poetry snapshots: oz hardwick

Good Morning America

They are showing CCTV

of a woman who binges in her sleep, peanut butter

straight from the tub – and we're talking a large tub –

when we cut to ads for Botox, anti-depressants,

America's power-packed super pill, Tom Cruise

live in the studio and fifty percent of pets

are overweight and two to three percent of Americans

will experience sleep violence at some time in their lives.



Good morning America, this could be the smallest woman

ever to have a baby, with cameras in the operating theater,

but first our lovable losers in Family Feuds,

forty seven percent say 'wrong' and the mad auntie

gets the laughs, loses points, goes home

a winner and we cut to ads. I leave for breakfast

on disposable plates amongst soldiers reading the news,

camouflaged, silent, trying not to think of percentages.

From The Illuminated Dreamer (Oversteps, 2010)

Oz Hardwick is a York-based writer, photographer and musician. He has published three well-received poetry collections, most recently The Illuminated Dreamer (Oversteps, 2010), as well as many individual poems, stories and articles in journals, magazines and anthologies. He has read his work in the UK, Europe and US, as well as on radio and television. As Paul Hardwick, Oz is Professor of English at Leeds Trinity University College, where he is Programme Leader for English and Writing and also teaches medieval literature. He has published widely on literature and art history, and his latest book is English Medieval Misericords: The Margins of Meaning (Boydell, 2011).

'The more one reads Hardwick’s poems the more they have to say… the nearer one approaches, the more they open up, the warmer the embrace’ – The Black Mountain Review.