In Memory of James D. Quinton


Last month writer, editor, friend and boss James D. Quinton sadly took his own life.
Whilst a fuller tribute will be published once it becomes possible to articulate the loss in a comprehensible way, here is a short elegy in memory of James.

A beautiful tribute by Adrian Manning is available here:
http://www.concretemeatpress.co.uk/james%20quinton%20memorial.htm

My thoughts are with his family.  He will be greatly missed - a gifted man and one always willing to believe in others before himself.


Street Psalms (in memory of James D. Quinton)

‘the edge is there
I know it’s there
because it calls my name
and some days
I feel like running towards it...’ (from Seduction)

These streets will always be yours.
Dressed in a double-layer of cloud
the pearls of your fingertips mime a cigarette.

A four-walled world made boundless
by your imagination.  You’d strike out
into that borderland nightly

to beat out your exile in every step and word,
and return with the morning tapping stories
from your boots, scattering night-songs like sawdust

across the floor, the ineffable etched
into your face – another chance to paint
light onto the skin of light.  And yes,

had you been a canvas lost in Paris
in the early nineteenth century, Picasso
may have painted his greatest work on you.

You who would always push for the edge
and thought something of my nothings.
You who will never stop reminding us

that a whisky-tongued stranger
lighting the borders with a cigarette
will always have stories to teach us. 

by Steve Nash 



Comments

Emily said…
Beautiful & Powerful
poetrytutor said…
Beautiful tribute. He will be much missed. Thoughts with you Steve
hodgehedge said…
unutterably heartbreaking. A beautiful elegy. I think hed probably have told you off for the jibe about your own work in there though Mr. James spoke very highly of your work always. A real tribute to his memory would be to start believing in yourself. xx