Ryan Van Winkle

The Apartment

Language: english
Translations: turkish (Daire), bulgarian (Апартаментът), arabic (-الشقة-), german (Die Wohnung), french (L’appartement), georgian (ბინა), russian (Квартира), latvian (Dzīvoklis)

The Apartment

                                          Our new walls,
                                          empty in the dusk,
                                          hang like sheets
                                          before first light

There is a driven nail
by the stove that could
hold a pan if the walls
stay sturdy. And the

                                                                             old tenants left a mirror in the
                                                                             bedroom which looks back at
                                                                             staring walls with fine cracks
                                                                             like a museum's basement vase

                                                               there are brown smears
                                                               in the study – chocolate, blood
                                                               or shit, we don’t know what
                                                               will happen to us here or what

           will settle on rented walls
           or if nothing will settle
           at all. We’ve just moved

                                                                             and already we are bitter
                                                                             cranberries in each other’s
                                                                             mouths, biting about photos,
                                                                             the place of the table, lay

of the bed. The apartment is a City
Hall we cannot fight. So we turn
like lawyers, against each other,
let the walls stare. There is a mirror

                                                               to look into, a nail to hang onto.
                                                               Our unopened boxes hide in corners
                                                               and closets like beaten children.
                                                               And we will take the blood

off the walls and the dust
from the shelves. We have one
year together in a place that
is empty at dusk and feels like fog

                                                               inside and between us,
                                                               and Christ, tomorrow,
                                                               we will live here.

© Ryan van Winkle
From: Tomorrow, We Will Live Here
London: Salt Publishing, 2010
Audio production: Ryan van Winkle & Colin Fraser (Culture Laser productions)
Categories: architecture & design, life & relationship

Ryan Van Winkle

photo © Wojtek Kutyla
* 08.12.1977, New Haven, United States
lives in: Edinburgh, Scotland, United Kingdom
Ryan Van Winkle (born 1977, New Haven) is a poet, live artist, podcaster and critic living in Edinburgh. Originally from Connecticut, USA, he first arrived in Scotland for the turn of the millennium, and since then has made it his home. He is indefatigably active in the poetry scene there in various roles: as poet, literary promoter, journalist, and long-term member of the multi-arts collective 'The Forest'. His performance “Red Like Our Room Used to Feel” was celebrated as one of the highlights of the Edinburgh Fringe Festival in 2012. Van Winkle’s texts are the expression of a stark, often uneasy emotional honesty. In one performance project, for example, he gave individual readings to his audience in a space that recreated his own bedroom.

photo © Sabina Theijs
Van Winkle was the first Reader in Residence of the Scottish Poetry Library and Poet in Residence of the Edinburgh City Libraries. His first poetry collection, “Tomorrow, We’ll Live Here” (Salt) won the 2009 Crashaw Prize for a First Publication. His second full length poetry book "The Good Dark" (Penned in the Margins) came out in 2015.

He has been a contributor to the Prairie Schooner blog and the host and co-producer of the arts podcast The Multi-Coloured Culture Laser and the poetry podcast for the Scottish Poetry Library. His poems have appeared in New Writing Scotland, The Prairie Schooner and The American Poetry Review. As a member of Highlight Arts he has organised festivals and translation workshops in Syria, Pakistan and Iraq. He was awarded a Robert Louis Stevenson fellowship in 2012 and a residency at The Studios of Key West in 2015. Find his website at www.ryanvanwinkle.com
Publications

  • Tomorrow, We Will Live Here

    Salt Publications, 2010

  • Red, Like Our Room Used to Feel

    audio CD

    Forest Records, 2010

  • ViewMaster

    book & album, with Dan Gorman

    Stewed Rhubarb & Invisible Agent, 2014

  • The Good Dark

    Penned in the Margins, 2015

Prizes

  • 2009 Crashaw Prize for a First Publication (for: Tomorrow, We Will Live Here)

  • 2015 The Saltire Scottish Poetry Book of the Year Award (for: The Good Dark)

Links

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