Valerie Laws, infamous for attracting Arts Council funding to spray-paint poetry on sheep, is always keen to break down the boundaries of science, art, literature, such as with her commissioned computer-controlled electroluminescent poems on St Thomas’ Hospital windows.  In 2006 she won the Northern Writer’s Award for current project, forensic/pathology poetry collaborating with artist Susan Aldworth.  She is the 2006 Ilkley Literature Festival Poet in Residence. Her previous collections are: Moonbathing (Peterloo Poets, 2003), For Crying Out Loud (with Kitty Fitzgerald, Iron, 1994), Star Trek – the Poems (ed/compiled, Iron, 2000), & Hadaway (Iron, 2003), one of her six commissioned /performed plays.  She won the Northern Promise Award for first crime novel, The Rotting Spot.  She is a disabled mathematician, creative writing tutor, and fanatical swimmer.

‘The poem “I didn't want to do it” is just right – no quibbles possible.  You've made me see Hadrian’s Wall in a new way, and that's what poetry does.’  U.A.Fanthorpe on ‘I didn’t want to do it’ in Moonbathing

‘Well-shaped poems with rich imagery . . .   wrily funny . . . vulnerability and readiness to express emotions.  If the job of the poet is to keep the reader intelligently entertained, this book succeeds admirably.’  Pennine Platform


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The Sound of No Music

In life there is no music
To warn us of danger,
Or sudden love. No strings
Start sobbing, no shark-attack
Knife beats, no gothic
Heart-clutching crescendo

ell us, don’t go down those stairs!
The shocks
Of burglar in your bedroom, metal
Railing through your chest, bus
Driving through your car, all
Happen, like sudden joy,
To totally inappropriate soundtracks
Or none at all. Blackbirds practise
Their phrasing, soap operas bleat,
A toilet flushes, as our life changes
Or ends, as we think, more
Than our pre-cinema ancestors did,
How, how can this happen, and to me?
 

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QUANTUM SHEEP
Price £7.95 per copy (£5.17 to Associate Members) post free
Cover illustration: Peter Kinley, Four Sheep, 1970 © TATE, LONDON 2006
Publication: AUTUMN 2006 – paperback edition.