Tag: new poetry

Ekphrastic project – James Cowie’s ‘The Yellow Glove’

2012AA41357

Oh my dear, it was too, too dreadful!

Mortal mind can scarce conceive –

At least, not yours, darling Vi,

Yours would have shrunk. Violets do shrink,

It’s an immutable law, like death, or gravity,

Or who sits to the left of the Bishop.

“Bother immutability” that silly boy would say,

And therein lies the drastic horror of the thing,

For Pongo positively pushed it this time!

Doubtless the dear old Duchess toot sweet

Snipped him merrily from the Will, singing

“Cold porridge to primogeniture!” So you see,

I simply had to pop back the jolly old ring

And hoof it hotfoot before the bean began blubbing.

It’s a rotten sausage, but there it is.

Now, do try one of mine – they’re Turkish.

Deseeded

I’m very happy indeed to have a poem selected for Deseeded, an online magazine edited by Degna Stone, founder member of the Butcher’s Dog editing team. The call-out asked for work written in response to a prompt from the late Julia Darling, published as a Guardian masterclass in 2005, shortly before her death. It was a lovely prompt, all about instructional poems, which are some of the most fun things to write because they really do ‘tell the truth but tell it slant.’

The overall selection is beautifully curated, and not over-long, so I urge you to just gorge yourself on the whole lot right now.

If you’d like to try writing an instructional poem yourself, here is the prompt , and if you are in the Newcastle area you could go to Live Theatre for workshops and new plays all responding to, and celebrating, the life and work of Julia Darling.

I also strongly recommend you subscribe to the amazing Butcher’s Dog magazine, which will come to you in hard copy twice a year and fill your life with beauty.

Filmpoems : Poemfilms

So I was rejected recently. Nothing new there. Got knocked back by Verb New Voices, who didn’t think much of a proposal featuring filmpoems. I don’t care, I love filmpoems, so here’s a couple of new ones for you. Please contact me if you’re available to re-record the voiceovers, I loathe the sound of my adenoidal toddler-voice.

This one written from a 52 prompt…

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eOfcfDsm-bc

This one written from a Buddhist text…

Plus of course, the inevitable sweary rant that is Primavera, recently screened at Stage 2 of Northern Stage!!! Hahahahahaha.

http://https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zsQ7d-f73aE

Remiss – miss me?

I feel guilty – I have been more attentive to my Moon blog than to this one. I’ve had plans! An essay/review on sonnet sequences in the work of Eleanor Brown and Patience Agabi, for example. That’s a particularly good figment of my imagination. I have been reading rather a lot of poetry…

Image

Or I could tell you about the agony and the ecstasy of the everyday poet? For example – I recently had a poem shortlisted for the York Literature Festival. In the last 50 of over 900. But didn’t win. I had poems rejected by Alliterati and Butcher’s Dog magazines, but had ones accepted by Streetcake and When Women Waken. 

I’m writing poems about the WW1 bombardment of Hartlepool – they’re pretty nifty, but I can’t share until the end of the year when they get published in an anthology. And I’m writing poems in response to the Bloodaxe Archive, but they’re all pants so far, so I’m not gonna show you.

OK, how about this little smidge, written in response to a prompt from the fabulous 52 project, on the subject of ‘praise’.

Praise After Bad Times

No balance to the meal

without a pinch of bitter.

The hunkered marriage-bulb knows

to bide the blink of winter.

Kisses re-risen, purple mouths

open gold tongues.

The patiently espoused

Worth our weight in saffron.