A New Home Beneath the Stars by Oz Hardwick

Photo by Clarisse Meyer on Unsplash

We fled under orders, tracking north along roads so new that the maps didn’t show them, sometimes so new that we had to lay them ourselves. Hardcore and tarmac. Burning palms blistering towards the Pole Star. We travelled by night and we travelled by day. We travelled by osmosis, by sleight of hand, and by a process akin to nuclear fission. We told no one our names, because names are power and we needed them to light our way, but we told ourselves lies to keep up morale and confuse the devil we knew was at our heels. At borders we became birds and rumours, and at rivers we became fish and superstitions. We fled under oath and never let ourselves down. Shadows sobbed as they took our hands. We fled under anaesthetic, and we still feel nothing but the dullest ache.

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Oz Hardwick is a European poet and academic, who has been described as a “major proponent of the neo-surreal prose poem in Britain.” His most recent full collection, A Census of Preconceptions (SurVision, 2022), was shortlisted for a number of international awards but didn’t win any, though he feels pretty confident about the upcoming egg-and-spoon race. His latest publications are the chapbook My Life as a Time Traveller: a Memoir in 18 Discrete Fragments (Hedgehog, 2023) and a track on the Deadworld album by British space rockers Incubus Lovechild. Oz is Professor of Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University. www.ozhardwick.co.uk