Writing Inspiration: Tom Leonard

Tom Leonard was a creative writing professor at University of Glasgow until September 2009. I found this out through e-mailing him some of my work and saying I'd love to work with him. The response? The poet that has revolutionalized poetry in the last 40 years said he would have loved to work with me.

the case for lower case

by Tom Leonard

lower case posits in-the-presence-of
lower case is presence
lower case is company

lower case can jump from one proposition to another
across the page

lower case does not spurn its friends in the typesetting office
lower case may yet lean on a semi-colon for breath; on its way up the stairs

lower case listens to the voice of the people
lower case is not Edict
lower case is the kinesis of democracy

CAPITAL is stasis
Capital is closure of the business in hand
CAPITAL is the cumulation of reified density
CAPITAL has no being at its centre
CAPITAL is without breath

the CAPITALIST SENTENCE begins by setting out its Stall
the CAPITALIST SENTENCE has the subject as line-manager of the verb
the CAPITALIST SENTENCE has no room in which to move
at the end of a CAPITALIST SENTENCE the world comes to a full stop.

THE CAPITALIST SENTENCE IS A DEATH SENTENCE.

lower case gives you space to live
lower case makes peace with the living
lower case does not hide behind the toga of the Roman Empire
lower case is the swish of the skirt

hmm
always here
as natural as breathing

lower space…..lower space,…. lower space……lower space



FIN

----------------------------

Being a Human Being

by Tom Leonard

(for Mordechai Vanunu)

not to be complicit
not to accept everyone else is silent it must be alright

not to keep one's mouth shut to hold onto one's job
not to accept public language as cover and decoy

not to put friends and family before the rest of the world
not to say I am wrong when you know the government is wrong

not to be just a bought behaviour pattern
to accept the moment and fact of choice

I am a human being
and I exist

a human being
and a citizen of the world

responsible to that world
—and responsible for that world