Some days I wake up as Kafka waking
up as a man up as a son up as a bug
up as a country, which though changed
into some unrecognisable scurrying,
idles in the space it grew up in
unable to leave and with no one
willing to kill it, or look it in the eye
or caress one of its long antennae.
Some days all I hear is the hateful buzz
of its sweet luminous wings.

This poem introduces the character Ichabod Storm Trouper, a composite personification of Revolutionary War era America with 1970s George Lucas blockbusterisation of Hollywood. He appears throughout the collection of poems California Sweet, someday forthcoming, in which this poem is a part of.

There’s a striking immediacy to Stephanie’s poetry, a visceral, playful force.

Inspired by formations found in the natural world, Dave Drayton created his conceptual series, Waterfalls – a visual and textual feast.