Featured Poet of November 2005

Philip Ruthen

Philip Ruthen, born in 1964, is a London-based poet, returning after spending much of his life in South Wales, the West Midlands and East Anglia, where experience included gaining university degrees in English language and literature-related subjects. From the influence of volunteering and paid employment in a variety of roles with organisations campaigning for improved, and optimistically, transformed health and social care services, he is currently undertaking a postgraduate degree in Law at Birkbeck College, London. Further encouragement to pursue this course came from his regard for the novels of John Grisham...............

He has a diverse range of work published. Articles and poetry have been selected for a number of significant magazines in their outreach, recent examples being Mind Link Magazine and The Voyager. Over the previous decade, his work has appeared in publications that include Cambrensis - Short Story Wales, The Poetry Church, CPR/Christian Poetry Review, Psychopoetica, and Target - Poetry and Comment as a featured poet.

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

His peer-reviewed article Electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) - The imposition of 'truth?: 2006 3:4 SCRIPT-ed 412, explores human rights in relation to contemporary debates in UK law, and health services; it is available 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

Go to Philip Ruthen Page at Poet's Letter

Blues Moon 

shadow falls
in front
clinker kick back
because the moon
hunts
with bat
precision engineering
 
by the 12 bar
gate
the bullock is gone.

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Launch

On bended knee
whilst saying how beautiful your voice -
like homage to a testament -
you sign your life;
with ink distilled
from distant arrows.
 
From distance
a spontaneous kiss -
staying is un-deserved,
leaving is un-deserved.
 
To submit,
others say,
is like buying
and selling
pink Cadillacs
in pierced lit ever-open showrooms.

On this occasion
unwittingly -
leaving is
traveling on.

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Footnotes

On the intersection of a circle
there is energy
dancing
the walls fall open
the meeting place
is serene
the well is clear water
and the land enclosed
by visceral energy
is good land
the water is all that is needed
with the mimosa for healing
and by the hearthstone
the distilling of comfort
within the contented tales
of abandon and reverence,
for the clear water is all that is needed –there is no desire nor requirementfor watchfulness
as the peace in the music of starlight
descends and is ever watchful
and there is long comfort in knowing this,
the walls are fallen open
others come steady to join
gathering to the clear water and gesture
that builds
in the clasping of illumination
through kinship and novel turnings,
there is energy dancing
an intercession with beyond-times,
after the long vigils, peace;
in the serenity of simile
in the firelight conjunctions of language
our heaven
makes the new day
new.

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Nothing
 
think
take off in your imagination
the siren call
to order
 
take
no notice
look across the fields
of golden wheat
 
change your view.
As others crowd
to speak into your ear
 
turn back
and tell the tale
rough and smooth
love to lose
to keep yourself
immaculate.

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Father

You can love someone
although they are not close
it is the same love
though a harder love
to recognise and accept
 
When I can tear myself away
from the selfishness
and hold you
I realise I must be strong
for what is to come
and find the right words
and quote softly
 
Too often we have not agreed
by choice or from a spurious
regard for our own judgment
truth unlike principles cannot be
reconstituted
so tonight
let us spin gently our goodbyes
now I have turned my spite
into that harder love.

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The Unsettlements

Where the ivy climbs through fragments
what is left in brick
keeps you remembered, and gone.
 
The movement of the people has slowed
the clouds fall
God - what are you doing?
 
From main stage to peripheral
being pulled across the floor
full stop; as if now is inevitable
the fall in compounds
to eat dirt
from polished reason
because this is no place like home.
 
When the mists rise
tread warily
at your own speed
you will find
‘a thousand expediencies of revenge’. 

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There is an Orchard
 
He wanted to see the stars
but the sky was blank and he said
why is it night and the sun is shining
and she said it is God waiting for you
and he gave three sighs and died.
 
This heavy dust that was someone you loved.
 
It is hard to clear a name from a mind
emptied
the last post
even by a drunk, a 'madman'
we did not object;
no return from outlandish sacrifice -
here we think the dead need all they can get.
 
Then wipe a smile from a sunny day
as when a child dies
like a tree cut down
like one of millions felled
yet, someone will remember.
 
So they cover you,
too briefly,
with universal commentaries
trying to make a point
until the Truth lies in the dust.
 
The Scriptwriters accept their own plot
and lovingly tend their own orchard.
 
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Find Me a Seagull

Find me a seagull
do you miss the seagulls
yes I miss the seagulls
 
hear me a seagull Daddy
you can hear seagulls
yes but only clearly with you
 
is the seagull near
can you hear it
are you crying Daddy
 
 no, see, I've found the seagulls
can you hear them
I can hear seagulls
 
will they stay now?
No, but they will be with you
whenever you cannot see.
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