Introduction

These poems span thirteen years’ work, although the majority of them were written in the last five years or so. Together they track an ongoing preoccupation in my writing; that is, the myriad ways in which the past pierces the present. I am interested in recasting the small stories and spaces in which this constantly happens. I have used the coinage meanderthals as a title in the sense that urban designers use it, to suggest any visible deviation from a provided pathway. These tracks are also referred to as desire lines.

I always work beneath a virtual wall of quotes. The ones that have mattered in this instance are as follows:

‘She imagined Maggie running barefoot with her spear across Arlington Park. She seemed to be alone in some definitive way in her lithe, pregnant body. Her face was the bronzed face of a warrior woman. Having drunk from the spring of life she had shed her association with men, had left Dave mending his motorbike in the back garden and run out with her spear.’ (Rachel Cusk, Arlington Park)

‘Our customary visible order is not the only one: it coexists with other orders. Stories of fairies, sprites, ogres were a human attempt to come to terms with this coexistence. Hunters are continually aware of it and so can read signs we do not see. Children feel it intuitively, because they have the habit of hiding behind things. There they discover the interstices between different sets of the visible.’ (John Berger, ‘Opening a Gate,’ The Shape of a Pocket)

‘Take the risk. Believe what you see and hear. It’s the pulse of every secret intimation you’ve ever felt around the edges of your life.’ (Don De Lillo, The Body Artist)