Featured Poets of the Month

Philip Ruthen

Watch Philip Ruthen Reading on British Satellite News Channel on the eve of Second London Poetry Festival 2006 at which he was one of the five Poets in Residence for the Festival. Click Here

Read more of Philip Ruthen's works as one of the five Poets in Residence at 2nd London Poetry Festival 2006 Here

Read Philip Ruthen as Featured Poet of November 2005 issue of Poet's Letter Online Magazine Here

Read more of Philip Ruthen as featured in Purely Poetry section of September  2005 issue of Poet's Letter Online Magazine Here

Read More about Philip Ruthen at 2nd London Poetry Festival 2006 Page Here 

Apart from these links there are numerous contributions made by Philip Ruthen in poetry, short stories, book reviews as the Founding Book Reviews Editor of Poet's Letter Magazine (between January 2005 and March 3, 2007) which can be accessed and researched out of all the Archived Issues Here

His Ebook: One Hundred Days War

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‘If you’re there, it happens’

It started with a magazine article,
articulate,
forced the premise that I knew
little
about anything,
on this occasion Burma, the Far East -

About turn;
I laugh nervously
fall into fantasy
via a dirty back alley,
civil
servants -
just
a technical detail.
The regime plays grown-up politics

travel east, there is heat and hot water
there is a smell of institutions and torture
calling from
home
at home abroad in tiny rooms -
people becoming cold
as ill-tempered steel

inside the compound.
They note my movements
every 15 minutes
but Evil never reaches
the space of escape
in the mind of a child -
the private rope over the walls
the space of joining minds
however touched;
pistol in the oiled rags
was never there,
chimera lovingly
discarded.

All times are local
in space and distance the news wires will
snap with the force of Burma’s peoples’ prayers,

the words filled with their features.

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Night is not necessary

Your taste is the swirl of poplars escaping
the city,
entering you,
in this world,
the lights of Provence
compel return to brush stroke
of difference in constancy

east from west, rise
tumble dangerously
pulling me with you
Bacardi and croissants
swept to the propped window lace screen
swell in, arch forward,
somewhere, further, do waves weep their travel?

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The past is the letter rack


Caught on the outskirts
of lovelines
scattered by dynamite kisses
on a real phone no better
than photos in wallets
where stray hairs flaw
screens holding gloss brushing
to each exposed cheek.

There is more than one way to write.
There is no need to find the wallet.

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After the death of the aeronautical engineer


I found him on the floor, the bridges un-built
the sky-scraper scarred into the chequer-board
kitchen-tiles
an egg-yolk, broken, in the Pyrex bowl
glaring at the dinner’s instruction sheet
and the slice of bread
a finger-tip away

as the air fix kit
carrying the plates and components of the Buccaneer
mocked attempts to recreate for his grandchild the
perfect vacuum slipstream only
an engineer could devise
from the tailfin
that defined lift.

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Copyrights remain with the authors

Book Review

And in here, the Menagerie: Angela Cleland

Angela is a poet of a living rainbow made of images, colours, senses, myths and melancholy self awareness and thus she gives you poetry of depth and breadth as well as dimensions! There are layers of lights and darkness, there are levels of salts and sugars and surely there are degrees of separation and longing as well as heights of hopes, dreams and optimism.

And in here, the Menagerie
Angela Cleland
Templar Poetry
54 Pages
£9.99
www.angelacleland.co.uk


Angela Cleland and her first collection, And in here, the Menagerie, both happened to be at the Poetry Café where I was just gathering myself to go! I was surely not looking forward to receive the benefit of the Menagerie! But I did! Bumped on to both of the poet and her collection and here now ought to write about her book, which she was holding with so much pride and joy! To start with I can say this that Angela Cleland is not a poet whose works one should approach with a dictionary! Leave the dictionary out for she will give you a new dictionary where meanings change through her images and even ‘Menagerie’ takes a meaning of ‘craftsmanship’ or rather craftswomanship! Leave the plasticine out Angela will give you gold-earth-clay, air-flour to make magic dough and you sing in notes that are made of so many different things than what you know.

If poetry is about imagination, if it is about leading us to a time and space where nobody took us before Angela is the poet who commands it all and she writes poetry like no other poets, her poetry is her breathing soul making magic and myth out of her living! It is pleasant, it is bright and brilliant but at the same time it breaks in pain, it agonises and it pines while maintaining this youthful ambience of gradual and rising optimism with a deep sense of purpose and conviction in it!

Angela is no cliché poet, she does not go on walks in Hackneyed Marshes or Citied walls instead she takes us to places where no one does want us to go or none of us would like to go!

Angela carries the landscape of myths in her poetry like Aladin’s Magic carpet and when she comes walking onto the city streets she makes us spectators of a mythical exposition where beauty speaks in confidence of youth but with the depth of spread of understanding and reach to life than any matured poets would do. Angela gives you a ‘pomegranate heart’ yet, wait a minute, it soon becomes,

‘my heart is Persephone fleeing Hades
in the knowledge she must soon return.’

Angela is a poet of a living rainbow made of images, colours, senses, myths and melancholy self awareness and thus she gives you poetry of depth and breadth as well as dimensions! There are layers of lights and darkness, there are levels of salts and sugars and surely there are degrees of separation and longing as well as heights of hopes, dreams and optimism.

Angela is not a poet of trained Tesco Value Poetry School. Angela is a poet born of her determination to write poetry as though that is what the end and beginning of her being! Angela is not simple, no easy, no ordinary a voice. Her sensibility has depth and her works shine in the realm of bright and deep intelligence!

Angela is a taxidermist of words that no one has touched before and even if they did Angela transforms them into magic and like her dead birds words invoke, evoke and endear a world that is utterly beautiful, wonderfully youth-spun, afresh and anew yet angst and haunted at times and absolutely rewarding while at the same time there is this sense of loss and longing or rather hope and optimism!

Wristwatch, Electricity, Stitching Silk, He has an Armchair in Your Brain, Analogy, The Rain Gauge, Your Art, Skimming, City Bird, to name but a few poems from the collection that tell us to begin learning this name for in names like this the future of today’s English contemporary poetry ought to be written.

But do not come back to say that we did not warn you, Angela will break your soul and make it into dust and then the dust will form a tree of nothingness where there will be birds singing but she will do that without you knowing it and worst still:

'One day I’ll show this bird how
to be a bird, teach him a song
in a language I don’t understand.'

To Angela life is an overwhelming necessity that pulls her in the thick of it and she is not scared to dive into it whether it is in the heart of the city from where she gives you ‘pieces of it’, of the city, of the life, of the living and dying of it but she gives pieces, shreds, shades, textures and geometry of her soul! It is not an ordinary gift!

As already said, Angela is no cliché-gathering word hermit! She does not even ‘miss’ something or other like other poets: she misses like a ‘bad archer’ and in doing so she gives us much more than what we are so much battered and trained into expecting out of dead Tesco Value Poetry!

This is a poet who writes about wristwatch and mesmerises the reader into believing that it was not about the watch at all or was it! She writes about electricity and does it talk about love or lightning! Angela Cleland is not a trained poet and should we be glad that she is not! Well, absolutely!

‘all painted-money-magpie
all pneumonic-rucked-road
all creased-crying-monkey-child
-wet-sand-sack-heavy.’

(Sinking)


‘The sea moves on the earth like a lover
Folded between their rough and smooth
passions, I am polished by their slow
heaving, eased back towards land.’

(Skimming)

‘Your careful strong lines will help me
when the sun goes down, to trace where
the shadows end and I begin

(You Art)

‘I remember how you used to say, ‘’look at her:
what a beauty,’’ and they’d watch my face light up.

‘Try it-it’s a scream-the fingers
crumple on contact just as if they’re broken
in a million places.’’

(Wool and air)

Your words
trickled in my ears, filling me,
inching like a rain gauge
from the feet up,

- Legs



- Loins


- Guts


- Heart


- Head, till I was so


- Full


they started leaking
from my eyes.

(The Rain Gauge)

If Templar publishes poets like Angela Cleland it should be the 'City Lights' of English poetry and poetry loving Brits should queue up to this breathtakingly fresh opening of new publishing.

www.templar.co.uk
 

Sport Relief Weekend: 14-16th Feb

Sport Relief is a fundraising initiative that uses everything that’s good about sport to change lives for the better.  It is all set to take place over a weekend of events, energy and entertainment: Friday 14^th – Sunday 16^th March 2008. 

We need your support to help us encourage more people to get involved and raise much needed cash.  We would be really grateful if you could put one of our banner or print ads on your website or internal publication.  

The money you help to raise by promoting Sport Relief will be spent by Comic Relief to support vulnerable people living incredibly tough lives both at home in the UK and across the world’s poorest countries.

Please click on the following links to choose the banner ad or print ad most suitable to your publication:

www.sportrelief.com  

CHINA NOW:2008

7-22 February

Fireworks, Dragons and Funfairs Britain Celebrates Chinese New Year China Now
 

Kicking off with spectacular firework displays, colourful street parades, Shaolin martial arts performances and 175ft Dragon dances, CHINA NOW's nationwide Chinese New Year celebrations sees the UK enter a Chinese culture craze.

CHINA NOW, the UK's largest ever festival of Chinese culture, launches its 6-month festival of over 800 Chinese events across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland with Chinese New Year festivities celebrating the Year of the Rat.

Considered a lucky creature, the Year of the Rat is seen as a prime time for self-renewal, hard work and new opportunities. Those born in the Year of the Rat characteristically adapt themselves to the situation at hand, have the ability to cope with difficulties and are at their best during a crisis.

Chinese New Year is the most important of the traditional Chinese holidays and normally begins on the first day of the first lunar month in the Chinese calendar lasting for 15 days. The New Year celebration starts this year on 7thFebruary and ends on 22nd February.
Following on from Chinese New Year celebrations, the CHINA NOW festival will include exhibitions, performances and activities spanning Chinese film, cuisine, comics, art, literature, music, design, science, technology, business, education and sport across the UK.
For more information on events that are happening in any specific geographic area contact Jessica Potter on 0207 936 7410 or 0782 500 4675.

The public can find more events at
www.chinanow.org.uk/events 

London

1. Lighting Lanterns on Oxford Street

At the start of the celebration to mark Chinese New Year large Chinese lanterns will be lit at Oxford Circus on 6th Feb. This is a China in London event, a season organised by the Mayor of London in association with CHINA NOW. 5pm
Admission: Free

2. Family Day at The British Museum

On Saturday 9th February the British Museum will host a special day of celebration for Chinese New Year. To welcome in the Year of the Rat, the Museum will present a spectacular programme of performance, displays, workshops and story telling. Exciting performances of Chinese folk tales by the Beijing Bailing Shadow Puppet Troupe and RDFZ Dance Troupe. There will also be opportunities for visitors to participate in painting and lantern workshops as well as making terracotta warriors. Other activities include screenings of classic Chinese silent films, storytelling and gallery talks in Mandarin, Cantonese and English by a wide range of guest speakers including Jung Chang, Antony Gormley, Hugh Quarshie and Dan Snow. Throughout the day, there will be Chinese-themed food available from the museums cafes, Chinese food stalls around the Great Court and Chinese tea and beer appreciation. This is a China in London event, a season organised by the Mayor of London in association with CHINA NOW.
Admission: Free

3. Parade and Trafalgar Square celebrations

London's celebration for the Chinese New Year of the Rat on 10th February begins with a parade along the Strand, Charing Cross Road and Shaftesbury Avenue. The parade is between 11am – 1pm.
From midday to 6pm, the main event takes place in Trafalgar Square with Dragon dances and a stage featuring the best of traditional and contemporary Chinese Arts and Entertainments. Included are visiting artists from the Beijing Dance Drama & Opera House and a dance group from the High School Affiliated to Renming University of China. There will be fireworks displays in Leicester Square hourly from 2pm - 6pm plus cultural stalls, food, decorations around Chinatown.
This is a China in London event, a season organised by the Mayor of London in association with CHINA NOW. Admission: Free

Manchester

On 10th February, Chinese New Year Celebrations will include two stages with performances from artists from both China and Manchester. Based in both Manchester Chinatown and Town Hall Albert Square, the programmes include Chinese stage magic, acrobatics, martial arts, a colourful grand parade, a 175 ft long Dragon with drums and gong, lion dance, Datong drum fleet and Chinese fairies. Street stalls of Chinese Arts & Craft gifts, delicious Chinese food, jewellery and handicraft stalls, a funfair and much more. Admission: Free

Brighton

On 17th February the Dome Complex in Brighton will be showcasing a mix of both traditional and contemporary staged performances in the concert hall, including music, dance, theatre and community choirs. The Corn Exchange will be brim full of interesting stalls and tasty Chinese delicacies. The North Lane area between Jubilee Square and Pavilion Gardens will be decorated with vibrant and festive banners and lanterns, the streets will come alive with the sights and sounds of Chinese New Year, a Lion dance, Dragon parade and much more. Make a dragon puppet or a lantern, as part of the city wide Chinese New year celebrations at Brighton Museum & Art Gallery between 2-4pm. The finale to the day's celebrations will be a beautiful Chinese lantern parade in collaboration with local community arts organization "Same Sky". Midday – 6pm. Admission: Free. 01273 234 800.

Coventry

Held in the Lower Precinct Shopping Centre on 10th February, the Coventry & Warwickshire Chinese Community Association are organising Dragon & Lion Dances, Tai Chi, Chinese Folk Music, Shaolin Martial Arts, Stalls, Food and Competitions. Admission: Free

Southampton

On the 10th February, at the African Caribbean Centre, the Chinese Association of Southampton will be hosting an evening including a Dragon & Lion Dance, Tai Chi, Chinese Folk Music, Shaolin Martial Arts, Stalls, Food and a number of competitions. Admission: £5. Children under 12 for free.

Leicester

On 7th February at 7.30pm, the UK Silk String Quartet will be appearing at the Richard Attenborough Centre in the University of Leicester for an evening of Chinese and Western music. The Silk String Quartet is the first and only Chinese String Quartet in Europe. The group combines traditional and modern, Chinese and Western music in a fresh and creative way. The four talented female virtuosi have all been trained in China and the West and performed diverse music genres worldwide. Admission: £15

Liverpool

Held in Liverpool's Chinatown on 10th February, the annual one-day event attracts 20 000 people. As part of the Liverpool's European Capital of Culture year, events planned for the Year of the Rat include artistic workshops, Chinese market, traditional Lion dance, funfair, street-trading, a variety of music & dance performances as well as martial arts demonstrations. Admission: Free

Bath

Traditionally on the first day of Chinese New Year a ceremony takes place to welcome the gods. Michael Lee, curator from the Museum of East Asian Art, will be talking about their current exhibition 'Shen: Chinese Icons of Divinity' in celebration of the New Year at 2-3pm on 7th February. Admission: £4

Nottingham

On 10th February 4.30pm – 6.30pm at Lakeside, the University of Nottingham's public arts centre, Chinese New Year's celebrations will include music, dance and drama and a Lion and Dragon Dance. The event finale will feature a spectacular firework display across the lake. Admission: £12

Edinburgh

Edinburgh is holding a traditional show of Chinese culture and art, with dance, music, songs, drama and acrobatics by Edinburgh Chinese School at the Festival Theatre in Edinburgh on Sunday, 3 February, at 2pm. Admission: £5

There is also a session on 9 February involving storyteller, dancer and musician Marion Kenny, who is being joined by Scotland's leading Chinese musician and composer Kim-ho Ip for an afternoon of New Year celebrations in the Storytelling Court at 2.30 pm at 43-45 High Street, Edinburgh. All ages welcome. Admission: Free

Cardiff

The National Museum of Wales in Cardiff is holding a Chinese New Year Gala on 2nd February. Over 350 guests are expected to be in attendance from all over the UK to celebrate the new Year of the Rat. The event will include Chinese martial art performances, calligraphy workshops, traditional ballet performances, a fashion catwalk show and hip-hop dancers. Prior to the event, a series of educational workshop for pupils from Cardiff Chinese School will also be taking place on the subject of traditional Chinese dance; arts and crafts prior to the Gala, and all work of arts will be shown on the day of the gala. 7pm Admission: £5
Journalists can call Jessica Potter 0782 500 4675 for events in specific geographic regions can be sourced by calling.

For further details, please contact:
Jessica Potter, CHINA NOW - UK
T: +44 (0)207 936 7410
M: +44 (0)7825 004675

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Editorial

Welcome to the February issue of Poet's Letter. Let The Universe Song speak as the Editorial for February. See you all (whoever could make it) at the Savoy Tup on Monday the 11th, 7 pm.

Claire Askew: Poet in Residence, January 2008

Coming Together

In the early days, when your feet still struggled,
each morning, to find themselves, you inhabited a city
that only made sense on paper. I, the flitting
white cane that guided you, steered us
through espresso daydreams on yawning streets,
beneath bus-shelters – we were both blind –
doe-eyed and awe-full among stricken gallery frames.
I remember you burning curls of incense
in a paper cup, scrawling on yourself –
your veins seemed to run on the outside of your skin,
liquidising your heart into the palm of your hand.
It was from there that your ash fell in the rain –
you started to smoke like an army man, that night,
as we sheltered against the steel doors
under scaffolding.

We took turns at artistic hysteria. I was your
Dorothy Wordsworth, your emotional proof-reader –
a writer of long-winded, comforting notes; a patient,
smiling model for myriad screwed-up sketches. In turn,
you suggested adjectives from behind newspaper folds;
filled the bathtub with autumn leaves – you fitted
stubborn typewriter ribbons, cursing, and blackened
to the wrist.

Soon, you solved the conundrum of your new
existence – turned correctly at the lights
without my prompt. Just like your escape from a life
lived between the pages of an A – Z, you began
to solve me; recognised my bad traits in the identity parade
of our love. Stupidly, I never thought to try
and trick you; simply buttoned you up with revelations –
talismans for the expedition ahead.
And so, we find ourselves cover-snatching under the jaws
of the night – I wear your shirts, confuse you
with my inexplicable scent. You read aloud to me,
memorise the poetic names of the beers I drink, insist
on paying for groceries. Somewhere, it seems, between the lost
and the finding, we scooped out a mould for ourselves
where the sky touches ground; a groove in the wood –
and somehow, with hands locked like puzzle-pieces, unnoticed,
we fit.

Christopher's wren

I shiver at the kitchen window, watching Christopher
as he works the garden.  A dim figure
in the dusk, he ducks in and out
of the steamy greenhouse, flexing his hands
over the heaters.  I remember the time
we slept in there - drunk, and locked out, lying
on concrete under glass and sky.  His tall marijuana
hid among the tomato plants, and we were sleepless.

I blanch the window with breath.  He throws a match
onto a mound of leaf-mould, and the lawn
stutters with sparks, then smoulders.  Back-lit by this bonfire,
he muddies the path to the door, arrives - boots
and everything.  He holds out a skinny hand, black -
dirt in the creases from hours of splitting soil,
sowing, stirring the earth like dough.  Look.

It falls in my palm - a smooth, white skull, the size of
a matchbox, once a bird.  Christopher blows silt from the sockets,
and it sings, an ocarina.  He leaves, to tend to something
still alive - amyrillis, snapdragon - this man my mother
is right to disapprove of.  The leaves on his fire sigh
into smoke, then nothing; dusk settles.  I let the skull fall,
smash, soundless on the tile, and see him shudder.
As if he'd listened for it, heard.   As if he felt. 

Read more of her works on her page. Click Here

Copyrights remain with the authors

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Purely Poetry Purely Poetry Purely Poetry

Mary Ann Lily:  I’ll Be

The wind that puffs the petals
The robin at your feet
The sun that shines upon you
The child you’ve yet to meet

The rain upon your shoulders
The grass beneath the tree
The candle flame that flickers
Whenever you think of me

The dreams you still can wonder
The days you cannot cope
The reason you keep on trying
The reason you can still hope

The coat around your shoulders
The shoes upon your feet
The hat you remember me saying
Will always keep in the heat

The chair on which you’re sitting
The food you always eat
The bed you then retire on
To rest, ponder and sleep

The strength to help and guide you
Along life’s weary way
The fun you know there will be
If only for the next day

The laughter you hear float by you
As you walk out in the park
The ducks you feed in the river
The dog you can hear bark

The trickle of running water
That falls from stream to stream
The reason you still keep trying
To fulfil your hopeful dream

The fire that burns so brightly
As you ponder life’s pattern and know
In the night, so calm and quiet,
I will keep away your foe.

As it flickers alive but quietly
Giving out it’s golden glow
In the night so dark, ‘twill calmly
Let you know

I’m the morning light that wakes you
The sun as it rises so slow.
The curtains in a hue of blue
By the window they quietly blow.

The flicker of the light bulb
When you wonder why it might
The noises that sound around you
In the quiet of the night.

The sadness you feel each moment
You look at photos and care.
The joy when you remember
Forever I will be there

The one who’s always waiting
To help you along the way.
Your hopes and cares deciding
Till that wondrous, bright day

We meet once again dear
The two of us to be
The ones that joined together
For ever you and me
 

Image and poem: Mary Ann Lily

Photography: Painting By Camera: By Mary Ann Lily

Copyrights remain with the authors

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Poet of the Month: Angela Cleland

From her Publisher's Promotional Post Card about her First Collection  'And in here, the Menagerie' Angela Cleland's 

Wool and air

Have you ever pulled your hand
into the wrist of your glove
and pretended the empty glove was your hand?

It stays, a faithful shape of you,
a delicate woollen hand-shaped balloon;
it can fool even those closest to you.

No-one will know till they try to shake you by it,
grab you by it as you fall,
reach out to put their hand on yours.

Try it, it’s a scream-the fingers
Crumple on contact just as if they are broken
in a million places.
 

Copyrights remain with the authors

www.angelacleland.co.uk

www.templarpoetry.co.uk

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BOOK REVIEW BOOK REVIEW BOOK REVIEW

Maggie Sullivan is No Ordinary Poet Tells Her First Collection Near Death (Domestic)

Near Death (Domestic)

Maggie Sullivan

Publisher: Tall Lighthouse

37 Pages

£5

Maggie Sullivan is no ordinary poet, tells us her confident first collection that speaks with a voice of a ‘Pink Elephant’ while she takes a dive into her journey in locating the inventor of time and comes up with pulses of time beating on the park benches, throws sparkles at us  out of the world diamonds from the eyes of her children!

Maggie Sullivan is no every day poet, tells her first resounding collection that marks an arrival of a big departure from lethargic feminism into a sharp, intelligent and sensitive female voice that does not speak the linguistic of the market and its manipulation and she comes up with a voice that has been brewed through every day life, being and its living in the everyday power-mad-household of pushchairs and trolleys, shopping bags, and school runs, washing machines and ironing and reading the story while sorting out: it’s not fair, a mother raising frantically the kids while breathing in imposed sanity-oblivion! Maggie does not write ‘pink’, Maggie does not write ‘bags’, Maggie does not write ‘lipsticks’ and she definitely does not write Marks and Spencer or Victoria Beckham.

Maggie writes in the gold of her blood that thickens in the brown of the park bench where only lights can go through the dark thick mist and reach the shore of truth that comes from something deeper and broader than anything we encounter on the apparent surface of 'thing in themselves'. Maggie writes in dark where lights needs sculpting out and she writes in lights where darkness needs to be painted and she does so with equal force, power and conviction for she is the elemental pen of the time that knows how to be right at the middle of it yet not staying there! She goes beyond the reach of time. Her wit is essential, her humour is sharp and modified yet there is this angle she takes and  dives in bravely and therefore we get poetry that not only touches us but also makes us into something that we were not before, which is what I would like to call The Eden Theorem of Poetics if poetry can relate to Geometry (which I believe it does) in which I propose that an easy formula to locate, catch and keep hold of a great poem is this: once one hears or reads it they mark it to come back and re-read or re-hear  it and as they do each time the poem brings something new and becomes something new to the reader as well as shaping the reader into something new and enabling them to become something new and the fact that they would not at all reach that shape or state of being (even would not know that that was always a possibility) without that poem. And Maggie's work fulfils this by becoming necessary poems which is what we would like to see more of.

And Maggie's voice is winter weathered, spring-harpooned, summer dazzled and autumn-touched that  pierces deep into the earnestness of something that comes from elements that let her stay true to what and who she is while making music out of door mats and funny bones. She may make you laugh but be wary for she will break your soul and reshape it without you knowing it!

Symbolic may be, but Maggie is a poet who prints her name in her poetry and then confidently crosses her first name out and writes it by her hand again so that there is this stamp of her being earnest and true with all the bite marks of time and their after taste and shapes remain resonating in her soul and that is what she captures with sure-shot precision and leaves us with jewels that imprint their shapes, leave their lights and shadows, sculpt out their shapes, paint their colours and dent their textures in a confident musicality of a flowing steel river that ‘dips’ into the ‘blue brown eyes’ of her daughter and her ‘bucket barely skims the surface’.

Yes, there are poems which are and can be read as love poems but it is not a ‘valentine card kind of love’. Maggie does not send valentines card written on bought cards and chocolate kissograms! Maggie writes them in the rays of her souls that cross seasons and geography literally as well as metaphorically!

Publishing poets like Maggie, Tall Lighthouse does a great service to English poetry and we congratulate them for recognising and publishing works like this for this is what we ought to be reading and listening to!

www.tall-lighthouse.co.uk

Review: PL

BOOK REVIEW BOOK REVIEW BOOK REVIEW

Help Us Somebody: Bob Dumbleton


 

“Help us, Somebody”
The Demolition of the Elderly

Bob Dumbleton

The London Press, UK 2006
www.thelondonpress.co.uk 
Social comment
Price: £5.95 Pages: 180
ISBN: 1-905006-14-4
 

One of those points in time of convergence found me listening to the Rt Rev. James Jones on Radio 4’s ‘Thought for the Day’, just a short while after re-reading Bob Dumbleton’s important living document and collective indictment on contemporary ‘urban regeneration’, social reform and social housing. Demolition of 1940’s pre-fabricated housing is and has been occurring across the UK within the ‘urban renaissance’ of town and cityscapes. The various factory constructed and assembled on-site houses were erected largely as the response of the incoming Labour Government to a housing crisis at the end of the Second World War, with well over 150 000 being built, and an expectancy of short-term usage only. Many communities exist today contentedly living in these original pre-fabricated buildings. Writing on the general tenet of replacing ‘obsolete’ or ‘unhealthy’ housing Bob Dumbleton acknowledges that in almost every respect it’s a progressive move, but “for others it is an upheaval too far. These are not easy deaths. Fear is a cause. Drawn out anxiety aggravates the diseases of age. And people get very tired as the process takes several years” (Introduction p 1). This publication addresses another socio-economic taboo – regeneration can be bad for your health. And foregrounds the ‘d’ word – resultant death.

The testimonies, and therefore evidence, presented in “Help us, Somebody” informs of the ironic ‘use of state power to make unequal people more unequal – as in ill, and dead’ (p 151). The author, collating alternate evidence and experiences of people primarily in Newport (Gwent), and Bristol since the late 1990’s, presents a systemic picture of institutional abuse (my term) toward people, particularly elderly people, placed in horrendous dilemmas concerning the roofs over their heads, where corporations’ choices become non-choices.

Bob Dumbleton, as volunteer housing activist from the 1960’s, socialist, radical and retired academic from Cardiff University, advisor to the Welsh Tenants Association, has extensive, deep-seated connections with and of real people in real life, converse to the sense of webs of disconnection spun by local authorities’ implementation of state housing plans.

To find a publisher for this book, however, was another task in itself, the rejection slips accruing as the text was viewed as ‘falling between two stools’ - neither stridently political, nor polemic, or being an academic thesis. I think these rejections – although unwelcome of course – show that the book’s careful stewardship of contributors’ words and lives has not been compromised. The personal and political are there, the analysis is there. The perspectives of coming to terms with an undaunted complex system imposing its own pressures on its staff to deliver up the regeneration projects, the local people’s responses and resignation, and the lessons not learnt from recent history provides a documentary good faith. As does the author’s own chronicling of opposition or despair directed at him from tenants at times, for being a seemingly powerless advocate. Jacqui Handley, a Newport resident, exemplifies the brooding tone of life:

“Time’s Moving On”

“Memories
Can I wrap them in soft tissue so they don’t break
Can I box them up
Can I take them all with me.
Will I still remember
When I don’t hear my creaking floorboard
Nor my gate, which gently creaks
Or my dripping tap that helps me sleep
They will be gone
Today, I will move//”

(p 179)

The unacknowledged causes of death from regeneration and demolition, and widening associations of people enduring ‘the unreasonableness of modern encounters’, gave me the means to link the theological argument of James Jones to radical politics. God, shown by his reference to Isaiah, requests a relationship with mankind based on reason and debate, as “to be given space to explain yourself and to be understood is the oxygen of life”. The right to articulate a defence against being suffocated from systemic pressures enforced by officials, capital-based personal and company interest, formalistic law and complex technological mapping inhibiting human contact becomes all the more vital. When rights are ignored or are just not there – whether the right to stay put, or for personal health and well-being considerations to be put foremost, for example, un-reasonableness can enter.

There is a stark message that regeneration can kill, can cause illness. And the extent of this, now, and over past generations is difficult to say, because governments and researchers have done little work in this area. The debate – according to the canonical or ‘established’ authorities in statutory power and academies – is largely uninformed. But uniformed by whom? Where have the funds been directed to find out? Where are the funds, and the will to find out? Who have they listed to, read about, visited, ‘followed up’? There is a body of evidence there already, in papers, articles, and in the mass of projects and communities, but alternate evidence means a need for its appraisal, and a consequential change in regeneration cultures. A step too far perhaps for the Government, local authorities and developers to consider? Similar situations arise in the re-settlement of, for example, people from psychiatric institutions into supposed community care - probably in contemporary times and in as recent times as the 1990’s. Few of the lives lost and the causes were fully recognised and the documentary evidence largely un-collated.

I think of the London News programme on TV recently, the campaign by worried residents in the London Borough of Lewisham to protect their rights to maintain their lives in the pre-fabricated buildings erected during and after the Second World War.

Quickly becoming aware of more examples of similar ‘clearances’, Bob Dumbleton’s book is timely, and necessary. And, to echo a phrase from the evening’s BBC TV Newsnight debate, ‘authenticity is everything’:

“…..Time’s running on now not long to go
I’ve tried to cope
But I know when the door knocker hits the metal door
This will not be my home anymore.” (from “Time’s Moving On” p 179).

The extracts of poetry from the poem by Jacqui Handley eloquently end the peace.

Review ©Philip Ruthen. December 2007

Declaration of interest: Philip Ruthen was a student, and was also tutored at UWIST, Cardiff, 1983-1987 by Bob Dumbleton; paternal grandparents lived in a prefabricated house in the North of England, the Prefab believed now to be demolished.

References:
Thought for the Day Date: Wednesday 12 December
Presenter: James Jones Subject: To be given space to explain yourself and to be understood is the oxygen of life.

Canvassing prefabs in Lewisham Sunday, August 26, 2007
Posted by The Brunswick Blog at 6:55 PM Paul Elgood Liberal Democrat Councillor for Brunswick & Adelaide ward of Brighton & Hove City Council and former Parliamentary Candidate for Hove & Portslade in the 2005 General Election.

How we built Britain – Modern south: Dreams of Tomorrow
Ep6/6 Sunday 15 July 9.00-10.00pm BBC One
www.bbc.co.uk/bbcone

Residents Calling For Prefabs To Be Saved (from News Shopper) Lewisham
Online Edition News Shopper
www.newsshopper.co.uk  by Samantha Payne 2007

This review published 09 January 2008 by ‘The Recusant’ – on-line non-conforming literature and politics journal, reprinted with kind permission of the editor, Alan Morrison: http://www.therecusant.org.uk

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Utter Good News and Events

'Utter' is proud to announce that The Arts Council of England has awarded us funding for another year, enabling us to bring another ten high-quality themed spoken word events to the heart of Harringey!

The next one is Utter! Disability..? Does having a disability hinder an artist from delivering a stunning performance? Not if you're….

PAUL HAWKINS: Host of Silent Night, "A singer laden with pure charisma" – NME, and antifolk hero who sings of radioactive schoolboy superheroes, alcoholism and asylums.

www.myspace.com/theeawkwardsilences

WIZARD OF SKILL: Ebullient rap poetry with a flava for the ladies (but he's not sleazy; he's lovely).

http://www.myspace.com/wizardofskill

DAVE RUSSELL: Understatedly brilliant singer-songwriter who plays his guitar like a synth and bigs up bus-stops and burglars.

www.thevac.co.uk/artist.php?artist=daverussell

LUCY LEAGRAVE: So much more than a token able-bodied, last month's Ajar mic victor rides a wave of suburban menace with the terrible beauty of an unstoppable glacier.

www.myspace.com/lucy_leagrave 

AJAR MIC CONTEST: You vote who gets a full paid slot next month: ALAIN ENGLISH, NADINE CAESAR, or LEORA RONEL….

Special guest host: Niall Spooner-Harvey, UK Slam champion and Utter! Ajar Mic grand Final winner 2007, reading from his book 'Only Not Walking' as heard on Radio 3…

www.myspace.com/spoonpoetry

Date and time: 7.30pm, Weds February 27th, 2008
Address: Salisbury Hotel, 1 Grand Parade, Green Lanes, London N4 1JX.
Tube: Turnpike Lane / Manor House.
Bus: 141, 29, 41, 67. Overland: Harringey Green Lanes (access ramp).
Phone: 07912 539 098
Email: richardtyronejones@gmail.com

Access requirements/info? Get in touch and and we'll sort it.

Cost: £4/2, plus FREE SWEETS and PRIZE DRAW to win an Utter! bag o'
books, all contributed by our kind sponsors:

Utter! writing group (Saturdays, 11am-1pm, Wood Green library Community Room)

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=5704768293

Trespass magazine - Edgy and controversial writers challenging the conventions and norms of modern society.

www.trespassmagazine.co.uk

The Delinquent – tri-yearly poetry, prose, drawings and diagrams

www.thedelinquent.co.uk

Rising: 'The Reader's wives of poetry mags' – John Cooper-Clarke

http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=6303931837

White Chimney magazine: The Creative Arts Journal

www.whitechimneymagazine.com

The Fix comedy magazine

www.thefixonline.com

Utter acknowledges the kind financial assistance of Arts Council England.

NEW NEWS!

Utter! opens a brand new Brixton franchise on Friday 29th February, 7.30pm at Coffee@Max-Os, 11 Rushcroft Road, Brixton SW2 1JH. Featuring: Niall O'Sullivan, Vic Lambrusco, Jacob Stringer and one more poet TBC. Contact details as above. www.maxoevents.com

Cost: £10 including ROTI MEAL

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Opportunities for Young Writers and Poets Either Born or Live in California or Nevada

Letter from the Director of Intersection for the Arts

I am writing to let you inform students and young writers that you work with about our upcoming Literary Award competition ? the 50th annual Joseph Henry Jackson Literary Award, the 70th annual James Duval Phelan Literary Award, and 17th annual Mary Tanenbaum Literary Award. These three prestigious awards are offered annually to promising young writers between the ages of 20 and 35 who either were born in California or now reside in Northern California or Nevada. There is no entry fee to submit a manuscript for consideration, and there are two awards of $2,000.00 each and one award of $3,000.00. Several award-winners in recent years have secured publishing deals with major publishing houses such as St. Martin?s Press, Simon & Schuster, Random House, and Knopf as a result of these awards. Former award recipients include Philip Levine, Ernest J. Gaines, Al Young, Michael Palmer, Frank Chin, Jane Hirschfield, Lyn Hejinian, David St. John, Dagoberto Gilb, and Sallie Tisdale. Deadline for submission is a postmark deadline by March 31, 2008.

The awards are sponsored annually by the San Francisco Foundation and administered by Intersection for the Arts. Please post the enclosed forms where graduate and undergraduate students have access to them, and feel free to photocopy these forms or to download additional forms from the Intersection for the Arts website, www.theintersection.org 

Thank you for your support and helping to spread the word about these incredible literary opportunities to the young writers that you come into contact with.

Best regards,

Kevin B. Chen
Program Director

Intersection for the Arts
446 Valencia Street (btwn 15/16)
Mission District
San Francisco CA 94103
www.theintersection.org  | (415)626-2787
 

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Support The Guardian in Katine

Poetry Collection of the Month

Near Death (Domestic): Maggie Sullivan

Inheritance

From my mother, proof
that life is too difficult.

From my father, proof
that life holds on.

From them both, a daughter
torn, believing one, without

Denying the other.

Copyrights remain with the authors

From Near Death (Domestic): Tall Lighthouse

For more

http://www.tall-lighthouse.co.uk

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February Events/Readings/Performances

From now on all listings will be posted here as part of every monthly issue. Please send in all listings to the editor's email address as usual. Please could people not send listings to the personal email address of the editor as that only ensures that they get missed out in the listings! Please remember the information must come as words (not part of a poster or leaflet or image)

Aoife Mannix @ Poetry Shack

Poetry Shack on Tuesday, February 12 at 7:30pm.
Event: Poetry Shack
What: Performance
Host: Poetry Shack
When: Tuesday, February 12 at 7:30pm
Where: The Old Crown

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Literature Lounge Loved Up

Sat 16th Feb @ 7.45pm
£6, (£5 conc) Waterman's Theatre (box office 020 8232 1010)
www.watermans.org.uk
Watermans 40 High St, Brentford London, TW8 0DS

Following on from the recent success of Literature Lounge's Indulgence
and Nitin Sawnhey's Aftershock, Anjan Saha returns to Waterman's to
curate "Loved Up" an evening of performance from the established spoken
word night Literature Lounge.  Bringing the best of cross
collaborative arts with a backbone of the spoken word, set in the
sumptuous theatre by the Thames. 

An all star cast give their literary and musical take on being in love,
out of love, single or just plain cynical!  Come and be entertained,
inspired and most of all, loved.

With poetry and tales from Poetry All Stars Anthony Joseph, Ruth
O'Callaghan, Dzifa Benson, Fathieh Saudi and introducing Johanna
Robinson.

With poetry from all stars Fathieh Saudi (with singer Kerry-Fleur Schleifer), Dzifa Benson, Anthony Joseph, Ruth O'Callaghan and Johanna Robinbson.
Music by blues guitarist Robert Hockum and tabla by Yash Pandya. New compositions by singer Helen Astrid and clarinetist Joseph Marshall (of Threadlines) and resident Literature Lounge DJ Leon Parker.

Music by the man behind the Ealing Blues Festival- guitarist Robert
Hockum, classical afterglow of cellist Sian Hender and tabla wizard
Yash Pandya.

Specially composed material by singer Helen Astrid and Joseph Marshall
(saxaphone and clarinet) of Threadlines.

Resident Lit Lounge DJ Leon Parker of Belly Beats Fame. Film and images by Stuart Pound. Book stall by Trespass Magazine. Hosted and Directed by Anjan Saha.

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Littlest Birds

Littlest Birds are holding an evening of poetry, music and jam tarts.
Febuary 25th from 8 til 10.30 with the bar open to 11pm.
The Poetry Cafe, 22 Betterton Street, Covent Garden.
Entrance is £3.50 or £2.50 concessions

The lineup will include poetry from Tamsin Kendrick and music from Diamond Family Archive and Lail Arad.

www.myspace.com/littlestbirds

Sound Minds Events

1. Ritzy Cafe. Thursday February 21st, 8pm: CREATIVITY & CONFUSION
We're back for our regular Ritzy session this time re-exploring Jazz's Classic Creative Age.
SM Jazz, part jazz collective & part pioneers of social inclusion feature musicians from both sides of the thin
thread betwen creativity & confusion. Brixton Oval, SW2 FREE!

2. The Bedford. Sunday February 24th, 8pm: SOUND MINDS RAT PACK & BEDFORD BASH!
Our 10th annual showcase of the Sound Minds stable with the new additions from the Count Me
In Agency. Like your music eclectic? Try blues rubbing shoulders with punk, hip hop sat next to reggae rhythms,
old school covers lined up against classic soul. 77 Bedford Hill Balham SW12. £5 / concessions available

3. The Big Chill Bar. Wednesday February 27th, 7pm-midnight: DJ DUO PUNCH N' GROOVE
AKA MARTIN KENNY & WAYNE SIVAN
Attitude on the Decks, a stellar night from Attitude is Everything at The Big Chill Bar in East London.
Talk about good music! - a full night of DJs playing chilled eclectica, world-beat, funky flavas, rare groove & breezy D&B.
Dray Walk, Brick Lane, London E1 6QL (Tube - LIverpool St.) Best part of it, its FREE!

4. The Bedford. Sunday March 9th, 7pm-11pm: LOVERS & FRIENDS // HAPPY SOUL FESTIVAL
Happy Soul - A festival of Asian and Black film and arts exploring well being, throws this party with a
stellar line-up from Sound Minds cream of the crop Reggae Posse - Bands: Channel One, The Blessed, Etchoo
along with DJS: Cry Freedom Sound and DJ Honey. 77 Bedford Hill Balham SW12 FREE!

5. Sound Minds. Friday March 14th. 11am - 4:30pm: WOMENS' WORKSHOP DAY
A chance for women to get together and try some of the arts activities and studio facilities offered by Sound Minds. The day is open
to current and past members of Sound Minds, groups from outside organisations, and service using individuals. Activities will include
music technology, visual arts, live music, recording, video, and singing, percussion, & djing workshops.
SOUND MINDS STUDIOS 20-22 York Road SW11 3QA

www.soundminds.co.uk
 

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Thanks to Poetry Library