Tag: poetry

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


By admin

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.

website
twitter

 

mad girls love art by Laura McKee


By admin

I thought to write a villanelle
like Sylvia and Elizabeth
I didn’t like it and it smells

It really didn’t go as well
as Sylvia’s or Elizabeth’s
I thought to write a villanelle

It’s hell it’s hell it’s hell it’s hell
I’d rather try some crystal meth
I didn’t like it and it smells

I used to have an auntie Nell
I used to have a flatmate Seth
I thought to write a villanelle

I’m crawling back inside my shell
I’m changing all my names to Jeff
I didn’t like it and it smells

For travel sickness take a Kwell
I like to sing Sunshine on Leith
I thought to write a villanelle
I didn’t like it and it smells

Laura McKee writes poems by mistake. Last year she had a poem on a bus for the Guernsey International Poetry Competition, was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize, and nominated for the Forward Prize Best Single Poem.

 

A Failed Poet’s Reflections on Writing Poetry – Part 1 by Jose Varghese


By admin

I struggled hard to create unique phrases,
got stuck with clichéd metaphors,
tried to freeze the magic of life
in extreme close-ups and wide angle shots
and ended with a senseless collage,
wrote of ‘chirping birds and twittering sparrows’,
watched thoughts ‘pirouette’, kept dreams ‘etched
in memory’, and failed miserably. Poetry
did not arrive in search of me. Perhaps
I lack experience, ‘real’ experience, mind it,
or I am insensitive to life and language,
or it’s my tpying, full og typpos, you see,
or it’s my blind faith in free verse and its
irreverent choices of

lexis

and

alignment,

or it’s just my attitude, my faltering faith
in the ways of the world of creativity.
I know there is something wrong for sure.
I have even started to wonder
whether the problem is with my readers.

(To be continued)

Jose Varghese is a writer/translator/editor from India who is currently  teaching English in the Middle East. ‘Silver-Painted Gandhi and Other Poems’ (2008) and ‘Silent Woman and Other Stories’ (forthcoming) are his books. He is the founder and chief editor of Lakeview International Journal Of Literature and Arts.

website

 

Stylist by Carole Bromley


By admin

My hairdresser doesn’t really get poetry;
he’s into Thai boxing, but he does ask about it.
We have these weird conversations
while we pretend there’s a point
in even talking about a new style.
He tells me about his broken nose,
how the A&E consultant lost patience
when he went straight out and got it broken again
and I tell him about stuff that’s alien
like doing readings to ten people
and spending more on a course
than I earn in a a year. He’s given up
trying to understand why I write
and I’ve given up trying to understand
the appeal of getting the shit kicked out of you.
I suggest the two activities are not so different;
he suggests a little layering at the sides.

(first published in Well Versed and in The Stonegate Devil)

Carole Bromley lives in York where she is the stanza rep and runs poetry surgeries. Winner of a number of first prizes including the Bridport. Two collections with Smith/Doorstop, the most recent being The Stonegate Devil, October 2015.

website
twitter

 

Poetry Lesson by Carole Bromley


By admin

Choose any animal, the teacher said,
maybe one you don’t like
and listen to his point of view.

Mary chose a rat, Fred a spider,
Jack a duck-billed platypus
but I thought of the rudest word I knew

and picked a dung beetle
not because I don’t like them
but so I could say poo.

Miss wasn’t amused and sent me
to stand outside the door
where there was nothing to do

so I pulled faces at the others
when her back was turned.
Jack laughed. She threw him out too.

We listed animals we didn’t like:
crocodiles, bulls, woodlice, sharks,
wasps, rhinos, the kangaroo.

I said ‘What about seagulls
when they snatch your chips?’
and Jack said ‘What about you?’

So I said he was an ape anyway
like the king of the swingers.
He belonged in a zoo.

But just then the head walked by,
looked in at the class writing poems,
said ‘What have you been up to?’

So Jack looked a litle bit sheepish
and I said ‘We’ve been acting daft.’
And he said ‘So what should you do?’

And I said ‘Say sorry to miss, Sir’
and Jack said ‘Not do it again’
and he said ‘Gentlemen, after you,’

and opened the door to the classroom
where Jack managed two lines about seagulls
and I did a dead good haiku.

Carole Bromley lives in York where she is the stanza rep and runs poetry surgeries. Winner of a number of first prizes including the Bridport. Two collections with Smith/Doorstop, the most recent being The Stonegate Devil, October 2015.

website
twitter