Oz Hardwick

Innovations in Civic Regeneration In a move to revivify the high street, news of deaths no longer come by phone, but is instead distributed in smart downtown boutiques with soft couches and free espresso. Department stores have been segmented into franchises with preferential rates and on-street parking (30min – no returns for 1hr), in a flurry of ribbon-cutting by local weather girls and reality stars who are shorter and older than they look on TV. So, instead of freezing at the sound of a landline ringing, startled hands dripping with washing-up suds, you can drop in on a Saturday to check on the mortality of family and friends. The ritual becomes habitual, part of the weekly shop, and you get to know ‘Sharon’ who smiles and checks the screen as you exchange small talk about diets and sports results. On the day when she’s not in, you talk to ‘Aimee,’ who you’ve seen but never spoken to before, and you joke that maybe ‘Sharon’ died, but she’s just on holiday and will be back next week – which she is. Weeks go by, and years go by, and you bring in a card when ‘Sharon’ has a baby, and then another one, and she says she’s sorry each time she has bad news, but you’ve become so accustomed to the routine that you just smile and say thank you before walking back out onto a street where no one’s left and nothing has happened for years. Party Favours in Standard Time 5am or 6pm, it’s always sometime somewhere on our tiny globe. You are sneezing into tissues printed with pastel Pokemon and my throat feels like a runway at a small southern airstrip, with clusters of children too tired to be fractious. Everyone’s going down with something, whether it’s seasonal flu or a slowly deflating airship, and we’re pausing in our daily round to wheel out truckle beds for whoever may drop in or simply drop. It’s 8pm and the Sun’s long set, like a firm jelly at the centre of a party spread. All our politic invitations have been returned unopened, but we’re preparing for pass the parcel, with random words wrapped up in successive time zones, which may one day make sense if arranged in the correct order. Together, we’ll tear off layers until all that’s left is a ticking clock with stiff hands covering its modesty. You wear a tiny globe against your throat, and you cough like small fluttering wings. With itching eyes, I leaf through old passports for the subtext I missed first time round. A Ghost is for Life The forecast is for frost and famine, with temperatures falling over tense borders. The world is warming, but negotiations are freezing in the craws of owls and nightingales, and the Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come has taken up residence all year round. He slouches on the sofa, featureless face on his scrolling phone, hungry for lols and likes. He says there’s time enough for graveyards and morality, and shows me a video of a cat dressed like a reindeer, another like the Easter Bunny, and a third like my younger self, asleep on a frozen staircase in a house tumbling down. The queue at the border is so long that it reaches my landlocked door, and lorry drivers and stranded exchange students ask to use the bathroom and wi-fi. The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come cadges fags and does a roaring trade in pyromancy, predicting frost, famine, and tall, dark strangers with the voices of owls or nightingales. On his phone, the screen is frozen on a picture of a cat dressed as I will be tomorrow, shivering on the stairs with the house tumbling down around me. Hack When your body becomes an answering machine, it’s vital to record just the right message. Too formal, and callers may assume that it’s just the factory setting, that you will never respond, or that you may not even listen, being caught up in the attic, finally sorting the papers and knick-knacks from your last hurried escape. Too informal, though, and bored girls in underheated glass cubes will assume kinship, as if you’re a lost sibling that they loved but never really knew, while friends you’ve not seen for far too long will assume that you’re hiding something beneath the strained bonhomie or that you’ve been hacked. So, make sure to keep it natural, speak like someone with regular sleep patterns and a normal resting heartbeat, and breathe as you would punctuate your words in a Sorry You’re Leaving card to a casual work acquaintance of reasonably long standing. Don’t let your voice waver and don’t leave any pauses which may afford the caller opportunity for speculation of any kind. Don’t say please more than once and do not under any circumstances cry or ask for help. Remember to say thank you, but not as if your life depends on it, regardless of personal circumstances. Don’t promise anything.

Oz Hardwick is a European poet, photographer, occasional musician, and accidental academic, who has been described as a “major proponent of the neo-surreal prose poem in Britain.” He has published “about a dozen” full collections and chapbooks, including Learning to Have Lost (Canberra: IPSI, 2018) which won the 2019 Rubery International Book Award for poetry, and most recently A Census of Preconceptions (SurVision Books, 2022). Oz is Professor of Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University.

 
 

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