tummy

were fizzing about and he was enjoying the comforting feel

of his mother’s hand in his. In the evening, when everybody

had gone home, I fell out of the full bin and landed hard,

but didn’t so much as crack; I’m made of sturdy glass.

I can see the sun waking up and blinking on the sea in the

distance, just as a gust of wind comes off the waves and

bounces off the shore. The first cars are lazing on the

street above as the shop signs rattle their last rattle

before sleep. The breeze picks up speed, pushes me lightly

and I roll along the pier, the indentations of my shape

making a low beat for the daybreak, before I fall off the

edge with a calm silence, into the sea.

GET INVOLVED

CONTRIBUTIONS WANTED - mag & CD

If you would like to take over two A5 pages in a future

issue of The Bath Burp, please get in touch. We’re looking

for original, interesting creative work, from people

with some connection to this little city. It could be

stories, poems, illustrations, photosgraphs, paintings,

or whatever. Or maybe you know an artist who should be in

here - let them know. Show other people what you are doing,

it makes the rest of us feel like we’re not alone : )

Email: contact@thebathburp.co.uk

We’re also always on the lookout for good recordings for

the CD - anything from the spoken word, a pub jam session,

local band or filmscore composer. If it’s being created or

performed here, then we’re keen. If you dont have anything

ready, we can also come and record you or your gig, just

get in touch. As above, spread the word to musicians you

know. Email: music@thebathburp.co.uk

A CREATIVE ‘YELLOW PAGES’ FOR BATH...

So I guess the question is ‘what is The Bath Burp Arts

Directory?’ Well, we like to think of it as your one stop shop

for contact with the wide and varied creative community

of Bath. Within the pages you will find links to everyone

from fine artists to folk musicians and everything

inbetween. We aim to create an online directory that will

plug you directly into the city’s creative heart. If you

are involved in the creative industries of Bath, or have

a company that supports those industries, sign up FREE

online and get listed.

www.bathburpdirect.co.uk

www.thebathburp.co.uk

Mother

After my father’s third bank robbery,

police called my parents Bonnie and Clyde –

they assumed my mother was the accomplice –

a struggling woman, an unfit mother.

So they brought her in for questioning,

with my baby sister in her arms.

They strip-searched her,

running gloved fingers over her swollen breasts,

on to her stretchmarks, then down to her stomach,

fumbling across her raw Caesarean scar.

Later she supported her baby’s head

as she breast fed in a cold, hard cell.

Copyright Dominique Dunne 2011

A Father’s Heist

They drop

like moths

in heat.

With a gun, wet

In the teller’s mouth,

the crowd deposits

their wallets of cash

and memories

into his hands.

Behind the glass,

the manager

empties the safe

into my father’s bag,

and passes it to him

through the door;

he seizes it

and leaves – smiling,

with a bag

in one hand,

and a water pistol

in the other.

Copyright Dominique Dunne 2011

OXJAM REQUEST FOR PERFORMERS

If you’re a band / poet and would like to play / support

Oxjam in Bath this October, please

email: oxjam.bath@gmail.com to arrange

a slot. All money raised goes to support

Oxfam. We will be giving over our

October Issue CD to Oxjam performers too

- so if you are performing remember to

submit your tracks:

music@thebathburp.co.uk

© Sam Fawcett

Allotment

It’s up here, you have to pretend you’re not that out

of breath and how fit you are. Some sunny days (yes and

rainy, and actually I’ve even been here in the snow), you

can walk up and help yourself to a view of the hillside, the

allotment, the plants and the slugs. I’ve been wondering

about the slugs, there don’t seem to be that many up here,

apparently they live in walls (a bit like us really) and

there aren’t that many walls in the middle of the allotment

BUT there are signs of the slugs ie vegetable matter

consumed. Anyway it’s all up here to see and sit on / lie

on / garden / mow etc. every day if you want and because I

am of a certain age it works out very cheaply; possibly as

little as 5p a day. Bargain! Fucking Bingo! (as they said in

that quite funny film based on the Posy Simmons cartoon).

So I come up here as often as I can, to get my 5p’s worth,

although, to be strictly accurate if I come up about three

times a week it could be as much as 12p, more allowing for

holidays.

So what do you want to do that for said some? Partly

cos it’s mine, well ours actually but for the purpose of

this piece I’m using the mine alternative; partly cos it’s

exercise and partly cos you get those fab days when you

come away with a bag of THINGS TO EAT. That’s really good

when that happens, there might be carrots, potatoes, broad

beans, strawberries, fennel and - sometime in the future -

Globe Artichoke! - how cool (as they say) is that?

People have taken to commenting on my style of gardening.

This is because, whenever I can, I sit down or sometimes

even lie down to do the weeding, sifting, planting etc.

and when you do that there’s the added benefit of being

able to watch ladybirds up close and those little red -

spiders are they? Then there is the possibility of mis-

identification, such as with the horse’s tail, or is it

horses’ tails, I once used a horse tale in a story, but I

watered them any way (the tails) just in case they were

some weird kind of asparagus. Mistake! And, apart from

gardening styles and horses, you can always look up and

see what the magpies are doing, the magpies are quite

interesting and there are, I think, six of them, six

for gold, and that is in the rhyme. They are interesting

and very shiny when the light is good but strangely when

it’s very good, too bright maybe the correct description,

somehow they are not so bright! How weird (as they say)

is that? Well not exceptionally weird, as it is probably

something to do with the light, or, possibly to do with that

particular magpie on that particular day. They do quite

a lot of swooping in amongst the trees and bushes where

all the blackberries grow. They don’t seem to do bad luck,

which is meant to be the case with magpies but if that was

the case, you can try several tricks to avert any bad luck:

spotting a crow is one, crossing your thumbs and saying

bad luck to you and good luck to me, though I think in that

instance there might be a certain amount of provocation

that would rile the blackbird, sorry, I mean magpie. You

can also ask the magpie how or where his wife is, which is

also meant to avert bad luck. Can you believe all this and

how do you know it’s a male you’re talking to(?).

I wonder, is there any relation, in luck, to

strawberries, because, I inherited a good number of high

cropping plants, and put them in a bed, and then, and

then.... well yes, they looked very good and plenty were

coming to fruition (the real use of the word?) but just the

next day......Carnage! I mean what sort of luck is that?

Imagine the scenario: strawberries, dragged several

centimetres across the plot, cruelly beaten, only stalks

left, half ripe, half gnawed. Chunks bitten away, the

fruit violated. The horror, the horror! But even so, I’ll

go back tomorrow, aware of the possible devastation that

may have been visited overnight on my patch. There’s grass

to cut, chickweed to thwart, weeds to pull and maybe even

a broad bean, a leek and a potato to harvest (not a horse

tail). And one fine day there will be a strawberry. Hale

and hearty. That’s it then, the poetry of the semi-rural,

the prose of the allotment, a sanctuary! And all available

for somewhere between 5p and 12p per day!

© Richard Selby

OXJAM ART AUCTION REQUEST: We’re giving over October’s issue

to Oxjam and we’re asking people to make

/ donate an original piece of artwork (no

larger than 70x100cm) for submission by Sept

20th. Images will be printed in the October

BURP and hung in exhibition ready for auction

at end of OCTOBER to raise money for OXFAM.

Contact Heidi (creative@thebathburp.co.uk)

to discuss details.

© Ashley Shiers