Every New Year’s at midday we meet at the harbour and
cast our ghosted bodies into the sea. We are no longer
seventeen and , over the years, have progressed from last
night’s underwear to trunks and t-shirts and, finally,
oil-sleep wetsuits, straining to contain our spreading
guts. Like soldiers returning from the Front we are fewer
with each passing year. This morning we are two- and
a handful of bemused children sheltering beneath their
anorak hoods.
Afterwards, shivering, we say ‘Same time, next year?’ and
mean, as our fathers must once have meant, ‘All good
things come to an end, even the sea.’
Something a bit different this week- flash fiction. Flash fiction often straddles the awkward line between poetry and prose, but there is something distinctly poetic about this story, particularly in the last two lines. Like most of the entries in this anthology (Postcard Stories), it is slightly surreal and unbelievable. The thought of a group of people trekking out to Portballintrae Harbour, which Google tells me is in Northern Ireland, in January, and jumping into the sea, even purchasing wetsuits, perhaps only for this occasion, brings to mind such a stubborn narrator, a stickler for tradition even after the group dissipates. To create such a charmingly bizarre character in so few words is such a gift. Often short poems which try to tell a story leave you feeling as if you need a bit more, like the characters could have been interesting, had it been longer, or the story could have been more entertaining, had there been more words. In this story, however, I feel it is exactly as long as it needs to be, providing a simple, sweet story from a fun protagonist’s perspective, and ending in a thought-provoking manner. Overall, the slightly bizarre and perhaps metaphorical nature of this story begs the reader to question, in a world of free verse and flash fiction, what it is that differentiates poetry from prose.
This poem comes from Postcard Stories, which is available for purchase on our website here.
Blog entry by Clemmie Joly
]]>My body is a palimpsest
under your hands,
a papyrus scroll
unfurled beneath you,
waiting for your mark.
I clean my skin,
scrape it back to
a pale parchment,
so that your touch
can sink as deep
as the tattooist’s ink,
and leave its tracery
over the erased lines
of other men.
You are all that’s
written on my body.
For me, what’s so brilliant about this poem is how unashamed of its emotions it is. The feelings are so raw, reminiscent of teenage heartbreak, rendering the speaker a young, vulnerable woman. She does not shy away from her emotions. When I first read it, I interpreted it as a love poem, to a present lover, someone the speaker sees a future with. However, in the anthology it is taken from, Ní Chonchúir goes on to explain that it was written soon after a horrible breakup, making it all the more poignant, and the desperation for some tangible, permanent mark of the man she has left behind. Although half the joy of reading poetry is taking a personal interpretation, it’s always fascinating to see what the poet was thinking at the time, and Ní Chonchúir’s explanation of her feelings at the time adds a new level of interest to an already-beautiful poem. It is also interesting to see her opinion on tense, as in retrospect, using the present tense makes it far less permanent than the past, ironically.
This poem is taken from The Deep Heart's Core, an anthology of Irish poets revisiting their own poems, and which is available for purchase on our website here.
Blog entry by Clemmie Joly
]]>Flora
The cow is on top of her game,
her haunches fat, her bones rounded.
She feels the goddess power of her udder
in the mould-damp dark of the milking shed.
If she stays still, all may be well.
If she thinks of the cool absence of horns,
feels their undead weight balancing her head,
she may contain herself.
But if she kicks the bucket at full froth,
tips it from the milker’s raw-red hand-
then she begins a hell which gathers heat
all through the livelong days without that milk.
This poem takes such a pastoral theme- milking a cow- and turns it on its head. Here, the cow is in control, not the human, and she is ‘on top of her game’, and a ‘goddess’. Personally, I’ve never seen a poem talk about a cow in such a manner as this. The power of the cow is to deprive the people of their refreshment on a long hard day, and so the people rely on her patience and tranquility. The metaphor is clear, and it’s brilliant. The quiet power of women, their potential to overturn and overthrow, a secret, brooding power, that women, like dairy cows, are too gentle to abuse. To take the comparison of women to cows, so often used as an insult, and subtly turn it into a symbol of female power and virtue, is a beautiful thing, making this poem very unique and powerful.
'Flora' is taken from Campbell's anthology Heat Signature, which is available to purchase from our website here.
Blog entry by Clemmie Joly
]]>
I stop writing the poem
to fold the clothes. No matter who lives
or who dies, I’m still a woman.
I’ll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I’ll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there’s a shirt, a giant shirt
In my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it’s done.
Taken from a collection of poetry about motherhood, this poem considers the role of a woman. Both a poet and a mother, the speaker performs her wifely duties, setting aside her poetry for later. However as she does this, she finds herself aware that she is being watched by her daughter, learning from her, following her example. This poem therefore explores the impact mothers have on their children, and forces the reader to consider the duty, therefore, for women to act in certain ways. The speaker does not resent doing laundry, even implying she chooses to do it out of her feminine ‘tenderness’, but there is still a sense of duty. The poem ending is almost sinister- will history repeat? Will the daughter grow up to set her own dreams, literary or otherwise, aside in favour of being a housewife? The moment is sweet, a mother passing down skills and the quality of tenderness down to her daughter, but cannot be read from a feminist perspective without a tinge of concern, causing this poem to linger on in the mind long after it is read.
This week's poem taken from Writing Motherhood: A Creative Anthology, available to purchase from our website here.
Blog entry by Clemmie Joly
]]>My mum cleans the kitchen,
opens all the windows, blaring
mixtapes dad made in the 80s.
The ones he would bring round
after he beat her.
His smooth DJ voice croons
Ain’t Nobody’s Fault But Mine
from the tape deck, treating
the wound with music.
In a year she’ll leave him
but for now she sings along,
sweeping cake crumbs
under the table.
Trying to choose just one poem from this anthology was nigh impossible. It’s a thin collection of short, incredibly readable poetry, taking the reader through a story that jumps around in time and space between England and Jamaica, between a young boy with two parents, to his mother leaving her abusive husband, to his reconciliation with his lost father, right up until he dies, an old man with dementia, grievously mourned despite his wrongdoings. I settled for this poem because I think it encapsulates the story as a whole quite well. The last image in particular, a metaphor for his mother’s initial forgiveness, which he will later demonstrate himself. On the whole, it’s a very real, emotive journey through a life, realistic and mature in its presentation of feelings.
Raymond Antrobus' second pamphlet, To Sweeten Bitter is available to purchase on our website here.
Blog entry by Clemmie Joly
]]>The devils and the lunatics are loose;
bear your children, keep them close
for now. Weave a cocoon of hair and skin,
a silver song to grow them in.
Raise them naked as the angles, sweet
and safe; but mix their milk with grit.
Fold them in love and give them ear and tongue
that they might parley with anyone.
Teach them courage, how to rise and focus.
Muscle them like little boxers.
Wait for it: those fists and minds will soon
turn quicker than your own,
will read this world, will try to cuff or kiss it,
will ask you- you- how to fix it.
Shrug; then spin this orb, this creaking prize,
spread out the maps, the changing lines,
throw up your wrinkled hands, unveil the wreck
you’ve left them: the fires, the slow black,
the cleft and spill. Confess: this bruised world, blue
and plundered; now it belongs to you.
I hope you enjoyed this poem as much as I did. The use of rhyming couplets to describe a theme so dark in such a lyrical manner was somehow so endearing to me. Although structured like a nursery rhyme, this poem reads like a recipe. The phrase ‘Fold them in love’ reminded me so much of cake baking instructions. And yet this is an emotionally charged poem, dark and brutally accusatory, pointing a finger at the reader and writer alike for letting the world become such a terrible and dangerous place to raise a child. In a sense, the poem is cyclical, taking the presumed reader from being a young mother of a soft, pure baby, to a trickster old woman with a young adult, angry at the world as young people are in every generation, the first accepting that the world is the way it is and we must compensate by raising our children to be tougher than ourselves, and the second still stubbornly trying to fix the problems left to them by their parents. The poem is almost playful with stock characters, from the angry youth to the conniving old woman, overall dealing with quite an unhappy subject in a thoroughly entertaining way.
This poem comes from Saphra's excellent anthology, All My Mad Mothers is available to purchase from our website here!
Blog entry by Clemmie Joly
]]>There are fleas and flies and knots and nits,
breadcrumbs, marmite stains and bits
of pencils lost in the distant past,
coffee dribbles from a thermos flask.
Spiders’ webs and sparrows’ nests,
string that they use for old men’s vests,
bits of dinner from yesterday,
orange pips and strips of hay.
Chips glued in with tomato ketchup.
Bits of driftwood sometimes fetch up
and tangle about in the twisty hair
the poet grows on his chin and there
are knitting needles, lengths of twine…
Oh no! Hang on! That’s a porcupine.
Koala bears peer out and chew,
there’s a cockatiel and a cockatoo.
A sloth blinks slowly under the fur
And if you listen close there’s a happy purr.
Did this make you chuckle? The opening poem of A. F. Harrold’s Things You Find in a Poet’s Beard, it demystifies The Poet while producing amusing poetry. The collection is a book of catchy rhyme, light humour, and playful imagination: you befriend bears, beetles, bees; you listen into their bright dreams, and you’re touched by the tender letters. For instance, the Hedgehog Simon writing to his mom ‘I saw a fox last night, / did as you always said / and rolled into a ball. […] Wish you were here, / love Simon’.
Accompanied by Chris Riddell’s comic pencil sketches, this is a book of poetry that delights children and grown-ups alike with its innocence and its rhyme. Available to purchase from our website here.
By Eiffel Gao
]]>Grass sings to her roots
Man thinks these are the colours
of air and water, of light and freeing,
but before this they were ours:
our blades are green, our lowly stems
the red of poppies, pink of damask,
our rhizomes white as redemption.
And you, my loves, are palest yellow
like the long memory of sunlight
from a rainbow on a glacial floe.
Like the many vegetal voices in the pamphlet-length sequence Small Grass, this poem invites us to take up a fresh perspective of the many existing opinons we have imposed onto the organic world, and in this case, the origins of hues. Small Grass speaks in varied tones: the ground breaking in spring, 'all I had was heat and carbon'; the grass singing the praise of the cloud, 'a blanket warm / and barely penetrable'; the grass lamenting marred nature, 'As the virus is to man, / man is to Earth'.
This collection of poetry is also interlaced with haunting black-and-white artworks by Frances Barry; available to purchase on our website here.
By Eiffel Gao
]]>windows curtained with rain.
Days
leaking into days.
-------Andrew Gibbons
This haiku enthrals the reader with its vivid images, syntactical parataxis and suggestive half-rhyme. One among the many in the pocket-size The Haiku Hundred published by the Iron Press, this poem conjures up a meditative picture with sparse brushstrokes, pointing to the world beyond the text.
Handsomely printed in vermilion, these haikus are a pleasure to read: the 1992 edition has ran up to six prints. A new edition has been published by Iron Press, and is available to purchase on our website here.
By Eiffel Gao
]]>The children first, half a dozen
revved up to arrive at the seaside
surge around where we sit on the pebbles.
In their wake the grown-ups with the gear,
giving us space, set up camp
not too near and gather them in,
all but one, a small boy, maybe three,
who stands between us and the sea
that holds him so long and so still
when at last he turns round and finds
us behind him, we won't forget
that all at sea look on his face,
the relief when he clocks his mistake
and scampers off back to his own
mum, settles himself in her lap.
In this short lyric, Michael Laskey has captured a moment of immersion the child experienced with the sea, also an embarrassing moment of mutual discovery when the little spectator realises he is being gazed upon. Many poems in Weighing the Present are about such omnipresent, subtle, everyday interactions, though they take various forms: sometimes a monologue of comic self-mockery, sometimes the deliberate veering-away from a muntjac carcass by the road, sometimes the passing-by of a girl with a violin on her back...Behind Laskey's poems written with a light touch and plain diction is a traceless virtuosity and an unswerving intellect, poking fun at the often callous and contradictory sides of human nature and always fascinated by its intricate knots and ties.
Michael Laskey has published four collections of poetry, and has been shortlisted for the T S Eliot Prize. Weighing the Present is published by Smith Doorstop, and is available to purchase on our website here.
By Eiffel Gao
]]>Derek, first to arrive, is in Barbour shirt, sensible trousers;
Sonnie wears denims, shirt open to mid-chest,
his St Christopher hanging, heavy.
I don't know why I'm here. Derek has left
his collection of international friends in the saloon bar.
Sonnie unwraps his Toby jugs, sets them in a circle,
like an invocation-
then I remember, he's already dead.
My mother works behind the bar.
I pay for the drinks.
She looks at both men, can't decide between them,
can't imagine what she ever saw in either.
My sister wipes our table.
It's been so long, Derek doesn't recognise her,
wanders back to his friends.
Sonnie starts to disintegrate, becomes a slick,
something my mother will have to clear up.
I can probably sell the medallion.
Part of the The Emma Press Anthology of Fatherhood, Katrina Naomi's poem explores meeting her 'fathers', covering issues of identity, independence and family. Naomi's poem shows Fatherhood from the perspective of a grown-up child, and tackles the issue of having two possible fathers lightheartedly. This brilliantly honest and stark depiction of the Father character sits perfectly within the wide array of different Fathers within this modern anthology.
The Emma Press Anthology of Fatherhood is published by The Emma Press, and available to purchase on our website here.
Blog by Katie Cruci.
]]>
Hull Hath No Fury Like a Poet Scorned
I refuse to enter
the East Yorkshire Arts Centre
after someone who works there
said my poems were shit.
Not for all the tea in China
would I degrade myself and enter
the East Yorkshire Arts Centre
after someone who works there
said I was semi-illiterate.
No. I will never ever enter
the East Yorkshire Arts Centre
after someone who works there
said I was many things but not a poet.
I know she’s not been well
since her husband ran off with a slag
but taking it out on me
and my wonderful poetry
isn’t going to make me give him back.
‘Hull Hath No Fury Like a Poet Scorned’ is taken from Wilson’s zingy new collection Sometimes I’m So Happy I’m Not Safe on the Streets, published by Wrecking Ball Press. In this poem, Wilson’s dazzling honesty, unapologetic directness and originality come through shining. His collection is about sex, love, loneliness, belonging, men pissing, girlfriends screaming, bingo, gossip, the seaside and much, much more. Through all of his bluntness, wit, laugh-out-loud humour and catchy rhyme, Dean Wilson has something unexpectedly tender to say.
By Louise Essex.
Sometimes I’m So Happy I’m Not Safe on the Streets is available to buy on our website here.
In fairy tales, only the good fairy wears wings.
Others are too hump-backed
or, beautiful but wicked, appear
on frosted sleighs when no one's looking,
slide ice splinters into untrue hearts.
Even brothers and sisters get separated –
boys turned into swans,
girls put in tall towers
where they have to climb down their own hair
to escape, then wander the earth
with thorns in their eyes.
They stretch out their arms in front,
cock their heads to the music of the red shoes.
Children, smelling of gingerbread,
cry out to them from cages.
They're only fairy tales, say our mothers,
who serve us porridge that's far too hot;
and who are they that we should trust them
when they prick their fingers,
drip their blood onto snow, then die after telling us they'll be there for ever.
Fairy Tales is one of the unsettling poems featured in Jennifer Copley's disturbingly compelling collection, Beans in Snow. Reminiscent of Angela Carter's Bloody Chamber, Copley takes our desire for happy endings and twists it into something far more sinister. Reverting back to the classic - and more frightening - tales of Charles Perrault, Hans Christian Andersen, and the Brothers Grimm, Copley reminds us that childhood innocence is nothing but an illusion.
There is something quite mesmorising about Copley's poetry, and readers are certain to find pleasure in the abundant references to the childhood stories we all know and love - even if they are almost unrecognisable...
Beans in Snow is published by Smokestack Books and available to purchase on our website here.
]]>No one has got it, so to satisfy my critics:
it is really all about the dress.
Few brides can wear theirs thirty years on
without stinking of cedar.
Theirs lie tissued like my untouched shoe,
but I can fasten pearl buttons
every day, if I choose.
No feeding family, no babies have pushed me
out of shape and it's surprising
how lasting wedding cake can be.
It's all about my silk-and-lace cocoon,
a second skin skimming my bones.
I love its yellowed ivory
resisting time and laundry for a look,
a shimmer in narrow light beams.
Here's a tip - stay out of the sun.
Shadow and a well-draped veil
show complexion best, will give you skin
pale and papery as moon moth.
I may have overdone this.
I don't look good naked.
Featured in A Mutual Friend, a collection of poems inspired by Charles Dickens, Kate Noakes has penned an alternate take on the character of Miss Havisham from Great Expectations. Finding the 'bright side' in Havisham's otherwise gloomy situation, Noakes has created a lightly sarcastic tone which puts a interesting spin on the story as we know it.
Edited by Peter Robinson and published by Two Rivers Press, A Mutual Friend is available to buy on our website.
]]>Flowers are nicer than people
They come in pretty colours and
smell much better
They hardly eat at all
(Water will do, thank you)
Get them in a bunch, they won't get noisy
Bring them in the house, they won't impose
They don't complain, or argue, or fight
They're much sweeter -
Just ask the bees
Using straightfoward, witty language, Stanley has composed a solid case for flowers and with spring in the air, this vibrant poem seems fitting this week. The one downside to beautiful flowers brightening up the day: hayfever.
Reckoning is published by Hearing Eye Books and is available to buy on our website.
]]>There's a man with aa axe
in me bedroom. We ran to her house
in fright, night after night.
'Axe Man' was never caught
even though she described him
in perfect detail, as far as we could tell,
tall, dark, carrying an axe.
This chilling poem comes from Tom Kelly's collection, I Know Their Footsteps, which includes other similar poems on death, ageing, and regret. Available on our website.
]]>Ask a Geordie to say conjunctivitis;
when in Hull, make them ask for dry white wine.
Ask a teuchter where Saskatchewan is -
he'll give himself away, time after time.
For me, apricot scones are in the oven
and don't expect much difference between
Patsy, singing 'Life's Railway to Heaven'
and the red-nosed joker in the circus ring.
Roddy Lumsden's highly-skilled and playful use of language comes into light here in this concise and entertaining poem. It's full of energy and emotion and is one poem that is better read out loud. Unless you're truly terrible at accents like me, in which case, you're allowed to read it in your head.
This poem comes from Roddy Lumsden is Dead, Lumsden's collection with Wrecking Ball Press.
]]>
My mother comes round with my star signs
a thin apple pie, shop bought,
that no-one will want, and the Daily Mail.
We say thank you.
The boys kiss her and go upstairs.
She presents me with six things:
1.
You must sort out my breakdown for my car Debbie
because my English is bad.
I get the leaflet, circle the right policy, hand it back to her.
2.
Where must I buy a new front door?
I say B&Q? Homebase? I said that before, Mum.
She waits for me to offer to measure it and take her.
I put the kettle on.
3.
Where do I find man to fit new door?
I tell her I don't know, Mum,
look in the Yellow Pages?
She waits for me to get the Yellow Pages.
I get her a piece of cake with her tea.
Just a thin piece... chorti... chorti...
She eats a large piece, noisily.
4.
Where do I find man to fit carpet?
The Yellow Pages, Mum?
Where do I look under?
Carpet Fitters, Mum.
5.
You must show me where to write email to Aleem.
I show her.
6.
I need you write letter to estate agent.
I can't do it today, Mum.
You are so lazy Debbie! she screams.
All her rage spits out.
She throws her mug into the sink and it shatters there.
I liked that green mug with the spots,
from Woolworths.
There is no more Woolworths.
Suddenly,
terribly, unbearably sad
that there is no Woolworths,
I tell her to go and never come back.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Deborah Alma when her debut pamphlet True Tales of the Countryside was first published in November last year. This poem comes from that collection (and was first published in The Emma Press Anthology of Motherhood). She uses a light touch to convey a comical tone as well as underlying tension throughout this poem, ending on a moment of tragic realisation felt by both the narrator and the reader: there is no more Woolworths.
]]>Now we have reached the trees - the beautiful trees!
their roots in someone's casket
contracting from the soil a human wilt,
bark aspiring to marble,
trunk to Venus de Milo
and to that end wishes lightning to strike twice
to drape their arms across car windscreens
the tiara they proffer no tiara at all
but the jaw they grew up with,
the memory of birdsong as it sounded before
laughter and smoke alarms,
rifle report
of a child advancing
plastic battalions
blasting snails into rubble and slag
happy as Ginsberg in Bunting's lap
we'll be together at the end of the Stelliferous Age
building a sandbank with our pension of skin,
gifted to the Westerlies, encrusting guitar strings.
With its descriptive imagery and often strange and fascinating juxtaposition, this poem is truly one which tests your vision. From Durasow's collection Endless Running Games, available on our website.
]]>If I'd had one more glass.
If I'd had one less.
If I'd got into that taxi.
If we hadn't held hands.
If we hadn't run, laughing, across the bridge.
If there'd been a bus at the stop.
If our bench had still been there.
if you hadn't led me down Black Horse Passage to the Foss.
If it hadn't been snowing.
If you hadn't taken off your warm gloves and put them on
my hands.
If I hadn't cried.
If I hadn't asked you.
If you hadn't said yes.
If there's been no cab.
If the street lights hadn't looked like pearls in the fog.
If there hadn't been cows.
If, with that first match, the fire hadn't taken.
This haunting poem of 'what if's by Bromley comes from The Very Best of 52, a collection of poems inspired by prompts from the 52 project. The project challenged writers to write one poem a week. This poem is in response to the prompt 'nearly'
The Very Best of 52 is available to order on our website. You can also try the 52 project challenge for yourself with 52, a collection of all the prompts from the project, also available to order.
]]>I am a chicken tikka masala in a Sunday night take-away for lovers.
I am Mohammed to my Parisian friends but Jacques on my CV.
I am a Friday night doner kebab after a good night out.
I am a taxi driver ready to pick up and drop you on a cold winter day.
I am a London sheesha smelling of apple.
I am an off-license shop with a pint of milk ready for tea when guests
arrive
I am hot-to-touch naan bread.
I am a little boy who cannot understand why my school-friends won't
play with me anymore.
I am a New York pizza delivery boy who is spat at when I deliver food.
I am a young girl who has taken off the hijab in order to feel safe.
I am an old man who has started to shave my beard.
I am a grandmother who has exchanged the zari for a pair of jeans.
I am a mosque with broken windows.
I am a Muslim.
I am not a terrorist.
This powerful poem is one of my favourites from Amir Darwish's debut collection Don't Forget the Couscous. Strong statements and evocative language, this poem achieves an empowering voice.
Don't Forget the Couscous is available to buy on our website. Read our interview with Amir here.
]]>I am holding it effortlessly steady
like a graceful waitress balancing a tray
of quail's eggs and salmon soufflé
on her horizontal palm.
I am dexterously carrying it up three flights of stairs
without stubbing my toes or splitting my fingernails,
without chipping paint off the door frames
or denting the soft plaster of the walls.
I am lifting the piano with one hand.
I have not eaten spinach, mineral supplements,
muscle powder or Weetabix.
Today I am just unusually strong
and able to carry the piano up three flights of stairs
where I'll leave the skylight window open
and a note inviting any passing ghosts
to come in, sit down and play 'Moonlight Sonata'
or 'Chopin's Nocturne' or 'The Entertainer'
or whatever they'd like to play on a neglected piano
in the house of a strong woman.
In celebration of International Women's Day today, here is the brilliant, strange, and empowering titular poem from Gaia Holmes' collection Lifting the Piano with One Hand. Holmes writes with wit and precision, hopefully inspiring us all to feel 'unusually strong and able to carry the piano up three flights of stairs'.
Lifting the Piano with One Hand is available on our website.
]]>Beyond the wind
a bird with a bitter shadow
beats its wings,
burying seeds in shadow,
burying with every beat
the words mislaid by me.
This poem comes from Paler's collection Definitions, filled with poems on the definitions of subjects such as love, illusion, re-discovery, dignity, and regret. The collection follows a reflective journey, with the poem following this one titled 'Definition of Un-loneliness'.
Definitions is available on our website.
]]>A curse on the children who tap the mouthpiece
with the heel of their hand to make a popping sound
who drop the trumpet on the floor and then laugh,
a darker curse on those who fall with a trumpet
in their hands and selfishly save themselves,
a curse on the boy who dropped a pencil
on the bell of his trombone to see if it did
what I said it would, a curse on the girl
who stuffed a pompom down her cornet
and then said it was her invisible friend who did it,
a curse on the class teacher who sits at the back
of the room and does the paperwork,
a curse on the teacher who says I'm rubbish at music
in a loud enough voice for the whole class to hear,
a curse on the father who coated his daughter's trumpet valves
with Vaseline because he thought it was the thing to do,
a curse on the boy who threw up in his baritone
as if it was his own personal bucket.
Let them be plagued with the urge to practise
every day without improvement, let them play
in concerts each weekend which involve marching
and outdoors and coldness, let their family be forced
to give up Saturdays listening to bad music
in village halls or spend their Sundays at the bandstand,
them, one dog and the drunk who slept there the night before
taking up the one and only bench. Gods, let it rain.
A witty, sharp, and passionate poem from Moore's second collection of poetry, The Art of Falling, which also features her poem 'Tuesday at Wetherspoons', winner of the 2011 Geoffrey Dearmer prize. Available to buy on our website.
]]>To the average-looking man
Of average height and average build
Who boarded the train at London.
I was the lady with a face,
Wearing clothes and being on the train -
It was so GREAT!
Londoners!
If you have a life-affirming moment
With a lovely stranger on your carriage,
Take a risk and ask them out.
One day, your children might have names like
Upminster and Heathrow Terminal Four.
Other than overpriced travel fares and the lack of bus queues, another thing I miss about London are all the 'life-affirming moments' with strangers on the Tube, captured perfectly in this poem.
Amy McAllister's debut collection Are You As Single As That Cream...? is full of wonderfully witty poems such as the above. Her energetic voice finds humour in the most ordinary experiences.
]]>Drunks spreading themselves along the pier.
A girl impaling a worm on a hook
with the help of swear-words.
A lad toying with a reel,
slowly raising and lowering the bail.
Charcoal aroma set over the dock.
Blue fishing lines pulsating.
It is almost night, and yet I can still see
their lures swaying in the depths.
A oddly picturesque poem carefully constructed in a way to reveal much more beyond its initial reading. From the Polish poet Wioletta Greg, wonderfully translated by Marek Kazimierski, in Greg's collection Finite Formulae & Theories of Chance.
]]>Where should I go
what should I do
where should I go
what should I do
so stuck in my skin
I grope for a zipper
and out of the open
jagged slit
I will slip out,
all muscles.
My skin will keep saying
good morning while going to work
for another couple years at least.
Major European poet Kristin Dimitrova is known for light, simple, playful language and 'Opportunities' showcases this spectacularly. I love the frantic flow and use of direct language to evoke startling images.
From Dimitrova's collection My Life in Squares by Smokestack Books.
]]>I want to be that lone bagpipe player in the field,
in full dress, under the motorway, pumping up
the sun on this icy morning, forcing leaves out
on trees, piping one of a forgotten clan from a glen,
play at the opening of the Highland Games
from Braemar to the Cowal Gathering,
and lead a triumphant Scottish football team
off at the next World Cup. The pipe's drone
reminds me of their banning, the clearances, kilts
and dirks, and make me feel like a celebrity
as I'm piped into this London field,
before I have finished my morning run,
by a magical, mantelpiece figure
in a Munro, MacLean, or MacPhurlan tartan,
who could tease salmon from a river
and a wandering Scot back home.
In celebration of Burns Night yesterday (yesternight?), we've chosen this spirited work from Salmon poet Owen Gallagher as our poem of the week. From his third collection A Good Enough Love, available to order on our website.
]]>Orlando Bloom, come quick. I want your world:
it fits me so much better than my own.
My husband tells me I'm a wreck because
most days I let the children make a mess
and cannot leave my bed; I pull my hair
out from the stress, but I firmly believe
that if we married I would be stable
enough to have six kids and still be thin.
Orlando - please teach me which kissing angles
are best for photos. Let's tell magazines
our kids are little angels. Come quick:
I'm dangling on the threads of want.
And I just know your world is better
than my own: where my husband leaves stickers
in the dinner's aubergines and I am left
to peel the barcodes off with my front teeth.
And on those nights, I think not of him but
of the grocery boy, who must still be
in high school, strapped for cash, still hopeful,
and I think of his hands touching my own.
I think of how he must've cradled our vegetables
like the small breasts of his backseat girlfriend,
a Latina girl, I think, whose build is sweet
and parents speak in broken English.
Orlando, you must know what nights like these
are like: I won't bring up the scandal, you ex-wife,
but dear, you must admit: we fit.
Orlando Bloom, come quick.
From her debut collection Kissing Angles, Sarah Fletcher pens this humourous and empathetic poem. Confessional, revealing, and centred on an experience that almost every person can relate to; who hasn't had a celebrity crush at some point in their life? I, for one, am still waiting for musical theatre star Aaron Tveit to come to his senses and ask me out.
Kissing Angles is available to order on our website - just in time for Valentine's Day!
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