A sense of place

A question I often get asked – as I’m sure most poets do – is who do enjoy reading. I have a small bookcase crammed with around one hundred poetry books. I am an eclectic reader! However, I do have certain ‘go to’ poets depending on mood and circumstances.

At the moment, I’m plugged into August Kleinzahler. One of my favourites.

Born in New York, having lived most of his life in San Francisco, his work largely vacillates between these two great cities. But what I like most about his writing is his fine observation of the minute details around where he lives. His sense of and rooting in place.

And this is especially important for me just now. Having moved from Devon, where I effectively grew up as a poet with the help of a wonderful and wide-ranging group of friends, I am now settled into the most delightful of English towns, Shrewsbury.

Already I have been welcomed into a buzzing poetry community and making new friends. Only last week we had the excellent John Hegley as guest at Shrewsbury Poetry and the place was rammed. Followed up by a late-night session with eight of us, including John, back at a friend’s apartment.

But, of course, gelling into your new world takes a lot more than that. And August is helping me down that road.

Polarised

At dverse this week the prompt from Dora is to write a poem using an animal as a metaphor to break through on a blank page

His eyes are a wasteland mirrored
by the arctic paper
lying in front of me.

This hunter of seals through
pack ice and
snowed shores.

Eventually blood will write
of the kill in this
clean wilderness

And so now
my page
finally bleeds

End of the Line

Your bed is empty and bathed in an eerie moon glow.
Like an altar
with shadows of a darkened hospital ward fretting at its edges.

Silence

No-one at the desk.

For that one moment I am all life
mocked by the death I was too late to reach.
Another evening dash which this time missed its connection.
You never waited

for one final stilted conversation

one final goodbye

one last chance for me to chisel through your granite layers
and touch the beat of your heart.

Left behind is this cathedral space
still not big enough
for a hundred questions.
A thousand regrets.

Zola Budd’s hyenas and her day at Sedgemoor services

Surreal and fun workshop last night at Juncture 25 (our group of performing poets). We were given a list of people, list of places and list of situations had to chose one from each and then write a poem in 40 minutes! A point of note: Zola Budd was a South African who became a British citizen and was the world’s leading women’s middle distance runner in the mid 1980’s. She always ran barefoot.

She stands waif-like between a morose AA man
and the West Country Cornish pasty mobile.
It’s been raining.
Coming down like lions and hyenas,
she tells one disinterested traveller.
At least he was until he heard her say that.
What?
Lions and hyenas.
Don’t you mean cats and dogs?
He regrets the words before they leave his mouth,
sees the trap of the surreal opening up before him.
He learns where she comes from,
it obviously rains lions and hyenas.
Then he notices a bucket full of sorry looking flowers.
Rained on, they bow mournfully over the edge.
Red blooms, yellows and night blues
bleeding rain onto the floor by the door.
How much, he asks.
But he’s not prepared for the comeback.
Whatever you think they’re worth. She shrugs her bony shoulders.
Grabbing a handful, he jams a tenner in her fist,
walks off shaking his head.
Taking pity on the flower girl
who has no shoes.

Silence

Tonight at dVerse we are looking at love poetry without using ‘that’ word! Sometimes love needs no words at all ~ just being together is enough.

Snow suffocates the shuffling of nature.
No longer can wind worry at autumn’s leafy remnants.
All loose ends are tied up,
neatly buried in a new world that’s stealthed
in under cover of darkness.
In this wire taut quiet
my hearing is keening at the silence.
Just your steady breathing
breaching my ears.

Radio interview

This is a recording from the 10Radio programme Talking Books when Suzie Grogan invited me to read my work and requests from her listeners. It was wonderful fun.

You can check out Suzie’s blog here http://nowrigglingoutofwriting.wordpress.com/