Huge thanks to Alison Raybould, who provides us with the very first piece of video footage for this new collaborative project!
Take a look at what we’ve got so far:
You now have until 5pm this Friday 10th April to send us the next 20 second clip, responding to verse 2:
a face I know to be yours
but folded away, cupboarded
kept for best
Full info and instructions on how to submit your film snippet are here. Really looking forward to seeing what comes next in this visual daisy-chain!!
Friends, I am delighted to invite you to contribute to a new digital project while we are all in lockdown, and hopefully beyond.
I have been asked by the wonderful poet Jo Colley to work with her on some activities to launch her fourth collection, Sleeper from Smokestack Books. It’s a glorious book full of double lives, Cold War spies, masked relationships, and emotional distances.
While we can’t bring you a physical launch (yet), we would very much like you to take part in a film renga. A renga is a long poem of linked verses that are created by several poets in collaboration, under the guidance of a renga master. The renga master directs the flow of the chain, and will select each verse in turn from the selection put forward by the poets.
In our renga, we are providing you with a weekly prompt, which is a short verse from a long poem in the Sleeper collection. We are asking for a 20 second video clip that complements the text rather than directly illustrating it, and which also responds to the images already accrued. Each time we release a new prompt, we will also show you the film so far.
Here is your first prompt:
the table in your house
dim light on a glass of brandy
incoherent babble, justifications
And here are the instructions:
We’ve reached the last Strange Prompt! Thirty whole new pieces of writing from me, with multiple contributions from 24 other poets and flash-fiction writers. It’s been a very satisfying outcome from my writing residency, and not at all what I expected. I’ve played with some fun techniques and poetic forms. I’ve written more flash fiction prose than I would ever normally do. I’ve been delighted by the quality of the shared writing, and very much enjoyed seeing some writers become slightly addicted to the prompts (Ann Cuthbert, I’m looking at you!). So thank you to everyone who has contributed, read, shared, commented and enjoyed this little project – I’ll see if I can come up with something great to follow.
Here’s my last one – just a little mesostic…
Thanks to Esther Bonner for this meditation on time…
Time passes..
Tick tock.
Seconds, minutes, hours.
Tick tock.
Birthdays, anniversaries,
work, pleasure.
Life never stops.
Tick tock.The beating heart, like a clock.
Tick tock.
Life slips away.
So STOP!Grab a moment to lift your face to the sun, let its warmth caress you.
Blow on a pearly white feather, watch it float idly on.
Rest your weary eyes.
Listen to the wind sigh on an Autumn breeze.
Trail your hand though a cool, fresh mountain stream.
Let your senses be cossetted and renewed by life.Time passes..
Tick tock
Julie Easley has a great take on the subject, fierce and feminist as usual!
she was adorned with bruises
ornaments of torture bejewelled about her body
but it was her poise that goaded him
her sealed room approaches
The doll, she said,
won’t dress herself, won’t sit to attention,
the doll won’t respond
if you tell her she’s miserable
Infinite gratitude to Tony Gadd, martial art guru and spoken word powerhouse, who sends us this wisdom from the depths of his own current, very serious, health struggles…
Walking the tightrope of an ECG
An emotional and bodily state
Balance in life
Like balancing stones
A lifetimes work
Practice the key
Physical and mental equilibrium
Unsettled by other
Forces and influences
Rebalance essential
Eyes closed, breathe and just be…
I had a vibe in mind for this prompt, an atmosphere, a sort of fin-de-Anthropocene gloom that I wanted to evoke with my deathless prose. Then I read this incredible flash fiction by Sharon Telfer, realised I could never do any better, and took to my fainting couch for a week.
But I rallied! And did my best, with this COVID-19-inspired flash.
Very happy to welcome a new contributor, Ann Whiting, with this short story:
The last house of the last passenger
He barricaded himself in, said it was his home and no one was going to take it from him; still strong enough to drag two-by-four wooden planks from the garden, he hammered six inch nails into their depths. Soon he would fly on angel’s wings to his beloved’s home and she’d greet him as she’d always had with a smile as alluring and warm as freshly baked bread. One hug from her and he was healed.
She’d died there, in his arms, and he needed to know she’d know where to find him when his time came. There was nowhere else he was going to die.He’d prepared his exit carefully, stopped the medication weeks ago. The cut backs in health care were a godsend to him. No one checked on him daily anymore. He’d fallen through the net.
His heart fluttered weakly now, the exertion had after all taken its toll so he rested in the chair, dreaming of her face lying close to his once more. This would be his last home and he would be the last passenger out of here. The last one to take flight on angel’s wings. He slept in his cosy armchair, dozing lightly. When the angel came, it looked like her, so he flew away with her into the blue sky and never looked back.
Beneath him, the authorities were breaking down his door to remove him to a ‘place of safety,’ also known as a Care Home, before the demolition men could be moved into the street, his street, where his children had played.
They found him in his favourite chair as if asleep, smiling as if at some private joke. He’d checked himself out, taken flight and evaded their control. The last passenger had departed his home on his own terms, not theirs, and there was a sense of triumph for him at least in that.
Outside, the engines of the bull-dozers growled waiting to leap into action but now there’d have to be an investigation into his death which would delay the demolition by months at least. Time enough for questions to be raised about the purchase of the land and their methods and perhaps for the truth to come to light…
The last passenger’s intentions began to immediately take flight.
Please also enjoy this poem from Caroline Walling, in which the Earth speaks to the last human…
This it is.
Time to leave.Could I not?
No
I’m tired of you riding my back
Spinning my axis for you
Get off
This is your final timeBut my home is with you.
It’s always been this way.How your memory is thin!
But you are my world!
Not any more
Please leaveBut why?
I needed time
You wasted it
wasted me.
I’m no longer your prize
Your infinite feastPlease, get off.
Where shall I go?
Where they all go
In the end,
From where they came,
and I shall be the happier for it.Now please
it’s time to leave.
And I’m delighted to have a poem from Jane Burn too!
The poor, the sick and the needy are already dispersed, dissolved,
divided up or dead. They will not be going forward into our Pure New World.
Did you think those sci-fi films were wrong? They were premonitions.
We super-rich got our heads together many years ago to shield ourselves
from such what ifs. Put our money where our mouths were. Why d’you think
we never really seemed to care enough while the Earth blazed and water
reclaimed the land? Remember Noah? That big blot on the horizon is our Ark.
This is our Plan B and yet I cannot help but want this one last glance,
barren and blistered though this place be. So I took the last in a long line
of temporary tents, have watched the loading of our privileged exodus.
Survival of the fittest, you see. Fat Cats will always land upon their feet.
We will be angels, mounting a ramp that rests on the slain – the ones
that tried, with their pauper’s hope and ruined bones, to join the Chosen Few
and now waste, with bullet addled skulls and bloody skins beneath our feet.I walk away from the camp – the last place I ever lived, on this planet,
at least. Wind snatches at silk like a lover gone wrong, snaps at the hold
of guy ropes, takes shreds of it into wasted air to remind the sky of birds.
The mental image that inspired my poem for this prompt is a photograph taken at Bhopal, after the catastrophic chemical plant explosion. (The image I mean is number 7 in this article, but please be warned it is an image of a dead child and very upsetting, don’t go there if you don’t want that in your mind).
I’m extremely happy to be joined today by two more excellent poems. This one is by the wonderful Finola Scott:
He arrived late, but smelt so sweet
and forty years later he does it again
My bold boy, the Prodigal, I joke
to his sister. Her and I smile & sigh.Today we high-wind hurtle city to city
across Scotland’s belted waist. He says
The Icelandic Symphony Orchestra play
capitally. As musician after musician
crowds the stage we giggle, so many tails.
Honey brass gleams, chestnut cellos wait
for sap-rise. He nudges, points at the timpani.Then it soars, I’m swept into fiords, ice
melts, sea eagles swoop, glaciers calve.
Side by side we voyage out of ourselves
into each other.
And this one is donated by the equally wonderful Harry Gallagher:
The Sea
Today I almost gave my glasses to the sea
but the sea said no,
it could see where things were headed
and the ebb and the flow
hadn’t lost my address
it had just looked the other way
for a moment.Today I tried to throw my stick into the sea
but the sea tossed it back
with a million tonnes of plastic,
said it was too full up for now
but if I stuck around
for at least another day
it could do with a hand itself.Today I shot my slings at the sea wall
but all that came back
was an echo of a wave
as ancient as time,
a reminder that tomorrow is a choice
that will happen with or without
the sound of my voice.Today I unloaded my woes to the sea.
The rage and the spray
of a world of injustice
was carried away on the westward wind
that battered and dropped me
then propped me back up
to await the turn of the tide.
Oh this was one of my favourite mis-translations, from all the way back at the beginning of this project! Here’s my effort, a little complaint from a bloke with growing political anger issues.
The prompt also inspired Jules Clare, who has donated this poem, also flavoured with politics:
DMs on hardy feet
White socks under Docs
Gathering in circles
Skin head flocksWe don’t need
this Facist Groove Thing
Crushed by the wheels
of British industryA free trade deal
A Statute of Liberty
Dead in the water
Donald and The PeachLest we forget
Iranian arms widespread
A life in arms
Radical, handy and ultimately unseen
When I was writing to this prompt, I really wanted to do something about the tiger who broke her front tooth and had it replaced with a gold one, but everything I tried turned out a bit – dunno, but wrong. So I did what I often do when I feel lacking, I tried out a form, a set of rules to play by. In this case, a Terrance Hayes A Gram of &s-type exercise. 11 lines, last word of each line must be found anagrammatically within the words of the title, 4+ letter words only, no pluralisation. I’m not saying the resulting poem is any great shakes, but it did come together with the little click that says ‘poem’ to me.
If you’d like to try your own A Gram of &s poem, or any sort of piece playing with anagrams of this title, here’s my most interesting word list so far – what others can you find?
INCITE RILE SLICE SORREL SPLEEN SPLENETIC RINSE SCISSOR CORPSE ROOST CREST STRIPE INCISE SPINDLE SPIRE INSPIRE SPINE STELE STEEL TREND REPENT INDENT SPITE SPORT PORTER PRESENT PINCER PRINCE INTERRED RESPECT TINDER SCREED SECRET SECRETE CREED REPEL RISEN RENNET CRISP CREPE ROPED DINNER DINE DINER TINE SITE TENSE CREDIT SEER
Update! Ann Cuthbert found some more anagrams, and wrote this superb Gram of &s with them, about Mayan jade teeth…
Lady of Teotihuacan, you rise,bones stripped but breath not spent,while Kukulkan writhes, peersfrom your mouth, from green serpentinetooth, tartared and worn before the cistclaimed your corpse. Jade priestess,you are the passageway, you enticethe serpent-god to emerge, spiritup a wind, conjure ancestor-gods in riteof resurrection. Green in your jaw, he sleeps.At your summoning, he stirs.
Last one of this little batch! For my piece today, I started thinking about resonant spaces inside us that enable us to make sounds. A tiny flash fiction about a washed-up opera singer popped into my head, so here it is for your entertainment.
Once again, the brilliant Ann Cuthbert has been having fun with these prompts – we’ve begun to joke that we should co-author a pamphlet of them. Listen to the music in this one…
Sonorous passageways
Sometimes a thousand twangling instruments will hum about my ears – Caliban, The Tempest
The tunnel curves like bangles round an arm.
Spiders dangle, dumb; spin jungles.
Rain thrums on corrugations, strums angles.
What’s coming?
Thumbs tingle. You’re following crumbs,
wangling a way out. Keep schtum.
Candle tumbles. Shadows gangle.
Huge thanks also to first-time contributor to this Strange Prompts projects, Alison Curry, with this lovely poem:
With shielded ears
The echoes rise
Dust awakened
Stings the eyesSeeking out
Within narrow walls
Gasps of air
Muted callsA glint of light
From a memory when
The harshness
Wasn’t- all was rightBeyond the darkness
Dust clears to light
Ah! A little something dark and twisted comes flowing forth today, from me and from my two contributors. Enjoy this very Strange Prompt…
From Julie Easley, a poem:
I thought I might be dead
waking up in this shrunken room.
The walls seem elastic
to my touch, bending with my body,
as if breathing on their own.
A small window beckons me,
desperate as I am for light,
for signs I am living.
There is movement, a momentary
glimpse of hope as images
flash before my eyes.
But I am just a mirror,
a reflection of my past, playing
out on repeat until I learn.
And from Jo Colley, a prose-poem:
It’s so light, but there are no windows: the light comes from a series of ultra violet bulbs, giving the impression of daylight. Light making an effort to emulate the sun, to be real, to improve your sense of well-being. But the effort is too great. And there’s nothing to hide under or behind: all open plan, wooden floorboards, floor cushions. You feel so exposed. It makes you want to prostrate yourself face down on the tasteful rug and list every one of your inadequacies. You suspect this might take some time.
Delicious!!
The most vertiginous image I could think of is that one by Escher of the dimension-defying staircases, so that is the starting inspiration for my poem today.
Taking up my anagrammatic challenge from earlier in this series, Ann Cuthbert has this poem for you all:
Vertigo is the illusion of motion/Artists create illusory motion in their images
Poem (unsubtly) written using only letters from the words illusory motionSlut soul, you mourn in ruins,slum it, slit, torn.Sin runs sly, rotsmusty in unlit rooms.Loins sour, unlusty.Moon’s lost story looms.
Kirsten Luckins 