Keeping Time, James Dick (Yew Tree Press)Lyric, James Dick (Yew Tree Press)Lyric 2, James Dick (Yew Tree Press)You may, or may not, have come across James Dick as lead singer of the Red Propellers, a band who recreate New York urban dystopia for the UK, all angular riffs and grooves, drones and chimes, underpinning incantatory, sputtering stories full of lowlife, love and sweat. The texts showcase Dick’s continuing freeform and loose-lined associative and imagistic thinking from the word go. We are instructed to ‘debunk stereotypes’ but also told the shooting incident is ‘Modern Tide Filth’. The third verse introduces us to a figure ‘dressed all in black’ (well, they would be, wouldn’t they?) Either they or us, perhaps everyone, is ‘not holding the centre’, and we should embrace those edges.