Review of Gwil James Thomas ‘love is a burning church, cleansed by welcomed rain’ (Clair ObscurZine, Yorksire UK, 2024 (18 pages).

 

Thomas is a small press Bristol poet who has previously published several chapbooks, including his latest  ‘What We Do, They Will Never Understand- a split chap with scumbag press guru Martin Appleby (@twokeycustoms) and a second collection of poems The P45 Power Ballad(@yellowkingpress).

 

Thomas’ poetry is typically free verse confessional, highly accessible  and remarkably free of literary bullshit. 

 

The chap is A5 in size, saddle stitched on recycled paper and handmade by the publisher in Yorkshire, UK. The layout and graphics which accompany the poems add to the pleasure of your read. The chap is limited to 30 numbered copies.

 

Some of the poems in this small chap have previously appeared in publications such as As it Ought To Be Magazine, Expat Press and in Back Patio Press.

 

The common theme of the chap is that of change. The persona of the poems, presumably Thomas, often narrates everyday situations which prompt him to make important personal observations and realisations.  

 

In the poem ‘Return of an Ex’, Thomas, comes across an ex girlfriend in a grocery store and humorously reminisces about their youthful relationship. He realises they both have shed their previous selves and he is “glad that the boy I once was had long since gone”:

 

Return of an Ex. 

 

It’d been years since she’d even crossed my mind 

and then suddenly she’d appeared in front of me, 

in the frozen foods section of Lidl - 

we caught up and she told me about 

her husband and her son and I told her about 

the cities that I’d lived in over the years. 

 

It was clear that the girl I’d once known had gone,

but as she talked some memories came back to me - 

like the time that I picked her up in my old banger, 

after I’d spontaneously spray painted 

the word KILL across the bonnet 

and how to my surprise she’d found it hilarious, 

or the way that the radiator by her bed 

would shudder when we’d have sex, 

or how I learnt to play songs on the guitar 

by bands that I’d hated and she’d adored, 

or of the evening that she’d left me and the pain 

that I’d dragged out trying to get over her 

and how one day that had just disappeared, 

like our youth and there was something wonderful, 

horrible and fucking stupid about it all.

 

Eventually, we said so long again and I paid 

for my shopping and wandered back to my car, 

where I stopped and glanced at the clean bonnet - 

glad that the boy I once was had long since gone, 

even if I was going to buy a can of spray paint 

on my ride home.

 

(poems in this post are published with the permission of the writer)

 

In the poem ‘Change?’ he meets a girl at a bar through some friends.  The following afternoon he opens a window and senses hope amongst his brokenness:

 

 

Change?

 

She’d arrived as unannounced, 

as love and disaster -

a beautiful Welsh, Italian girl, 

a friend of some friends. 

From the cow eyed glances 

at the bar when no one was watching, 

to the extended touches nobody noticed - 

I knew the script well enough and once 

the drugs and alcohol drowned out 

any inhibitions, we’d left to our 

poor excuses.

The script flipped back at my flat 

and instead of passing out all fucked up, 

or jumping one another’s bones, 

we’d talked and she told me about 

a pain inside that was hard to explain 

and despite her youth, career and looks, 

against all of my lack of, 

I knew then that she was broken 

in the same way that I was -

yet, to laughter and sunrise, 

we’d shelved suicide, 

before her lips met mine 

and we’d stripped, whilst a fresh day 

had unfolded outside. 

Alone, the following afternoon, 

amongst my room’s familiar decor 

and its fluttering moths, 

I’d opened the windows to the bipolar weather -

I wasn’t even sure if I’d see her again, 

but something in me longed for change

and for the first time in a long time, 

I felt the truest smile fall onto my face -

realising, that I’d finally felt 

something.

 

These are deeply personal, well crafted poems. As Thomas describes in these poems, change may be traumatic but it is also an inevitable and regenerative part of life. 

 

Buy the chap here: https://clairobscurzine.bigcartel.com/product/love-is-a-burning-church-cleansed-by-welcomed-rain-by-gwil-james-thomas

 

Latest Releases: Holy & Intoxicated Publications (2022-2023)

pete donohue: new midnight sky (2023) Front cover John D. Robinson

 

There is a great variety of poems amongst the 15 in this chap by the UK poet Pete Donohue. In the opening titled poem, ‘new midnight sky’ Donohue creatively humps the alphabet through an enlivened statue to reveal a sense of hope at the bottom of his spun-out barrel:

 

new midnight sky

 

one illuminated evening

this statue sheds its stasis

becomes alive again

for reasons only known

to herself

bending burnt spoons

between those bony thighs

into impossible re-use

like rusting cars crushed

at the local breaker’s yard

she crunches up syringes

with rotten gappy teeth

behind thin blooded lips

& spits out fragile shards

to form nascent stars of hope

surrounding a gibbous moon

the frolicking humpback mother

spread out across the canopy

as warm protective blanket

in her new midnight sky.

 

I dig best Donohue’s cast of wayward souls represented in his character poems. The personified ‘erotic wine’ bottle is a classic study in minimalism.Cheerful too is ‘stylish annabella’:

 

she wears tight woollen dresses

hair shirts in black

never any underwear

between those & skin

 

sharing every outline

of bony flesh

to the judgemental

naked to all

 

Best in the collection is perhaps ‘psychobilly baby’. I like how Donohue telescopes time and compresses images in this tragic, character study:

 

psychobilly baby

 

he never smoked hash with us

told us he didn’t like the way

it made him feel

or think

said he had a small habit

with smack

but was on top of it

his mother & sister

died in a car crash

when he was younger

he wouldn’t speak about it

we admired his drape jackets

& the way he walked through the night

all over london

loaded up on speed

he printed a mean silkscreen

fashioned wax in a candle shop

when we eventually found him

in his shepherd’s bush basement

he had been dead three days

the needle limp in his arm

i lit one of his candles.

 

Gwil James Thomas: Gold Chains Around Our Necks, Hellhounds At Our Heels (2022) 22 pages

 Thomas lives in Bristol but some of his best work draws on his years in Spain. There are 20 poems in this chap, including 3 haikus, some of which have previously appeared in small, alternative publications such as Terror House Magazine, Rye The Whiskey Review, Expat Press, The Bees Are Dead and others.  His poetry characteristically is free verse, narrative and confessional in style. These are honest, original one-off poems, wrought out of the beautiful but sometimes fucked up cauldron we call life.

 

Here are two of my favourites from the collection. Posted with the permission of the publisher. Click to enlarge:

Gwil James Thomas is a novelist, poet and inept musician. He lives in his hometown of Bristol, England but has also lived in London, Brighton and Spain. He has twice been nominated for The Best of The Net and once for The Pushcart Prize. He has worked as a labourer, a chef, an aeroplane cleaner, a product sales demonstrator, a freelance writer, a dishwasher and a news article archivist. In 2022 he also published two other poetry chapbooks - Part English, Part Welsh, Part Wolf (Scumbag Press) and The Labourer Poems (Hickathrift Press). He plans to one day build a house amongst other things.

 

  

 

The Woman Who Loved Floppy Hats (14 pages) 

John D. Robinson (words) & Danny D. Ford (illustrations)

 

This is a hilarious, explicit romp into a young woman’s bedroom antics and her peculiar sexual hat fetish. The story is clearly told and unfolds in an interesting and highly entertaining way.

 

Danny D. Ford’s four illustrations add humour and bonk to Robinson’s inventive frolic. 

 

The short story first appeared in the e-zine ‘Horror Sleaze Trash’ and was later published in Robinson’s collection The Dirty Sacrifice & Other Stories (Alien Buddha Press, 2021).

 

The story begins simply and graphically and entices the reader to continue:

 

Loretta Blissful was a very attractive and sexy twenty-seven-year-old and had an untamed and insatiable appetite for the opposite sex. She had been married and divorced nine times; a commitment to just one man was impossible for her. 

One man was never enough. 

Loretta liked to think of herself as a sexual vampire with an unquenchable thirst for cock. No matter how deeply Loretta’s love for each of her nine husbands, she could simply not resist the urge, the opportunities, the lust to pursue other men for sexual conquests and adventures. She simply could not help herself; her passion was her demon and she loved her demon well.

MORE TO FOLLOW

 

 

New Poems: Gwil James Thomas

 

The Disentangling. 

This poem is about 

putting the past 

aside, 

welcoming you 

with open arms, 

whilst hiding 

the switchblade 

and thrusting it 

into your soft 

underbelly -

no really 

this poem is about 

the day I die, 

but in truth 

how each day 

on earth was a gift, 

yet when it comes 

down to it

this poem 

is about marking 

something mundane 

within the quotidian, 

like eating rice crackers 

whilst doing the laundry, 

which is really just 

to distract us all from 

the fact that this poem 

exists in a confusing 

and expanding 

universe - 

then again this 

poem is about you 

finding something 

in these lines -

some chunk of my flesh 

to take home with you, 

missing all that I left 

hiding in plain sight, 

as you fumble 

in the dark for the key, 

unaware that this poem

has already finished. 

The Bottomless Brunch.

One dish,  

and as much 

as you wanted 

to drink 

in two hours -

which soon 

became a race 

between us

to get as pissed

as humanly possible. 

In the end 

we all succeeded 

and drunk as lords,

we’d staggered back

to our homes - 

ready for bed

by lunchtime.

Young ‘n’ Dumb. 

15 years old back in school, 

between the raging hormones, 

black eyes, skipped classes, 

shitty grades, sampled cigarettes,

prophecies of an already 

broken future, 

self loathing and doubt – 

the new hardline headteacher 

sat me down, after I’d shaved 

a mohawk into my hair

with my mum’s hair clippers

the night before and told me

that I was going to be 

suspended for my new hairdo.

‘Most people in this world are 

stupid people pretending 

to be smart, but for some reason 

it’s like you’ve chosen to be 

the exact opposite in life,’ she said. 

I listened, but was far more 

interested in the magpies fighting 

over a chip butty outside, 

and sometimes I want to return 

to that time, 

to feel as free as those magpies

through that window, 

young and dumb again -

instead of now where I’m mostly 

and even blissfully, just the latter.

B I O  :

Gwil James Thomas is a poet, novelist and inept musician. He lives in his home town of Bristol, England but has also lived in London, Brighton and Spain. His most recent poetry chapbooks are Part English, Part Welsh, Part Wolf (Scumbag Press) and The Labourer Poems (Hickathrift Press). His poetry was also recently featured in the Songs From The Underground anthology (East London Press) alongside the likes of Li-Po, Charles Bukowski, William Blake, Lord Byron, John King, Richard Brautigan, Valarie Solanas, Marquis De Sade, Mark SaFranko and Jospeh Ridgwell. His poetry chapbook Gold Chains Around our Necks, Hellhounds at our Heels is forthcoming from Holy & Intoxicated Publications.

New Release: Gwil James Thomas- Lonesome Wholesome Soup (Holy & Intoxicated Publications, 2021)

This is the latest release from John D. Robinson’s Holy & Intoxicated Publications. Gwil James Thomas is an English poet. Here is a sample poem from the chapbook:

 

 

Blend.

 

I was the grey hair 

on the baby’s head, 

the ugly Casanova, 

the bug that traded 

his wings for feelings 

and wished he could 

trade them back, 

the herd’s first 

carnivorous cow, 

the vegan piranha,   

the one who got you 

back on your feet 

and then the one 

you left behind,

the sheep 

in wolf’s clothing, 

the ghost of all that 

was and ever will be,

never blending into 

the crowd –

even when 

I tried.

 

 

Buy the chap here direct from the poet: gwiljamesthomas@gmail.com

 

 

From the back cover:

“Gwil James Thomas’ latest collection Lonesome Wholesome Soup is  exactly what poetry should be: humble reflections of the past, present, and  unwritten future, coupled with straight punches to the heart. The first poem  finds Gwil wandering with a cheap bottle of cerveza and ‘a poem always in  my heart –/but rarely there when I need it most/on the tip of my tongue.’  This sets the tone for all 12 poems collected here. Lonesome Wholesome  Soup is a wonderful collection of poetry that leaves the reader reflecting on  their entire life, while begging for more.” – Tohm Bakelas: poet.

Gwil James Thomas writes with a rare thing- a pen that is dipped in honest blood. Raw, reflective, sometimes brutal or uncomfortable, these are not pretty poems. What they are is more and better than that. They make us confront the truth, ourselves and the dark shadows in between and that can only be a good thing. That is what poetry should do and thomas does it as well as any of them. I read Thomas' poetry whenever I can - so should you. Adrian Manning:Poet:Publisher: Concrete Meat Press

Featuring Gwil James Thomas

19.04.2020. 

 Through 

a lightly 

 smudged 

windowpane - 

 a Japanese 

Magnolia Tree. 

Its blossom 

 twisting 

in the wind - 

 as my eyes 

follow 

 the trails, 

until 

 I become 

the 

 blossom -

slowly 

 drifting 

up 

 into 

the 

 lilac dusk. 

There are Some Poems. 

That can only be written 

feverishly on the spot, 

with everything fucking dropped - 

catching the poem off guard 

before it can resist, 

or be overworked - 

as you break in through the backdoor 

blasting it in the cranium

with the sawn off shotgun -

raiding it for every 

word and syllable you can find 

and leaving before the blood 

can drip back down 

from the ceiling - 

never once looking back.

Catalonian Bread 

You turned off the TV 

that was broadcasting  

bad news in Spanish,

before olive oil dripped 

from my toast slice 

and landed perfectly 

by my crotch, 

like some suggestive stain 

on my freshly washed 

pale jeans - 

as I then looked up to see 

you eating with elegance 

and intimidating beauty.

‘It’s fucking delicious,’ 

I said, taking another bite 

of the lunch you’d prepared - 

‘Please, it’s only toast, 

tomato, garlic and olive oil,’ 

you replied 

‘It’s way more than that,’ 

I added, 

which sounded stupid 

the second that it left

my mouth - 

but you just smiled at me 

across that table - 

still leaving me feeling 

like I was at a royal banquet, 

even if I’d only ever be 

a fleeting king.

The First Job I Ever Had. 

Working full time as a dishwasher 

in a cafe that had once been a public toilet 

with a stressed, but fair Turkish boss, 

a barista that always joked that if he’d 

won the lottery he’d buy the cafe 

and turn it back into a public toilet, 

a chef that’d blast Cannibal Corpse 

whilst angrily pressing paninis,

a waitress that I never quite knew - 

but whose kind face I still remember 

and on Saturdays, an old ex crook 

named Pot Wash Paul who’d help me dish 

as he’d become the bard of the dish pit -

telling me his burglary stories, 

followed by his prison stories and 

that all this world ever came down to 

was crooks and victims and at some point 

we all had to choose between the two - 

before they fired him for talking too much 

and I’d always wonder how I’d look back 

at my time in that greasy kitchen years on, 

but in truth I remember little -  

other than it wasn’t the best job,

nor the worst,

but it was the first of many that I’d take, 

moonlighting for the love 

of this strange art.

Gwil James Thomas is a poet, novelist and inept musician, whose written work can be found widely in print and also online. His sixth poetry chapbook Cocoon Transitions can be found here https://analogsubmission.com/chapbooks/gwiljamesthomas-cocoontransitions

Find more work by Gwil James Thomas on BM here:  https://georgedanderson.blogspot.com/2019/09/featuring-gwil-james-thomas.html

4 New Releases (2019) Holy & Intoxicated Publications (UK)

In 2019 John D Robinson of Holy & Intoxicated Publications has released 19 chapbooks by some of the best small alternative press writers in the English speaking world. Here are his last 4 of the year:

Tom Bakelas- No Place To Be

These are poems about mental illness and underclass life from a bloke who has worked in the industry for decades. Bakelas blurs the line between the patient and administrator, moving seamlessly between first and third person. Cover art by John D. Robinson.

Tin Foil

​​

most people i've met 

don't wear tin foil hats 

when completely psychotic

that is a fantasy of some

shit sucking hollywood exec

in hospitals, in streets,

in homes, in jails…

i've never met one 

who wore a tin foil hat

a few years back

i smoked some hashish with 

thirteen books of matches —

i didn't have a lighter—

i went to the pantry

found the foil

constructed an army grade helmet

affixed it to my skull

and felt truly powerful and free

no gamma rays, delta rays,

x-rays, and/or radio waves

were going to get me

as i stood admiring my tin foil hat

in the reflection of the bathroom mirror

i heard a knock on the front door

i ran into the pantry

shut off the light

and simply waited for it to pass.

porch swing

it was 2:30pm when I got there

she sat on her mother’s porch

smoking a cigarette 

she had been awake since 9am

and started drinking vodka around 11am

she told me she needed help 

finding a screw or a nail

to hang something on the wall

the smell of vodka on her breath

turned me on

something about vodka and beer

on a woman’s breath

does that 

she wasn’t wearing any makeup

i said she looked pretty

she told me she cried it all off

the night before

when we couldn’t find a nail

i sat with her 

rocking back-and-forth

in a swing that

hung from the porch ceiling

when she stopped smoking

she wrapped her arms around me

there was no more talking

the creaking chair spoke loud enough

this continued on for some time

after i left

she found a nail

and hung her painting on the wall

on the drive home 

i thought

sometimes we need that 

sometimes we need to simply be

we need quiet afternoons 

with someone 

even if no words are shared

sometimes it’s what 

keeps us

from suicide

or worse

sometimes it’s what

leads us 

there.

(all poems in this article are posted with the permission of the publisher)

What people have said about Tom Bakelas's No Place To Be:

Treading within the shadows of suburban tarmac, into a vanishing point that disappears upon each realisation that, there is No Place To Be. Tohm Bakelas finds a strange and confusing state between hope and isolation, where optimism decays in the perception of itself as a driving force to survive. A perception that is ever-present in our dead-end society. 

Lucy Wilkinson: editor/publisher of Death of Workers Whilst Building Skyscrapers Press

Bakelas finds the poems hiding in the quotidian, either skinning them alive to get to their core – or by picking them up and cradling them with a distinct tenderness. Although he maintains a strong voice when he hands these poems over to us, Bakelas does so in a way that takes a step back – allowing us to truly examine something and in turn even ourselves. No Place To Be acts as a taster menu for anyone not yet familiar with Bakelas work, or a much needed fix for anyone that’s been left craving for more.

Gwil James Thomas: poet, writer and inept musician. 

It takes a special set of qualities to understand & champion the needs of those struggling with mental illness. Poets often possess these by nature. This poet has them in spades. Tohm Bakelas lives inside the heads of some of our most troubled brothers & sisters. People simply trying to get along in an over-complicated world. & From his own head come observations & imaginations. Some sweet. Some tragic. Always with empathy. Ever with dignity. If poetry is about opening doors onto the deep reality of who we are as a society & how some of us can be cast without care into turmoil, through no fault of our own, then Tohm Bakelas has nailed it in this collection. –

 Pete Donohue: poet

Gwil James Thomas- In The Barrel Of A Beautiful Wave

Gwil James Thomas includes 14 poems in this collection. The poems are reflective and sometimes have a symbolic or extended metaphoric edge to them. Cover art by John D. Robinson.

The Stag Beetle Song.

I noticed him at the bus stop by the park,

this gentle giant crawling over the road

courageously making his way across 

the unforgiving asphalt – 

holding his jaws to the sky 

with a slow and sure determination 

not once stopping as the vehicle wheels

sped past like randomly fired bullets 

missing him by centimetres each time -

yet miraculously 

the stag beetle made it 

to the other side of the road unscathed, 

as he paused on the adjacent pavement 

and hobbled off out of sight.

What had made him risk life and limb?

Surely, he had all a stag beetle wanted 

back in that park? I pondered –

until I remembered a time that I crawled 

across hell and back for someone 

giving everything I had 

and hoping that was enough 

like a dumb and desperate 

stag beetle in love. 

Stock Car Racers.

An early memory –

under a blood red sky

on a rare late

Saturday afternoon

where my dad was present,

we sat in a 

dilapidated racecourse.

Stock car racers

 tore

around the track –

 twisted

metal

 and

skid

 marks

everywhere.

The weekend warrior

stock car racers

kept their hands gripped

to the wheel,

finding some glorious 

and gregarious escape

from whatever it was 

they did between 

Monday and the track –

as it was for us 

sat on the grass sprouted 

coliseum like steps –

a strange 

sort of 

beauty.

 Bio: Gwil James Thomas is a poet, novelist and inept musician originally from Bristol, England. His written work can be found widely in print and also online. He is the author of the poetry chapbooks: Gwil Vs Machine (Paper & Ink), Hidden Icons & Secret Menus (Analog Submission Press), Romance, Renegades & Riots - W/John D Robinson (Analog Submission Press) and Writing Beer, Drinking Poetry (Concrete Meat Press). Other work can be found widely in print and also online. He was also once a member of the Spanish/British band Irreparables (Nominal Records). He currently lives in San Sebastián, Northern Spain. 

A Blurb about the chap: “Gwil shoots from the hip and pours out barrels of heart onto each page of this new collection. His unique and nuanced perspective will make you want to read each poem again and again. Gwil's writing continues to get stronger and stronger and this is another great addition to what is becoming a fantastic bibliography of work."  

Martin Appleby, Editor of Paper & Ink Literary Zine

Catfish McDaris- Magic Coyote Rain Dance

Front and back covers by the legendary Marcel Herms (clink on to enlarge).

It’s difficult to describe Catfish’s original absurd mayhem on the page. His opening poem "Go Pound Sand" and its intricate word play, free-flowing associations and allusions will give you a blink of an idea of what he does (click on the poem to enlarge):

The best in this chap is his epic poem “The Day van Gogh Died” (from Chiron Review, Issue #74, Spring 2004) and the late great Todd Moore’s review of it (The Hold, June 2004 and The Outlaw Poetry Network).  Also of significant cultural note is Catfish's illustrated short story “Tiger Skin undies” (click on image to enlarge).

Kevin Tosca- Paris by Night

Tosca includes ten short stories in this chap, including seven which were previously published in The Frogmore Papers, The Interpreter’s House, The Broken Plate, Mojave River Review and Otoliths. Despite the romantic associations of the title these are dark, satirical takes on France as a tourist destination especially after the 2015 terrorist attacks on the offices of Charlie Hebdo and on the Bataadan Theatre in Paris. Similar to Ted Hughes’s poem “My Paris”, Tosca grimly exposes the underbelly of the city beneath its tourist façade.

The striking opening short story with the ironic title "Progress" peels away the surface to reveal the political undertones of world realities. Click on to enlarge:

Best of the short stories include “War Drums” and the titular “Paris by Night” in which Tosca satirises the best selling but insipid travelogues of France aimed at well-healed American tourists. 

Tosca’s collection of short stories is certainly amongst the best of the work published by Holy & Intoxicated Publications since its inception.

 Interview with John D. Robinson- PunkAndPoetryPodcast- Episode 2

Zine editor and poet Martin Appleby (of Paper and Ink), interviews poet, writer and publisher John Robinson (of Holy&Intoxicated Publications).  Robinson talks about alcohol & writing, his writing process, his Holy & Intoxicated Publications and what to expect from him in 2020. Find the postcast here (11:04-26:43m): https://soundcloud.com/punkandpoetrypodcast/punk-and-poetry-podcast-002

See also recent updated interview of John D Robinson by Catfish McDaris: http://ppigpenn.blogspot.com

For more information about the books contact publisher John D. Robinson here: johndrobinson@yahoo.co.uk