Photo courtesy Clare Jephcott
Alistair Noon was born in 1970 and first arrived in Berlin in time to be
filched by East German border guards. He's lived in the city since 1993,
apart from a couple of years in China. He currently works as an in-house
translator of legal texts.
His publications include the chapbooks At the Emptying of Dustbins
(Oystercatcher), In People's Park (Penumbra), Animals and Places
(Longbarrow) and Some Questions on the Cultural Revolution (Gratton
Street Irregulars), as well as translations of Alexander Pushkin's
Bronze Horseman and the German poets Monika Rinck and August Stramm. His
translations of Osip Mandelstam are forthcoming in 2011.
"Knockout poet". Kelvin Corcoran
"He's good, no question". taz, German daily newspaper
“I don't know any poet who flies about so carefreely, never alighting in
the pigeonhole for long enough to become ringed. Each poem represents a
moment of attention just long enough to signal its intention, and then
it moves on.“ Giles Goodland
Out of the Cave was published on 17th September, 2011. To order a copy, please go to
the Catalogue page.
Sample Poem
The Manuscript
Let me just tell you I am so excited
to be holding this paper now. My eyes
have seen that place where his fingers alighted.
To feel this jewel was more than a surprise.
It’s like reading the life’s work of a monk.
Just look at the way that these curves say ”word”.
This script’s a ship we thought long lost and sunk.
Here’s a small stain where his coffee was stirred.
I believe the source of the text on the verso’s
a double-blind placebo-controlled study.
There must be some clear reason why he chose
this page, why the ink seems a little muddy.
Here there’s a hole, perhaps pierced by a staple.
And might those be the marks of a dog’s teeth?
His hand jogged here by a groove in the table?
And this stuck white mass, what’s there, underneath?
Link to Alistair's website