At the Sign of Ursa Major
by Oz Hardwick
It was something about pronunciation, or maybe it was translation – we were, after all, in a post-Revolution state, its borders drawn with tank traps and bullet holes – but we ended the night in a bar with a couple of bears. At first it was awkward, the simple gesture of six hundred pounds of muscle, claws, and teeth, leaning in to share a joke or a bag of dry roasted peanuts, elicits an involuntary flinch in even the most composed of soft and potentially tasty humans. But we soon relaxed, and they explained that, though omnivorous, they preferred berries, roots, tubers, broad-leaved herbs, and the like. And hunny, said one, with a grin. Oh, yeah – and pic-a-nic baskets, said the other, and we all laughed. The thing about bears, is that they can drink, and the night got a little blurry, and at some point, someone slipped out a small bag of white crystals. And I remembered being bored on a twenty-hour flight, and watching Cocaine Bear because there was nothing else to do. And then I looked at the flight map, and I thought about all those war zones I was sailing above, with in-flight meals and a glass of wine that had been mislabelled Zinfidel. And when I zoned back into the room, the wide-eyed bears had got some party balloons from somewhere and were speed-talking about bees, slurring their words and blurring the borders between language and the things it purports to represent.
Oz Hardwick is a European poet, photographer, barely-competent bass guitarist, and accidental academic, who has been described as a “major proponent of the neo-surreal prose poem in Britain”. His most recent full collection, A Census of Preconceptions (SurVision Books, 2022), was shortlisted for a number of international awards but didn’t win any, though he feels pretty confident about the upcoming over-60s egg-and-spoon race. His latest publications are the chapbook Retrofuturism for the Dispossessed (Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2024) and a track on the Deadworld album by British space rockers Incubus Lovechild. Oz is Professor of Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University.