Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    North End Poems, The
    North End Poems, The
    North End Poems, The
    Ebook144 pages50 minutes

    North End Poems, The

    By Michael Knox

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    With The North End Poems, his always vivid new collection, Michael Knox has further honed his lucid, accessible style. In the tradition of The Collected Works of Billy the Kid, Michael Ondaatje’s classic book-length poem, this at once gritty and tender lyric sequence creates a desperate but surprising narrative that’s reminiscent of David Adams Richards at his very best.

    Channeling the beliefs, passions, fears, friends and fights of Nick Macfarlane, a young steeltown warehouse worker, Knox creates the kind of hardscrabble, blue collar world that exists everywhere. Benders and punchups, beaters and punchclocks, give The North End Poems the means to explore notions of masculinity in both familial and social environs. Because this is a world largely without the presence of women, Nick’s perspective takes a significant turn when he meets someone from the other side of the tracks — a University student named Carla who challenges him to think about a life beyond the north end and outside of what he thought possible.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherECW Press
    Release dateJun 1, 2008
    ISBN9781554903184
    North End Poems, The

    Related to North End Poems, The

    Related ebooks

    Poetry For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Low Expectations

      Feb 1, 2019

      Low Expectations
      7 min read

    • Article

      It’s Come to This

      Sep 1, 2021

      It’s Come to This
      16 min read

    • Article

      Hell In High Waters

      Jan 29, 2024

      Hell In High Waters
      4 min read

    • Article

      Pour One For Me

      Jan 15, 2024

      Pour One For Me
      5 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      Oct 12, 2023

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      7 min read

    • Article

      Tessa Castro

      Aug 24, 2022

      IN COMPETITION No 283 you were invited to write a poem called Things Fall Apart. Martin Brown wrote some close parody of Yeats, and when his shopping bag burst, ‘The best splat all the kitchen, while the walls / Are caught with passionfruit at veloci

      2 min read

    • Article

      We Were Hull

      Feb 3, 2022

      We Were Hull
      6 min read

    • Article

      The Fleet Street Norton

      Jan 5, 2022

      The Fleet Street Norton
      5 min read

    • Article

      Roger’S PROFANISAURUS

      Aug 4, 2022

      profanisaurus@viz.co.uk air fryer 1. n. Device for making chips that won’t fur up your arteries. 2. n. A highcalorie food’s ghost exorcised from the premises of one who enjoys an unusually high-fat diet. Alan Sugar’s beard n. A straggly, threadbare f

      6 min read

    • Article

      Thornhope, Indiana

      Jan 1, 2020

      Thornhope, Indiana
      17 min read

    • Article

      I Had A Fortress Once In Paradise

      Mar 1, 2021

      I Had A Fortress Once In Paradise
      10 min read

    • Article

      1181 Durfee Avenue

      Jan 5, 2021

      1181 Durfee Avenue
      4 min read

    • Article

      Happy As A Mudlark

      Jul 13, 2020

      Happy As A Mudlark
      8 min read

    • Article

      Magnets: Carried through time, lovers seek their purpose.

      Feb 6, 2014

      Moon Colony B, 2213 Former Ponzi-schemer Mary Pillar digs through a trashcan. It smells like rotten eggs and milk. She is elderly and homeless, living in an alley between two eco-efficient skyscrapers. Dust particles dance around her. She has lost ev

      11 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      Sep 8, 2022

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      9 min read

    • Article

      Ready, Set, Let go!

      May 15, 2019

      Ready, Set, Let go!
      11 min read

    • Article

      Borderline

      Feb 20, 2019

      Borderline
      19 min read

    • Article

      Following a Thread

      Sep 19, 2019

      Following a Thread
      6 min read

    • Article

      Strange Season

      Jun 4, 2020

      Strange Season
      14 min read

    • Article

      This is England

      Apr 21, 2021

      This is England
      6 min read

    • Article

      The week in theatre: Get Up, Stand Up!; Value Engineering: Scenes from the Grenfell Inquiry; Love and Other Acts of Violence

      Oct 24, 2021

      Get Up, Stand Up! could hardly fail to ignite, what with the flair of the music and the flare of the subject matter. Live on stage are some of the most glorious, ear-changing numbers of the past 60 years: Is This Love, I Shot the Sheriff, Redemption

      5 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      Apr 11, 2024

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      9 min read

    • Article

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS

      Jan 5, 2022

      Roger’s PROFANISAURUS
      5 min read

    • Article

      Stonehenge

      Jul 11, 2023

      Stonehenge
      7 min read

    • Article

      LeTtEr ROCkS

      Jan 5, 2023

      LeTtEr ROCkS
      10 min read

    • Article

      Behold Invisibility

      Apr 21, 2022

      Behold Invisibility
      14 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for North End Poems, The

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      North End Poems, The - Michael Knox

      THE NORTH END POEMS

      Michael Knox

      Copyright © Michael Knox, 2008

      Published by ECW Press, 2120 Queen Street East, Suite 200,

      Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4E IE2

      416.694.3348 / info@ecwpress.com

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval

      system, or transmitted in any form by any process — electronic, mechanical,

      photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written permission

      of the copyright owners and ECW Press.

      LIBRARY AND ARCHIVES CANADA CATALOGUING IN PUBLICATION

      Knox, Michael, 1978–

      The North End poems / Michael Knox.

      a misFit book.

      ISBN 978-1-55022-817-5

      i. Title.

      ps8621.N69n67 2008      c811’.6       c2007-907104-x

      Editor for the press: Michael Holmes / a misFit book

      Type: Rachel Brooks

      Cover Design: David Gee

      Author photo: Shanaeh Reid

      This book is set in Bembo, TradeGothic and CgDeVinne

      The publication of The North End Poems has been generously supported by the Canada

      Council for the Arts, which last year invested $20.1 million in writing and publishing

      throughout Canada, by the Ontario Arts Council, by the Government of Ontario

      through Ontario Book Publishing Tax Credit, by the OMDC Book Fund, an initiative of

      the Ontario Media Development Corporation, and by the Government of Canada

      through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program (BPIDP).

      For Ali and for Andrea, who stay in this scrap.

      THE NORTH END POEMS

      CHARACTERS

      The Macfarlanes

      Nick

      Jimmy — Nick’s Father

      Ricky — Nick’s Uncle

      Johnny — Nick’s Uncle

      Chad — Nick’s younger brother

      The Boys

      K — Nick’s best friend

      Scotty — Nick’s friend

      Ronnie — Nick’s friend

      The Girls

      Carla — Nick’s girlfriend

      Kasia — Carla’s housemate

      The Rest

      Jen — Ronnie’s girlfriend

      Cora — daughter of Ronnie and Jen

      Helen — Johnny’s ex-wife

      Lincoln — Nick’s sparring partner

      Ronan — Ronnie’s father

      Steven — Carla’s teenage brother

      THE HARBOUR AT EVENING

      Water gnaws the shore

      industrial black blurring

      wobbling smokestacks.

      The bulk of the steel mills

      and the blotting faces of men

      who stand and smoke unnoticing.

      Clang of industry

      faint but ubiquitous

      dusk has settled shadows

      filling their songless faces.

      Life is withstanding.

      Pinched cigarettes

      three beers that interfere with sleep

      the dubious constancy

      of wives and children

      and awful fraternity

      always that.

      Mangy seagulls wheel in pursuit

      flash of a nemesis

      matching every careening

      winking out of being

      slips over the dock

      flutters stiffly to the lip

      of one of the rusted trashcans

      strung along the quay.

      Severe eye like a hard drop of blood

      a cry like a burst of hell.

      The men smoke and watch

      ships tiny in their world

      of open ocean, huge in this one.

      Hong Kong Vancouver Cape Town

      a thousand lives like theirs.

      NORTH END SONNET

      The city dives from itself floating half aloft.

      Steel-fires beneath illuminate gutted porches that watch and think.

      Barred doors and broken windows bleed the night air draft.

      Waist-high weeds poke through chain-link.

      Drinks and laughter on the dirt front lawn.

      Knees snap pool cues in cloudy halls, splintered keen.

      Glaring white kids stand in packs with open noses, then come on.

      Bass buzz lopes from tinted Cutlass Supremes.

      Discarded blankets weather against brick factories, skeletons of bikes.

      Women with sunken cheeks and slow, squalid wrath.

      Eighteen-wheelers shiver roadside weeds and houses alike.

      Railway lots seem abandoned but sprout trash.

      Fresh tattoos leak from ship cable arms, blood inside wrecked.

      Scabbing hands quiver first of the month cheques.

      ENTER NICK

      Nick squints his way

      down Burlington Street.

      Transports heavy sprint past

      rolls of steel

      beds of stone

      machines uncannily perched.

      Things that wear men’s hands.

      Steel toes stump

      by industrial yards.

      The smell of exhaust

      grey belch of steel fire.

      Nick stretches a stiff bicep

      drags a key through fresh chain-link

      spits high over its barbed crown

      into the smashed skids.

      He crosses Wellington without looking

      North End swagger and long stare

      down the empty street

      before he climbs his front stairs.

      SUMMER WORDS

      Meet us menacing

      in the wide-skied evening

      with the slap of laughter

      sunset angling our squinting

      bottles amber cores

      in callused princely grips.

      Problems and solutions

      have their genesis here.

      We still cut each other’s hair in

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1