{"id":5079,"date":"2022-10-27T08:00:27","date_gmt":"2022-10-27T07:00:27","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/writersrebel.com\/?p=5079"},"modified":"2022-10-24T20:50:54","modified_gmt":"2022-10-24T19:50:54","slug":"steve-ely","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/writersrebel.com\/steve-ely\/","title":{"rendered":"Excerpt from The European Eel<\/span>Steve Ely<\/span>"},"content":{"rendered":"

20 degrees north, 62 west.
\nThe outer rise of the Puerto Rico Trench,
\na hundred miles north of Anguilla.
\nNew Moon, 1% visible. Kraken darkness,
\nlit only by octopus phosphorescence
\nand the bright detonations of ejaculating eels.
\nThey\u2019ve been travelling in tandem for five days now,
\nthrough frittering flames of fertilised ova
\nand the disarticulate, space-junk fall
\nof dead and dying eels. This is their predestiny,
\ntheir inescapable fate, the fate of every Atlantic eel
\nsince the Yucatan asteroid dropped its apocalypse
\nsixty-six million years ago\u2014to ruin themselves
\nin the act of breeding and die in the dopamine afterglow,
\ndrifting down from the towering heights of ocean
\nto the black red clays of the five-mile abyss,
\nlayer upon layer upon googolplexian layer.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Steve Ely<\/strong>‘s books of poetry include Oswald\u2019s Book of Hours<\/em>, Englaland<\/em>, Incendium Amoris<\/em> and Zi-Zi Taah Taah Taah: The Song of the Willow Tit<\/em>. His books have won or been nominated for several literary prizes, including the Forward Prize for best first collection, the Ted Hughes Award, the Michael Marks Award and the Northern Writers Award for poetry. His most recent books of poems are Lectio Violant<\/em> and the Laurel Prize short-listed The European Eel<\/em>, both published in the summer of 2021. Steve is Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at University of Huddersfield and Director of the Ted Hughes Network.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

20 degrees north, 62 west. The outer rise of the Puerto Rico Trench, a hundred miles north of Anguilla. New Moon, 1% visible. Kraken darkness, lit only by octopus phosphorescence and the bright detonations of ejaculating eels. They\u2019ve been travelling in tandem for five days now, through frittering flames of fertilised ova and the disarticulate, […]<\/p>\n

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