“Sod the wine, I want to suck on the writing. This man White is an instinctive writer, bloody rare to find one who actually pulls it off, as in still gets a meaning across with concision. Sharp arbitrage of speed and risk, closest thing I can think of to Cicero’s ‘motus continuum animi.’

Probably takes a drink or two to connect like that: he literally paints his senses on the page.”


DBC Pierre (Vernon God Little, Ludmila’s Broken English, Lights Out In Wonderland ... Winner: Booker prize; Whitbread prize; Bollinger Wodehouse Everyman prize; James Joyce Award from the Literary & Historical Society of University College Dublin)


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14 October 2011

LET YOUR CHAIR DO THE TALKING

BAY OF SHOALS, KANGAROO ISLAND photo PHILIP WHITE
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on being seated


once fussy about where I sat
the direction I faced seemed important
so having first moved the chair
to get it pointing right
I’d follow that up with further adjustment once down

it was a matter of what needed addressing
ruled by some cool subconsciousness
a flash shard of equations
the rapid sorting machinery
delivered a sweet calm empowerment

now I find it better
to leave the chair as it stood
take to it with keen interest in the angle it has chosen
get in there with a smoke and a drink
and scour what it offered me all along

I see a better range of stuff this way


Philip White


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