Performing a poem in a non-poetry space by Mark Blayney

Hello, my name is Cough. I’d like to share my what the hell’s this? with you
and also to welcome bar till ping.
It’s lovely to see excuse me love here and also
so many of you who are mower starts outside window.

SO I’LL SPEAK a little louder to cover the Is this not Cuban salsa?
and hopefully we can move to the first well they told me it was in here
and then we’ll enjoy a reading from a new book by
oh you’re right it’s Thursday.

It’s good to see so many new faces FART
and I hope not all of our first-time performers will be nervous.

So don’t listen to him it’s all indoctrination,
put your bible away you wan- kingdom of the polar bear,
a set of poems about Greenland and the
ice sheet – me, let’s put something on the jukebox!

And please welcome to the stage, reading from her new book
‘Poems spoken in a whisper’
the very wonderful Police siren! Bar till! Where are the toilets?

Good evening. My first poem is called, ‘The long silence’.

….

….

….

Let’s go, Doris. We’re missing Casualty.

Mark Blayney won the Somerset Maugham Prize for ‘Two Kinds of Silence’. His third book ‘Doppelgangers’ is available from Parthian and his first poetry collection ‘Loud music makes you drive faster’ will be published in October.

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Severn Bridge by Mark Blayney

Driving Wales to England
there’s a windsock so you know
what the breeze is like.

Why isn’t there one
on the other side?
In a way I’m pleased

that, like me,
even a giant bridge
can lose its socks.

More embarrassing for the bridge
because its ones are bright orange and huge
I can imagine its mum, saying for goodness sake
how can you lose that?

West of the bridge
we drive through stunning earth

bracken on mountains
ice blue lakes freeze
soil compressed by blackened sky

scanning the horizon for a glimpse
of the gigantic sofa
that the sock might be behind.

Mark Blayney won the Somerset Maugham Prize for ‘Two Kinds of Silence’. His third book ‘Doppelgangers’ is available from Parthian and his first poetry collection ‘Loud music makes you drive faster’ will be published in October.

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twitter