THE
PLACE WHERE SOCKS GO
Poems 1980-90, published by Asset Publications in three editions 1985-90.
I started writing poems again after some years in 1980, and began performing them regularly from 1983 in concerts with Geoff Shattock (we were a guitar/vocal duo called, excitingly, Shattock and Rust). This led to demand for copies and experiments in home publishing with the first edition of The Place Where Socks Go in 1985.
This was the
days before PCs, and Socks
was produced on a
company laser printer. It was an early venture into print-on- demand,
as
I would
run off and comb-bind one or two hundred copies as needed, and I was
able to add, amend and
remove
poems incrementally in successive reprints and editions. There were
three
editions in all (1985, 1988 and 1990), the last with a cover designed
by Simon
Jenkins, now editor of Ship
of Fools, and about two thousand
were sold.
The first
edition contained 45 poems. By 1990 29 more had
been added and 15 dropped as being too dull or dated. Most of
the
survivors found their way into Breaking
the Chains, a further 12 being retired, at which
point production of
Socks
ceased. Of the poems which survived the course, several underwent major
surgery on
the way, including the title poem, and others were renamed.
This page shows the Table of Contents of the third and final edition. The poems are published here in their current form. Those which were not originally carried forward into Breaking the Chains are mostly not reproduced, although for curiosity value I have included Babel, the first poem I wrote in 1980, and a few others that made me smile on re-reading.
Some song lyrics were also published in the last edition. These are not reproduced.
The poems
below appeared in the final edition
Joseph
and the shepherds
Signs
Dream
Phantom
The
comfort of the rain
Arithmetic
Other poems appearing in earlier editions
Beirut (original poem of that
title)
Communion of saints
Depends how you look at it
ET (the Extra-terrestrial)
Finger-Counting Rhyme
Hunger
Incident at dinner
On a
Probability
Two by two
Two-Timer
Two down