https://stepawaymagazine.com » 26

A Letter from the Editor

dcarlaw — Tue, 30 Jan 2018 13:13:07 +0000

Dear Reader,

Welcome to our twenty-sixth issue.

It is always heart-warming to share in the successes of past contributors to StepAway Magazine. Rarely a week goes by without me receiving news that a writer that we have published is preparing for a book launch or has received an award. I’m often contacted by writers asking for advice on finding a literary agent. It is difficult to answer such a question, or recommend any one individual, simply because the right agent for one writer may be completely wrong for another. It is important that the agent is in a position to champion the manuscript, and this comes from having a passion for what the writer does, and shared interests. Finding the right agent is difficult. And for this reason, I thought it would be helpful to share a link to Agent Hunter.

Agent Hunter lists every literary agent in the UK, providing contact info, biographies, literary preferences and submission requirements for each. A publisher search is also available. It is perhaps rather out of character for me to endorse online literary services as part of my editorial. However, I found Agent Hunter to be such a powerful and useful search tool, that I felt it important to share the site with other writers. I particularly appreciate the manner in which the target genres of each agent are clearly listed, along with the authors and books the agent admires. This, in my opinion, is essential information when trying to target an agent with whom the writer can truly connect. The search for an agent is a daunting process, and in many respects Agent Hunter succeeds in making literary agencies more transparent and approachable to writers. I hope this is of some help.

Our winter issue marks the return of several excellent writers who have an ongoing connection with StepAway Magazine alongside some exciting new voices. It is particularly satisfying to open the issue with Ceinwen E. Cariad Haydon’s “Strangers in Newcastle,” a poem set in StepAway‘s home city, and also feature a striking cover photograph entitled “The Walk,” taken by local photographer Jonathan Bradley on Newcastle’s Quayside. This photograph is part of The Ephemerids collection, a series of hand-processed and printed images using traditional black and white photography techniques. It is available to purchase via Crimson Tiger.

What struck me about this issue was the way it begins in Newcastle and then moves rapidly outwards, visiting Sicily, Beirut, Lagos and Dallas, to name but a few far-flung locations. One of this month’s contributors commented that the issue was ‘a trip’ and it inspired travel. It’s good to know that StepAway is on the right path. So, without further delay, let these ten talented writers lead you:

O-Jeremiah Agbaakin, Quinn Byrne, Richard W. Halperin, Ceinwen E. Cariad Haydon, Ann Howells, Ilona Martonfi, Jimmy O’Connell, Freya Marshall Payne, Ilse Pedler and Spencer Smith.

I hope that you enjoy reading this, our twenty-sixth issue, and may I again say a heartfelt thank you to our contributors and readers for your continuing support.

Yours faithfully,

Darren Richard Carlaw

editor@stepawaymagazine.com

Strangers in Newcastle

dcarlaw — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 15:10:37 +0000

On Westgate Road, another stranger
asks me for directions.
My tongue ties as I try
to mouth new, puzzling words
and meet her gaze.
My heart hammers.
I try again.
She stands close to listen
and my breath mingles with hers almost.

Under the eaves house sparrows
nestle against the north-east wind.
Their chattering carries down to the street.
We listen and smile.

Her hands shape a bird,
the cold sun throws a silhouette
against the crumbling brick wall,
her fingers fluttering wings
stretched as if to fly.

And my mind wanders
seeking home in her eyes

I step towards her.

Ceinwen E. Cariad Haydon

She Walked through the Valley

dcarlaw — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 15:06:12 +0000

She walked through the valley.
It was a city street, it was the rush hour,
But she walked through the valley.
I could see it, quiet,
The sun somewhere, the shadows long.
She looks back at me. She knows I know.

That, was one of the good things.
It gives me pleasure now
To write about it.

Richard W. Halperin

De noche, en una ventana

dcarlaw — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 14:57:30 +0000

The pastel houses outside my window fade to dusk.
I’ve slouched over the years
down Scotland’s corbie steps,
Spain’s roofs flattened with the plas of rain,
through the North East’s penned-in gardens
to settle precarious
on the south’s edge.
La Iglesia del Buen Varón casts a greying shadow over sloping Britain;
its rough walls still hold the echo of processions.
Imágenes de mi tierra, mi pueblo,
más esencial que “home” y poblada de
gente que no sé si serán jamás mi gente.
We moved to a house the strange yellow of sunlight through glass
in a village whose name I only later learnt to pronounce:
Hoyos con una ‘h’ silenciosa
with women sitting in the street haciendo bolillos.
Newborn lace
creeps over pillows
stung deep with pins.
I dreamed of making lace as ‘bollilos’ rolled
explosively off my tongue, new language’s unfamiliar taste.

There is a peculiar obscurity to being awake in the long dark hours.
Here, I travel:
driven towards, drawn out, reaching back
to clasp an origin story of people who will never be mi gente
and places which will never be mi pueblo
wishing customs could come easy to me
held down like fresh lace by the threads and pins of shared culture.
But if this is stasis
I sense I must move on
to find home in freedom.

The falling darkness and the pane of glass
throw back at me a reflection
slowly crystallizing.
I see puzzle pieces of the past:
Loughatorick, StAndrews, Ceres, Blebo Craigs,
Granada, Mérida, Hoyos.
My dreams have rough edges and my ideas
float in distance:

Uruguay, Chile, Costa Rica perhaps.
Back come the cicadas and ochre dust of childhood
the flow of language ronroneando eres tan largas
and the lace escapes the pins.
It has the shape of a woman
and she has a voice: ‘viaja, viajera’.

Freya Marshall Payne

Snow in Seoul

dcarlaw — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 14:46:53 +0000

My goal today is going out and I’m gung ho, inoculating a cresting headache with my last two pills, and armed with maps. It’s Saturday. Time to exchange the inner for the outer world. The Spanish writer in the next room writes to ask if he should burst the blister on his foot he got from boiling water yesterday. He has a needle and some iodine. And Oh it’s snowing. It’s snowing? Today’s my day for going out! The last day of the Hongdae Free Art Market and I’m going. I got up four hours late but I’m going. I have a cold but still I’m going. I could stay in, just like all week, but this is Saturday. I’m going. I run to the window and prise apart the slats of blinds. It’s snowing. I run to the kitchen and raise the blinds. It’s snowing. In biggish clumpish flakes which melt at oscillating touchdown, giving up the ghost beside the now wet moraines of leaves. Nagyeop. I can’t go out. If there is one thing I’ve learned in life it’s that you don’t argue with snow. Like poetry, it has its own economy. Unlike poetry, it’s not benevolent. I go back to bed. Browse for two hours. Decide to take a short nap, set my phone timer for thirty minutes, roll over and somehow emerge from the roll standing upright by my bed, reaching for a change of clothes and throwing maps, gloves, hat into my green elephant bag. What happened? Upon entering the roll a poem title appeared, “Snow in Seoul.” While rolling, I thought 40 lines. One of those poems you’re relieved to find is not about its title. Three quarters way through I thought Here I go again, before I know it’ll be dark, another day gone. Next thing it’s as if someone somehow drives a prong through me. I am speared from the warm bed and put standing upright by its side. I just am. Definitively. No way am I not going to Hongdae. Don’t know if I can find the Free Market or not. Couldn’t last Saturday. But I’m going. I’m out of here. And I am. As soon as I get to the bus-stop, the bus sweeps into view, on cue. The driver is one unhappy mother. Even without Korean I know that from the way he drives, jolting and rattling all of us hanging from straps and packed into the bus. At every stop more people get on. If someone asks him a question, he mumbles, and if they ask again, he shouts. Then he goes back to throwing us around again, a shock we acknowledge by almost looking at each other. I know my stop will be the sixth stop. I have been to the neighborhood of the fifth stop before and when we get there everyone gets off so, tired of being thrown around and reluctant to go by bus into unknown territory when I can’t even see out the windows, at the last second I get off too, even validating my T Money card. If I had stayed home in bed the phone timer would be going off now, or soon, with a fanfare disproportionate to its scale. I would be steamy and warm, aiming knives of recrimination against myself, deciding whether to begin or postpone writing the poem “Snow in Seoul.” The day I had imagined outside was cold and challenging. The actual day is warm and squelchy, necessitating and not necessitating an umbrella in equal measure. I have a yellow umbrella. My phone burns like a vermilion tongue in my bag. In my head, I would find the market, led by some reptilian brain lodestone. In real life, I walk as far as Hapjeong, hunting for the couple of markers I can read on the map: a GS 250, Papa John’s, before turning and coming back towards Hongik. What does it matter? It doesn’t matter. I am out. The wide street is loaded with traffic, skyscrapers stacked alongside like books at the end of term, the sky frowns, lowering as if to scold or hit, the metro pulsing up the million beautiful faces of the young people of Seoul. In my head, the market was magical, a bazaar, lit with lanterns in the deepening November dusk. In fact, if for sure I found the place, it is a little playground but there is no-one there except five or six tallish teenage boys, practicing rap. Maybe this is not the place. Maybe last week was the last week. Outside the playground, a few stalls are still open. A man is packing things into a case. A young woman walks down the street with her portfolio. A man and a woman are giving free samples of nut brittle. The market is over, or some place else. I walk all the way home, without falling. Even if it is in prose, I write the poem.

Quinn Byrne

Canary Wharf

dcarlaw — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 14:43:05 +0000

We worship at the new
cathedrals, mirror-glass
spires of ingenuity that
cut black edges in the
sky. Clouds patterning
their surfaces continue
on and it can be hard to
tell whether it is the sky
or the edge that’s falling.
All the time down below
tiny trains weave in and
out on rollercoaster track
their reflections running
beside them. Inventing
their importance, priests
in dark suits hurry from
the gasp of openings past
pilgrims who have come
only to gape and wonder.

In glittering basements, a honeycomb of passageways throbs
to the sting of stilettos. Pulses of grey suited workers seek
out lunch, perch on high stools in spot lit cells, drink wine.
All they need is here. All they need to protect.

Ilse Pedler

there are landmines in Lagos

dcarlaw — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 12:25:40 +0000

it’s 05:30 and Eko misted
periwinkle blue with excess dawn,
already grovels ahead — stretching
out into a steamy mirage

cars shift like clouds, conversing
in honks and angry pointers
sudden like lightning flash;
mufflers puff —
continuous incense to God:
a prayer for a thousand reasons
not to die en-route Golgotha

who doesn’t carve a new home
on the sprawling asphalt?
i find love again, but in Lacasera;
and shrink in pity at a crippled raconteur
trying to sell his music album

Lagos goes slow at night
like a python that’s eaten too much.
the madness loosens at 11th hour
you cannot beat time in Lagos

this home is not unbroken.
she hums of government betrayal:
deadly potholes
like landmines on a battlefield;
and when our Danfo is done
escaping the clogged thoroughfare,
a belle buried in her job-hunt
documents screamed
how did that Micra beat you?
to the rebuke of a septuagenarian:
son of man, home is running nowhere.

Eko - (Lagos) A busy city in Western Nigeria.

Lacasera – a beverage popularly hawked on streets in traffic situations.

Danfo – a popular Lagos commercial bus.

Micra – a small commercial model of Nissan Vehicles.

O-Jeremiah Agbaakin

Giarre

dcarlaw — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 12:03:06 +0000

One summer long ago, I took the train to the town of Giarre, between Taormina and Catania. Climbed the green slopes of Mount Etna. Picked cactus pear beset with spines, armed with glochids, growing, coral, on rocks.

I walked through an alley of cypresses by the winding cemetery road. I told you of things, you had often asked. About the sirocco blood rain, red dust-laden wind of the Sahara desert. The island off the tip of the boot. I stacked words into lines. Arid, semiarid subtropical. Cerulean Ionian Sea. Azure skies. And I told you how I learned to love its heat, that summer long ago,

learned to love its tile-roofed houses. Colour of ochre yellow limestone. Shuttered windows and balconies. The odour of deep-fried arancini, stuffed rice balls, wafting through. Zesty lemon granita. How I bargained a souvenir, a wheel thrown pottery water jug, decorated with scarlet roses. And learned that “bedda” means beautiful. In summers long ago,

ebb tide in the sand

receding from the shoreline

orange full moon

Ilona Martonfi

A Bus Ride

dcarlaw — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 11:55:44 +0000

It was an evening of grey sky
with the sun scything through the bland
thickness of cloud — the overhang
of jealous autumn preventing
summer from returning. Nothing
exceptional, about this bus
ride, except that instead of
riding upstairs I sat downstairs,
traffic side, by the window, where
a shopper from Clery’s and Arnotts

demanded gangway as she plonked
herself beside me. I regretted
my choice of seating, wishing for
the cigarette and evening-paper
men upstairs. But I dared not ask
her to move, shift all her baggage,
risk the evil glare — fear had me
a prisoner. Then, we were halfway
up North Strand, a laneway I had
never noticed before between

a hardware shop and an Italian
fish & chip, a narrow laneway
which seemed to rise toward a cottage,
two windows either side of an
opened half-door and an elderly
woman waited, smiling with
unabashed delight at a girl
walking toward her. A girl, my age,
fourteen, maybe younger, her face
shadowed by evening burnished hair;
The sun still sheening upon her.

Jimmy O’Connell

Interlude

dcarlaw — Mon, 29 Jan 2018 11:49:19 +0000

Cracked sidewalk outside the book depository,
Elm and Houston, Saturday morning:
boots and Stetsons stride, purposeful
leather attachés clutched, or mosey past
in Levis and pearl-buttons. Long-legged women,
tall boots and short skirts, brush back
blond hair unbound and blowing free.
Ah, Dallas. Diamond-studded Buckle
on the Bible Belt.

Families with kids wound tight as yo-yos,
teens on skateboards, all species of tourist
immersed in brochures, cameras, and phones,
step from the curb to a cacophony:
shrieking brakes, clamorous horns.
Babel of language. Pointing fingers.
A lone figure stakes out a red brick wall
weaves blues; guitar case yawns. Small sign
reads Wounded Warrior. Head bowed
over twelve strings, he nods, keeps time,
sings a chorus, sometimes riffs a phrase,
lets fingers spark melodies fluid as mist rising
from rain-damp walkways, to wend among boots,
sneakers, sandals; encircle broad shoulders,
narrow waists; slip into unheeding ears.
Folks pause, rapt, as he wails, open-throated,
into mid-day.

A man in Dockers tosses change;
woman in polka dots rummages her handbag.
Crowd digs deep into purses and pockets -
This guy is good! Folks are smiling, swaying,
tapping toes. Stevie Ray medley complete,
the guitarist scoops change, folds bills,
snaps the guitar in its case, slings it
over his shoulder, slips into a braced crutch,
and exits to standing ovation.

Ann Howells