Table of Contents

Acrobats / 11, Spartans / 12, Rules of Conduct / 13, Ancestor Worship / 15, Son of the Soil / 16, Religion / 17, History Lesson / 18, The King's Head / 19, Hermes Unrecognised / 20, Chagall's Horses / 21, Riscle / 22, Restless Geography / 23, On Being Cool / 24, In the Warehouse of Broken Dreams / 26, House / 27, The Writer Shoots Up the Past / 29, Rules & Weather / 30, Departure, Ioannina, 1942 / 31, More About Salt / 32, Lone Rider / 33, Stalingrad / 34, Insurance / 35, Dismal Days / 36, France / 37, Alice's Game / 38, Strange Encounter / 39, Alice Alone / 40, Wolf Story / 41, Vagrant / 42, More of Everything / 43, The Singers / 44, The Strange Bird / 45, Arrival / 46, Dusk / 47, Alice, Her Thoughts / 48, Loss / 49, The Past, Again / 50, Spy / 51, Strange Rain / 52, September Night / 53, Every Stolen Object / 54, No Love for the Enemy / 55, The Face / 56, Unclean / 58, River Jazz / 59, Catastrophe & Pestilence / 60, Theseus' Secret Shame / 61, Dogs / 62, All These Ithacas / 64, Swamp / 65, More on Categories / 66, The Road Not Taken / 67, Piano Bar / 68, Wrath of God / 69, The Aerialist / 70, Dog Breath / 71, Another Generalisation / 72, Nil by Mouth / 73, Begur / 74, Translation / 75, Ballad of the Sad Giraffe Cafe / 76, Biographical Note / 77

About the Author

Richard Gwyn grew up in Crickhowell, South Wales. He studied social anthropology at the LSE and worked in factories and as a milkman, before leaving London to spend ten years in aimless travel, settling for periods in Greece and Spain. He returned to the UK in the 1990s and took a PhD in Linguistics at Cardiff University, where he now directs the MA in Creative Writing. He is the author of five collections of poetry and two novels, The Colour of a Dog Running Away and Deep Hanging Out. In addition he has written many articles and essays and reviews new fiction for The Independent. He has translated poetry from Spanish and Catalan, and his own poetry and fiction have appeared in several languages. www.richardgwyn.com