Iain Britton was born and educated in Palmerston North, New Zealand. He spent many years living and teaching in London, followed by a period of time working as an EFL teacher in Bournemouth. During the 1980s Iain taught in such rural areas as Manutuke and Taupo in the North Island of New Zealand. He now teaches at a large independent school for boys in Auckland.
Iain’s poems have appeared in numerous magazines, including Ambit, Agenda, Stand, The Reader, Staple, Orbis, The Wolf, Tinfish, Poetry Salzburg Review, Jacket, Cordite, The Warwick Review, Harvard Review, Stride, Blackbox Manifold, Shadowtrain, Horizon Review, Great Works, Free Verse, and BlazeVOX.
He has published four previous books, Hauled Head First Into A Leviathan (Cinnamon Press, 2008, shortlisted for the Forward Poetry Prize for Best First Collection), Liquefaction (IP, 2009), Cravings (Oystercatcher Press, 2009), and Punctured Experimental (Kilmog Press, 2010). tusitala of white lies is published by Like This Press.
“Comprising six sequences, tusitala of white lies is a meditative, fragile and frequently beautiful collection of poems. Concerned with delicacy of phrase as well as the space of the page, Iain’s poetry is about breath, and thought, and the way language maps the shape and rhythm of a life.
tusitala of white lies is published as a limited edition run of 200 individually numbered hand-bound copies with hand-stamped covers and printed on heavyweight vellum laid cream paper with various tissue paper inserts.”
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tusitala of white lies
a million blackbirds
fling full stops at the horizon
but who do I prefer to believe –
the lady in black feathers
who owns and occupies
a fig tree
or the slothful bugger
who lives in the letter box
posting mail to himself
or the toilet roll author
of Kingdom Street
the tusitala of white lies
of uninhibited wafflings /
the view from here
is global / inviting
extinct frogs
continue to purse their lips
to chirp (bird-like) through solitary séances
the moon’s / a cold lump
stuck hard
and helmeted
but I prefer the brunette
her feather cloak
her moulting shadow her strut
I coax her to come in
share the dilated vista of another’s reality
I’m the tourist guide bus driver jesus janitor / the son
reorganising the future footprints of a family yet to cement
its language in stone in grubby layers broken like old teeth
another thing?
I walk through my house every day
to the sound
of water music
a forest shuffling its roots
doors opening shutting
a mango melting at the altar of my mouth
but then
not all is at right angles
all isn’t the perfect hideout
for this fresh-air junkie
contemplating
a dreamtime jaunt
an astral flight /
with no strings dangling
loose-limbed haloes
break down
dissolve
reviving an animal magnetism
I retreat into the hood of my consciousness
groping for the lady’s
anatomy
her tightening grip – this flesh
and blood
mix of polarities
from tusitala of white lies (Like This Press, 2012).
Order tusitala of white lies.
Peony Moon 