Joel Seath

Once Upon a Teller Fell Joel Seath

'This train is the last of the night, travelling north and east. It falters, with a long unearthly squeal, and it surrenders, this evening in the deep and still surrounds. 'Who else here discovers green-blue gloss across the vast night sky? Beyond the nebulous solidity of the embankment, a corona of unexpected light weakly washes the world . . . even time can go nowhere when the world is precisely lit.' Ragnar, Teller of Tales, alights from the broken down train and is lost in the City of Trees, the city that doesn't exist: a place experienced in degrees of perception. Nature and the urban slide between each other. Illusions and realities of past and future-poems start to intertwine. At home, somewhere and somewhen amongst it all, are Ragnar's wife and children. In the City of Trees, the city that doesn't exist, he must decide who to trust in his entanglements and navigations to find his family: Avia and her kin, fey but sharp in what might be witcheries; Ingmar, who would be king, obsessed by luck and also seeking escape; the missive other children of the place, illusory or otherwise. Once Upon a Teller Fell is a story of intersecting illusions and realities, of past and future tales, of looking for the now. If we look - what might we see, with which we may believe.