About David Chorlton
My parents happened to be in Spittal-an-der-Drau, Austria, when my time to be born was due. With family on
my father’s side in Manchester and on my mother’s in Vienna, I grew up in the north of England with
occasional trips to Austria that opened up my awareness of that country. After I left school at age sixteen, I
spent two boring years working in an insurance office, followed by three studying graphic design. For four
years I worked in graphics in Manchester, then gave in to the pull of Vienna and moved there in 1971.
During the seven years I spent there I began painting seriously and made my first attempts at poetry,
encouraged by an English-speaking poetry workshop group that met and eventually gave a few public
readings. After marrying Roberta, a violinist from Arizona, and much indecision we decided on moving to
Phoenix.
I have, at various times since moving here, been involved in promoting Early Music, protesting wars, arguing
for animal rights, editing a magazine (The Signal with Joan Silva), giving dramatic readings (together with
musicians including Roberta), teaching a weekly creative writing class, and looking after our own cats, birds,
and more recently, a Jack Russell terrier. The wild animals around us and the Southwest landscape intrigued
me from my first exposure to it, but the years spent here have changed my relationship with nature and
much of my writing reflects this. In 2007 a collection of poems, The Porous Desert, appears from
FutureCycle, and Waiting for the Quetzal, with more poems focusing on place came out in 2006 from March
Street Press.
My paintings, largely in watercolour with pastel, have been shown at local galleries and in a one-man show in
1991 at Chandler Centre for the Arts. More recently I have enjoyed taking acrylics outdoors to paint simple
landscapes.
Small press magazines have published a lot of my work, both on paper and online. Other collections
featuring poems on varied themes include:
2004 Return to Waking Life (Main Street Rag Publishing Company)
2003 A Normal Day Amazes Us (Kings Estate Press)
1994 Outposts (Taxus Press, UK)
1992 Forget the Country You Came From (Singular Street Press)
and chapbooks:
2006 Places You Can’t Reach (Pudding House Chapbook Contest Winner)
2005 Another Word (Pudding House Publications)
2001 Common Sightings (Palanquin Press Chapbook Contest winner)
2000 Greatest Hits 1980 – 2000 (Pudding House Publications)
2000 Assimilation (Main Street Rag Chapbook Contest winner)
1997 Getting Across (Modest Proposal)
1997 Country of Two Seasons (Pudding House Chapbook Contest winner)
1994 The Insomniacs (Slipstream Chapbook Contest winner)
1994 The Epistemological Question Mark (March Street Press)
1990 Measuring Time (Trout Creek Press)
1990 The Village Painters (Adastra Press)
My parents happened to be in Spittal-an-der-Drau, Austria, when my time to be born was due. With family on
my father’s side in Manchester and on my mother’s in Vienna, I grew up in the north of England with
occasional trips to Austria that opened up my awareness of that country. After I left school at age sixteen, I
spent two boring years working in an insurance office, followed by three studying graphic design. For four
years I worked in graphics in Manchester, then gave in to the pull of Vienna and moved there in 1971.
During the seven years I spent there I began painting seriously and made my first attempts at poetry,
encouraged by an English-speaking poetry workshop group that met and eventually gave a few public
readings. After marrying Roberta, a violinist from Arizona, and much indecision we decided on moving to
Phoenix.
I have, at various times since moving here, been involved in promoting Early Music, protesting wars, arguing
for animal rights, editing a magazine (The Signal with Joan Silva), giving dramatic readings (together with
musicians including Roberta), teaching a weekly creative writing class, and looking after our own cats, birds,
and more recently, a Jack Russell terrier. The wild animals around us and the Southwest landscape intrigued
me from my first exposure to it, but the years spent here have changed my relationship with nature and
much of my writing reflects this. In 2007 a collection of poems, The Porous Desert, appears from
FutureCycle, and Waiting for the Quetzal, with more poems focusing on place came out in 2006 from March
Street Press.
My paintings, largely in watercolour with pastel, have been shown at local galleries and in a one-man show in
1991 at Chandler Centre for the Arts. More recently I have enjoyed taking acrylics outdoors to paint simple
landscapes.
Small press magazines have published a lot of my work, both on paper and online. Other collections
featuring poems on varied themes include:
2004 Return to Waking Life (Main Street Rag Publishing Company)
2003 A Normal Day Amazes Us (Kings Estate Press)
1994 Outposts (Taxus Press, UK)
1992 Forget the Country You Came From (Singular Street Press)
and chapbooks:
2006 Places You Can’t Reach (Pudding House Chapbook Contest Winner)
2005 Another Word (Pudding House Publications)
2001 Common Sightings (Palanquin Press Chapbook Contest winner)
2000 Greatest Hits 1980 – 2000 (Pudding House Publications)
2000 Assimilation (Main Street Rag Chapbook Contest winner)
1997 Getting Across (Modest Proposal)
1997 Country of Two Seasons (Pudding House Chapbook Contest winner)
1994 The Insomniacs (Slipstream Chapbook Contest winner)
1994 The Epistemological Question Mark (March Street Press)
1990 Measuring Time (Trout Creek Press)
1990 The Village Painters (Adastra Press)
Spring Light
After winter incubation in the stem
a red flourish appears
at the tip of each ocotillo
that snags the scented winds
crossing the desert
in April when palo verde
swell with yellow
while the scales on a snake’s back
uncoil between blooms
that are ink during the night
and luminous by day.
The glow of thirst
washes across a rock face
overlooking riparian trees
where an oriole flashes
through the eye of a needle
sewing water to light.
And the mountains
that flow along our gaze
recede through shades of blue
until they are too slender
to hold even the roots
of the penstemon
a drop of whose scarlet travels
forever when the air is dry.
The Extinction Express
All aboard, cries the conductor,
for a journey to the end of time,
and every seat is taken
as the train pulls out of the station
while those left behind
wave handkerchiefs and weep
for what they have lost.
After the freight yards and the factories
come the outskirts of the city
and gradually the light
on dewy fields
glows from a mysterious source
as the tracks run straight
for the horizon.
On schedule, a forest burns
as the train rushes by
and the ice from a glacier
thunders in the wake
of its passing. The last of a
species lands on the signal
before it turns green
to say Pass. And the whistle
lets out a long howl
to match that of the wolves
which goes unheard by the passengers
who lean back in their seats
and pull the blinds across the windows
as the night sets in.
Borderland Interviews
Medical Examiner:
This close to the border when the sun
has had its way with the body
nobody can tell who was carrying drugs
and who was looking for a job
among the spring flowers that blossom
in the night and collapse before noon.
Police Officer:
We tell our Mexican friends
not to get into a car in Tucson
but to ride the neutral buses where the fare
is the only ID they need.
Chili Farmer:
I’d gladly hire legal workers
if they’d break their backs for me
loading freshly picked flames
into twenty-two pound sacks.
The issue is a hot potato.
Border Town Resident:
They change their clothes in the yard
at the back of my house. We can’t sleep.
My sons who work for Homeland Security
tell me how many they’ve traced
to terrorist groups while my parents
are so frail they wouldn’t survive
without the medicines they buy
when they walk across the border.
After winter incubation in the stem
a red flourish appears
at the tip of each ocotillo
that snags the scented winds
crossing the desert
in April when palo verde
swell with yellow
while the scales on a snake’s back
uncoil between blooms
that are ink during the night
and luminous by day.
The glow of thirst
washes across a rock face
overlooking riparian trees
where an oriole flashes
through the eye of a needle
sewing water to light.
And the mountains
that flow along our gaze
recede through shades of blue
until they are too slender
to hold even the roots
of the penstemon
a drop of whose scarlet travels
forever when the air is dry.
The Extinction Express
All aboard, cries the conductor,
for a journey to the end of time,
and every seat is taken
as the train pulls out of the station
while those left behind
wave handkerchiefs and weep
for what they have lost.
After the freight yards and the factories
come the outskirts of the city
and gradually the light
on dewy fields
glows from a mysterious source
as the tracks run straight
for the horizon.
On schedule, a forest burns
as the train rushes by
and the ice from a glacier
thunders in the wake
of its passing. The last of a
species lands on the signal
before it turns green
to say Pass. And the whistle
lets out a long howl
to match that of the wolves
which goes unheard by the passengers
who lean back in their seats
and pull the blinds across the windows
as the night sets in.
Borderland Interviews
Medical Examiner:
This close to the border when the sun
has had its way with the body
nobody can tell who was carrying drugs
and who was looking for a job
among the spring flowers that blossom
in the night and collapse before noon.
Police Officer:
We tell our Mexican friends
not to get into a car in Tucson
but to ride the neutral buses where the fare
is the only ID they need.
Chili Farmer:
I’d gladly hire legal workers
if they’d break their backs for me
loading freshly picked flames
into twenty-two pound sacks.
The issue is a hot potato.
Border Town Resident:
They change their clothes in the yard
at the back of my house. We can’t sleep.
My sons who work for Homeland Security
tell me how many they’ve traced
to terrorist groups while my parents
are so frail they wouldn’t survive
without the medicines they buy
when they walk across the border.
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| The Art & poetry of David Chorlton |
