NOTTINGHAM
All I remember about my dream is I was happy
and loud in Bodega smoking area. I got on one
of the tables they have out there and shouted
none of you is without sin! waving my glass about.
Taking the piss, presumably. I was wearing nail varnish
that was black as owt which is how I can be sure
it was a dream. One of my weaknesses is cowardice.
I so rarely remember my dreams and when I do,
it’s in snatches. I think it was a YouTube video years ago
where I heard that every time you access a memory
you change it. Something about neural pathways but I think
of it as nail varnish chipping away when you use your hands a lot.
Like typing or summat, I wouldn’t know. It was my birthday
in the dream I think. Everyone’s faces were so bright and happy to see me.
Joshua Judson is a poet from Nottingham.
He is an alumnus of the Mouthy Poets collective, and is a member of London’s Barbican Young Poets community. In 2013, he founded Poetry Is Dead Good, a monthly poetry night in Nottingham once described as ‘Nottingham’s Premier poetry event’ by the Nottingham Post.
His work has been published in The North, Magma, Brittle Star, The Rialto, The White Review, Bath Magg among others, and he has worked with partners such as Tower Bridge, St. Mungo’s, and the Barbican.
Gongoozler (Bad Betty Press: 2021) is Josh’s debut poetry pamphlet. Filled with poems that are firmly rooted in Nottingham – canal-side twitchels and Bodega smoking yards, supermarkets and hospital wards.
“On a mission to escape the self, this speaker channels the manifold ghosts we hold within, and the people who hold us together. Judson’s poetry is pop punk in all its fierce and fragile beauty, the honesty of a power chord, the way ‘an old, old song can hit you exactly where you are and fill you with light’.” – Bad Betty Press.