Hardcore
(Ek Zuban) 2006
Angela Readman and Tapani Kinnunen

Hardcore is a pamphlet which came out in February 2006 as part of Ek Zuban publishing a series of pamphlets of Finnish and English poets involved with the Flesh of the Bear exchange. Each pamphlet publishes two poets, a Finn poet and an English poet, (containing a total of twenty poems, ten by each poet in both English and Finnish.) I was delighted to be asked to do this by Bob Beagrie and Andy Willoughby, although I was somewhat terrified at the prospect of being paired with Tapani (because he is a very good poet, and very well respected in Finland where he has had 5 collections published.) Times like this make me feel a bit of a YTS poet, and I suffered over my work, will it be good enough next to Tapani’s?

This is one of the beauties of the project, poets try new things and take their work to the next level. I ended up writing about 20 new poems for the ten I needed for the pamphlet, and let the editors decide which they wanted to use (because I hadn’t seen Tapani’s poems.) The poems I wrote for Hardcore felt very different to my work in Sex with Elvis, in that they are pared down, and quite simple. I think I was writing very much with the knowledge that these poems would have to be translated, and also was reacting against the process of writing Sex with Elvis (in which I developed themes which were explored in more than one poem, and had a number of sequence poems.) I feel as if Hardcore is a very bold publication and the beginning of my work heading in a certain direction, and some of the poems in it seem a lot more open and express a vulnerability that isn’t in some of my other work.

My favourite poems in Hardcore are: Breakfast at Turku, Vampires

My favourite poem of my own in Hardcore is: Tom and Jerry Transaction

Poem I most like to read in Hardcore is: Spank.

Tom and Jerry Transaction

The day I started nursery
I wore Tom and Jerry pants
with a bow like birthdays on the front.

I experienced first popularity
as boys queued and asked to read the comic strip
under my slip. One offered half a Mars bar
and I lifted my skirt.

It was the same day
I found a bird, dead on the doorstep.
Sat on the path with legs crossed,
The cold on my lap, blinking,
Silently opening
and closing its wing.

My mother lifted me onto the counter,
Gouged eyes from potatoes, and asked
What I had learnt at school,
and all I could say was something.

Angela Readman (Hardcore)

The Vampires

“There is a vampire
living under
mom and dad’s bed”,
my daughter
says seriously.
I kneel on the floor
and say, “Nobody
lives there”.
“At night I
feel like it”, she
continues,
“sometimes I hear
loud screams.”
I think about the marks
on my wife’s neck
with a new perspective.

Tapani Kinnunen (Hardcore)

www.ekzuban.co.uk/publications