Ghost Particles by Fred D’Aguiar

Description

Published on the day of Geoff Hardy’s memorial service 3rd September 2024

From Liz Lefroy’s foreword:

‘When I stood up and looked out across the faces looking at me…I felt afraid and said, “How do I do this?” but a voice said, “We’re all with you.”’ – Peter Roscoe, writing after Geoff Hardy’s burial, June 12th, 2024

These poems, they’re a ‘tear in the space-time continuum’. We cannot raise the dead, and yet Geoff is so close by. ‘…soul / come close / closer’, close enough to thank, as Peter did: for the memories of holding hands over the decades, and the irony of holding hands on walking around Redwood’s neighbourhood, 50 years on from Pride 1972, eliciting nothing other than normal responses…it wasn’t significant. Look, Geoff! You made it possible. Not to capture the times before psychosis, but for Fred to write the words we need to hear, though ‘I know you won’t come back’. We can, however, return again and again to these poems which are brim-full with love, articulate with memory.

Fred D’Aguiar’s previous pamphlet with Fair Acre, titled, Grace Notes was published in 2021. His most recent collection, For the Unnamed (Carcanet) and the pamphlet, Arboretum for the Hunted (Arc) were published in 2023. Born in London of Guyanese parents, he grew up in Guyana before returning to the UK. Currently, he lives in the US and teaches at UCLA.

Liz Lefroy is a British poet and organiser of the monthly event, Shrewsbury Poetry. Pretending the Weather, was winner of the 2011 Roy Fisher Prize and her most recent pamphlet, GREAT MASTER / small boy (2021) was published by Fair Acre Press.

Peter Roscoe, whose art is on the cover, is Geoff’s civil partner.