Prayers for the Living & the Dead
These are poems of connection and remembrance. They celebrate family, friends and acquaintances — fellow travellers on the road to wisdom and enlightenment or simply vanishing out of sight over the horizon. They are also poems which affirm the dignity of the ordinary, by turns rueful, wistful and comically sardonic. Like a priest attentive to the goings-on in his parish, Lindsay Rabbitt wanders, observes, and acknowledges his neighbourhood and its inhabitants. His poems gently unfurl in a Whitmanesque spirit of camaraderie. Undeniably a poet and writer of the working class, in this new book of poetry he invites you to join him in raising a glass to the salt of the earth, to the ‘wild child’ and to the ‘Everyday Christ’, to his mother who sent him flowers for his 63rd birthday, and to his barber grandfather who whispered ‘Keep your skull still’.
– David Eggleton
These Lives I Have Buried
Four Winds Press – 2004
‘Once, the fear gripped me in the bank manager’s office while I was putting a case for why he should extend the firm’s overdraft. I said I needed to go to the toilet, and rushed out of the bank to a nearby pub. I downed five double vodkas as quick as you could say “Jack Robinson”, and went back to the bank. I got the loan. Large doses of alcohol dowsed the fear, but I couldn’t live constantly drunk.’
thewayofit
Black Robin – 1988
shifting points
look see
here it is
what’s
to happen
now that’s
forgotten
Black Robin – 1988
On the Line
Voice Press – 1985
upagainstit
Voice Press – 1983
letter from holloway road
the evenings are drawing out
movement is more pronounced
late sun makes an eye sparkle
a lip slips across foliage
currency is exchanged
at gateways
light wet tongues…
even the silent are articulate