Boys! Build Your Own Time Machine! by Oz Hardwick (HOW TO Series)

Boys! Build Your Own Time Machine!
by Oz Hardwick

IMAGE: Untitled (Bird, Tree & Mountain) by Jagdish Swaminathan (1984).

NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR: When I think of my childhood, I think of the smell of wood: the timber yard a few streets away that I’d explore while Dad bought whatever it was he needed for something around the house; the school floorboards that were polished like treacle under glass; the wet tree stumps in the park where my grandfather would collect leaf mould for his prize-winning flowers; pews in the new church; and burning wood in the open hearth. During the past year, with so much less traffic, the world has smelled different, and sometimes a scent will trip me down a wormhole into another time.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Oz Hardwick is a European poet, photographer, and self-deluding musician, whose work has been published and performed internationally. His chapbook Learning to Have Lost (Canberra: IPSI, 2018) won the 2019 Rubery International Book Award for poetry, and his most recent publication is the prose poetry sequence Wolf Planet (Clevedon: Hedgehog, 2020). He has also edited or co-edited several anthologies, including The Valley Press Anthology of Prose Poetry (Scarborough: Valley Press, 2019) with Anne Caldwell. Oz is Professor of English at Leeds Trinity University, where he leads the postgraduate Creative Writing programmes. Visit him at ozhardwick.co.uk.