Welcome to the Home of The Poet's Letter Poetry Anthology of New Voices
Poet's Letter
Poetry Anthology of
New Voices
Editor: Munayem Mayenin
London 2005
Introduction
The Poet’s Letter is committed to support and promote poets and writers who are getting into the world, more of publishing and not so much into writing. It seems that if writing is a profession then promoting one’s writing and getting works published by publishers are two more different professions add with it the closed dark world of Literary Agents who work on mysterious ways and with means of god given talents and skills made divine by well connectedness with the right people.
One gets puzzled with this riddle when one is confronted with it: consider this: all the big name publishers say they do not accept “unsolicited” (only they know what they mean by that) manuscripts. Then there are the Literary Agents saying they don’t take “unsolicited” manuscripts either! There’s the riddle: if the publishers and the literary agents do not take unsolicited manuscripts then the questions must poke their heads out: how come then all these books are published by these publishers!
Publishers don’t want unsolicited manuscripts. The Literary Agents don’t want them either! How on earth then these new authors and poets get their works published! There seem to be two infinitely strong powerful walls between the publishing world and the literary agents who effectively maintain the status quo while the authors pay the literary agents to work for the publishers. The publishers save money not paying for editors and literary agents act as publishers’ editors paid for by the authors who are blessed with acceptance.
This is killing creativity and any prospect of any new voices coming out. This is not an acceptable state of affairs by any standards. Yet there doesn’t appear to be any way out of this vicious cycle of all powerful controls on what gets published and what does not.
If we look at this situation from a political view point it relates to the state in which we find ourselves in whereby we give out our rights to make choices ourselves to other people (who the system says are better able, equipped, educated, trained, connected and supported than ourselves) to make these choices. Therefore we lose the state of mind that requires us to be active and choose for ourselves: whether it’s the Iraq war or getting muddled up in some other way or form we do not and cannot choose. Even when electing a representative we need media’s help to get things chewed up so that we find it easy to digest. When we do not choose we do not feel responsible and therefore we begin to stop caring all together unless it hits us right in the head on our bodies: i.e effecting our children, family members etc.
How does this relate to publishing and creativity? Well, we do not buy a book or read a book unless it has a good media review or somebody has said it was a good book. We don’t want to choose for ourselves: we want book reviews to do that for us. So even in what we read the system has a strong input in it. We no longer want to find it out for ourselves, we want manuals in which we find everything is done for us by so called specialists and institutions and that’s what the publishers are doing. The media, while manipulate the populace, is itself manipulated by the market force big brothers. A big publisher or a huge movie with a gigantic budget spends a Himalaya amount of money promoting their product creating intended media manipulative outcomes. There are often glowing reviews of books written or films for that matter which turns out to be a flop. Regardless the fact is that the market is there to make profits and security and safety of investment are the paramount concerns and any attempts to challenge that are crushed with absolute brutality, although it is almost impossible for a new author who has not got a publisher or a literary agent to actually challenge anything but his/her own confidence like the female worker in the city who is continuously being sexually harassed and abused by her colleague and her employer’s inability to deal with the abuse worsens it. They tell her she has issues that need resolving and send her to counselling. or therapy which might even come up with the fact that she is delusional! No amount of counselling or therapy can resolve her anger and continual abuse, disregard and violation which would eventually wipe her out. Like that city employee our new author or poet would eventually have his/her confidence eaten away and he/she would give up pretty soon.
The non caring attitude comes from the basis of all our relationships that are formed in the market (all relationships other than those of blood) that essentially makes everyone a consumer and everyone is acting out two things to fuel their consumer being: make a profit or money so that they can consume, therefore all are two in one: one is either selling or buying; selling to make a profit to consume and buying to consume while try to pay less so that they can consume more. In this we see that the relationship between a buyer and seller is based on a perverse attitude and a mutual distrust, disregard, cynicism and on-your-guard attitude guides the interaction. A sense that either party is able and actively seeking to exploit naivety and out to deceive keeps cynicism well fed that bears a dangerously corrosive effect on how one looks at and sees and responds to things. That is why when everyone says people have lost respect on politicians they are not seeing the whole truth. One can not respect anyone if one sees the whole world as a mass of people trying to con them either by selling or by buying. So respect is a concept that does not and cannot fit in a capitalist market economy and society. Moreover, because individuals believe and made it their faith that one has to ensure their own self interests otherwise they are going to be deceived and short changed they cannot trust anyone and thus they cannot respect anyone they do not trust. Thereby the in built castle gets harder, stronger and lonelier and people live in their works and jobs and in their houses and flats. They don’t want to come out, they don’t want to know their neighbours, they don’t want to know about anything that goes on in where they live. No one knows anyone because it does not matter or help them in any professional or financial way. They are only interested if it benefits them. Thus they do not feel enthusiastic about anything that matters to all because all does not matter if "I" does not exist. What matters to them is their well being. This is the state of the affairs that is caused because consumerism freed people to be enslaved but taken their sense of responsibility by virtue of the fact that people cannot choose. One cannot feel responsible or act responsibly if they cannot choose and unless we all are individually responsible we are going be isolated and alone and therefore look for ways and means to support and safeguard ourselves.
This comes to poetry and literature too. We do not choose, cannot choose so publishers choose for us, media and book reviews choose for us, celebrities and professionals choose for us, media gurus, life style gurus, family gurus, career advisers and the lot out there choosing for us. There are radio and television and a host of other media choosing for us. Libraries choose for us by buying books that are highly promoted and hyped up. They do not buy books that are not published by big publishers and big name authors and poets. So we are left to eat and drink the materials that are selected for us.
The education system does not help either. Having gone through the schooling most young people do not become intellectually literate because the education system fails to reach children but the market university does not. Hence we do not have more readers and lovers of books coming out but less. Reading and buying books do not seem to be an activity any longer. Television is the culture because it frees people to be lazy in every sense of the word and do nothing but sit and watch passively. People are too tired, exhausted and drained that they don’t feel like doing anything but watch and that watching shows the passivity due to the fact of disempowerment simply because one could not and does not choose and hence there is no point thinking about it because one cannot do anything about anything: Iraq or Darfur massacre or dead rats and sewage in the river or global warming.
On this background we find poetry is embroiled in losing grounds all the time and not getting anywhere. Poetry fails to become a commodity and it is hard work and expensive to promote it Therefore people only takes the established roots and stick with the tried and tested product.
The English Poetry Elites are like the Conservative Party fighting with a losing elitist view. There is a Poetry Policing Academia of Automated Prohibition and Censorship that keeps watering a long dead system of snobbery and aristocratic bigotry. They don’t want people to read poetry! They want poetry to be an elitist avenue for frustrated academics to dream of glory after dead time! That's why poetry to them means poetry written by dead poets and living breathing poets do not get acceptance at all, even though in the process dead poets are getting less and less readers. Because the elitist view point survives by denying the reality and living in the past. Paradoxically this is fuelled by a deeply rooted capitalist tendency of rivalry, resentment, envy and jealousy that is derived from our state of mind that is made fiercely and brutally competitive whereby no one would like to accept anyone else's advancement. The so called media people and the other areas of the market are led by people like that (ordinary people are not unlike them at all) and they find it difficult talking or writing or saying anything about the guy who they went to university or college with in their media. So these new contemporaries get the cold shoulder unless they hit it big time in which case the media had to talk about that guy for the sake of the market leadership. No one would hear about Jonathan Jamison or Adeel Chakladar or Naomi Burundison written in any newspaper or media unless they suddenly somehow managed to persuade the goddess of success to bless them with a prize or award (for which they had all along been good enough) and there come the flood of interviews, appearances and lot more! Until then everyone pretends they do not exists! What would go wrong if we read and enjoy the creative works of contemporary poets, authors and playwrights!
With regards to the snobbery and bigotry we are not worried for this is already a dying donkey at the last breathe of its life. Let’s not worry about “institutional racism” either because society in general has moved on and accepted the basis of humanity as one race and the fact that we have got to find a way of living together (not just tolerating each other but actually living together interacting together). Conservative Party could not win the last election not because they campaigned badly but because they thought generally British indigenous white population is “racist” in a mute state and they could tap onto it. Therefore they went for immigration and asylum putting a figure on top it, promising to repeal Human Rights Law and committing to get out of Refuge Convention and lot other racist policies. It failed because in general it is established that indigenous white British population is not racist as nor are the ethnic minorities and they found these suggestions politically vulgar, economically bankrupt, sociologically suicidal and morally repugnant. How could a political party in the UK dare asking people to vote for them when they say they are going to repeal the Human Rights Law! So like these political dinosaurs there are of course those with a very big and long “BUT” who begin saying: “We are not racists BUT." These are the people modern British people whatever backgrounds they are from must be aware of because these were the very people who allowed Hitler to germinate on the political landscape of Germany to devastate the whole humanity. There is no but about it. Unless there are claps in their millions and growing there cannot be a Hitler being born again. Yet it is possible because of people like these who say they are not supporters of the most filthy sociological and most utterly repugnant concept of racism and still come up with a big BUT! Yet thankfully they are going to be more dinosaur-like than the dinosaurs thanks to the advancement of society.
Although there are a great many people and institutions that hold onto the territory of these BUTkindapeople! They want English poetry to be “pure” in the form of male names and appearance of white. This has to change and already changing. Britain is the best world could offer in every sense of the word which unfortunately does not mean that it is perfect it is far from it and we must carry on fighting for what works and continue developing it together as nation of diversity in unison.
Therefore like the UK today the poetry should flourish in an explosion of diversity in styles, characters, voices and natures representing all backgrounds, spectrums and walks of life. We see that developing in reality: in audiences of poetry readings and poetry reading public in general.
We don’t want to see Black or white poetry, Asian or Middle Eastern Poetry or Western European or Eastern European poetry written in English simply because their poets bear a “non-English” name! We want English poetry growing to celebrate life and get people into the rainbow of it. We want to see a poetry reading attended by Black, White, Asians, Middle Eastern, South American and every other community that are there together not segregated with labels on them. British poetry means literally poets and readers reflecting the diversity in unison.
Here comes the other part of the responsibility question: if one cannot choose and take responsibility then what can we do about influencing poetry and the publishing houses? Here we differ with other people: we say we ought to and must try and begin taking back our powers and ability and right to make choices of any and every kind. We choose poetry, we choose poets and writers who are not made a brand, we buy books to read and try and see, we go and read books from new authors and poets and if the libraries do not have their books we insist that they do. If asked they are obliged to acquire the asked for books. Single reader may not make a difference but if all the people in the country visiting libraries, borrowing books from them begin to ask the libraries for books of authors and poets that they do not have they would be forced to get their books. The more people do that the better it would get; we have to use the power of market to beat it in its own game. Write to local paper to report poetry events and local poetry and literature scene, write to television and radios asking for poetry and literature programmes, get your schools to do more poetry with kids, with parents with teachers. Most importantly got out there, talk to people and get to know people who live in your locality, start a poetry reading club in the estate, on the park or by the river bank. Go to poetry readings, go libraries, go to festivals and read poetry and present people poetry books. Teachers? Organise poetry reading after school and invite poets to come and read with you, invite parents to come and join in. Working at hospitals and run the hospital radio use it to take poetry to patients and doctors. Organise lunch time poetry reading for doctors and nurses. Work at a Town Hall, organise a weekly poetry reading for people who can come along and sit and enjoy and may be even read some.
The Elitist view and the destructive efforts to academised poetry and writing which is supported by the publishing industry and the efforts of so called Poetry Journals and Reviews and all the poets and poetry loving public showing a passive acceptance cost poetry to become a lesser art from. Poetry is not anywhere in the map. Here we propose everyone involved take responsibility and do something about the thing they love. You care for something you show your care by doing something.
“Bloodaxe
editor Neil Astley believes he has found a huge new audience for contemporary
poetry at the same time as the poetry establishment has become narrow-minded,
male-dominated and Anglocentric. Poetry publishing and reviewing is policed by
a clique of academics who rail against 'populism', 'democratisation',
'marketing' and 'dumbing down' but (ab)use these terms to censor poetry they
dislike - including much poetry by women and ethnic minority writers - in
support of a damaging academic agenda. Astley argues that their attacks on
anyone who addresses a broader readership or promotes emerging talents may
threaten the survival of poetry. Incestuously fawning
to their poet and academic peers instead of serving readers, the poetry
police are out of touch with the grassroots readership, he believes.” (
www.bloodaxebooks.com )
(To read Neil Astley’s Stanza Lecture: http://www.stanzapoetry.org/lecture.htm)
Bloodaxe editor cannot work on his own and achieve miracles. No one can work on their own. There are all sort of people and organisations devoted to this craft of words who love and spend all their energy and efforts in promoting it. All these people need to work together and co-ordinate the fight to take back ownership of the lost streets of poetry in British Isles.
How can one help individually? Everyone expects the Art Council should do more, the poetry society or the poetry fan club do more. Of course they do and there are valid reasons to claim that. All other branches of arts get enormous amount of money and poetry comes the cheapest! That does not negate our responsibility. When we spend £15 pounds on a music cd or £20 on a dvd or spend £30-40 on a concert or lot more to go and eat out we do not expect the Art Council to subsidise that! Why then we are not ready to spend some money to buy poetry books or attend poetry readings and pay for tickets! Why not do something? It is about responsibility. Just because there is an ambulance service there does not mean we cannot care about in need of help (no matter how small it is). Everyone of us could do something to promote poetry and get poetry to more people and more people to poetry. Read a new poet's works tell people about the poet, when at the library ask the librarian about that poet and his books. Write to your MPs or to your local council to do more about words and words art.
Poetry has no immigration or asylum policy and poets need no passports. Anyone who has a human heart will have to fall in love with poetry particularly when we have such an astonishing wealth of diversity to offer. Use any means to promote the event. Sell poetry, buy poetry, market poetry, promote poetry, support poetry, stop apologising for loving or writing poetry. Do all that to prove that you are not dead that you are live and living. Organise poetry reading and festivals, poetry reading clubs and particularly work with your children with poetry. Let’s make poetry some noise: poetry can be bling bling in all and every heart. Let’s hear it, let’s see it, let’s touch it, let’s touch and feel it, let’s show the world how life and living can be made better and longer and more joyous with poetry in our homes, in our hearts, in our bags and in between our palms.
If you are a poet you must live in a local area: find other poets and people who like poetry, work with your local community groups and organisations, schools and churches and other community and bases and organise readings. Better still organise small scale local poetry festivals and get local schools and community and youth groups to come and join you. Use initiatives and not wait for people to come looking for you! You make sounds and people cannot escape hearing the rhythm and music of your words. Connect with people and people will respond to you. People are tired, exhausted and worn out by over work, extensive level of worries and burdened by paying bills and living in a babushka box (that has infinite number of boxes in it) give them something: give them magic and the magic of poetry comes from the power of words that has the key to free us from this babushka box and let us be in an infinite box of humanity. We are made to live a clichéd life that is enforced on us through the babushka box only by our creativity we can and do live a life that is unclichéd, afresh in which all the meanings and melodies are not readily available in dictionaries of words and living and thoughts (explained by experts who are doing it with a specific taught and programmed way of thinking and writing).
We present poetry of Alan David Pritchard, Girija Shettar, Nan Archer, Laura Mowforth, Bryan Harrison, Sean Burn, Robert Furness, Domino, Alan McKean, Davide Trame, Kauser Parveen, Sarah Lee-Snape. We believe their voices deserve to be heard. We do not set out to provide criticism of their works; we leave it to their works to do. If anyone would like to comment on any of the works by any of these poets please send your comments to us and we would forward your comments to them.
We would like to thank all the poets who have submitted their works for the anthology. A lot of people submitted from America and Canada, which could not have been included because of the remit we set out, however, if their works are of high standard we would publish them in the future issues of The Poet’s Letter Magazine.
I would like to express my thanks to my wife Pia, our three children Ohie, Saahia and Raaneem to keep me grounded in the tiny brilliance that I call life. I am happily grateful to Ohie and Saahia for letting me use their works as the cover of this anthology.
Do take care, choose and choose poetry to tell the market that we refuse to die quietly and claim back our right to choose and we choose to live with poetry in our hearts, rhythm in our footsteps, dreams in your words and love and faith and interconnected in our melodies of everyday life and the flowering towering joys, thrills, pleasures as well as heartaches, pains and agony speak to us in lingua poetica with which we dance our living.
Thank you for being with us.
May poetry germinate your dreams into a life that rejuvenates the land of humanity’s vision of a one-globe-togetherness giving birth to a nationalitiless, borderless, passportless humanion of men, women and children on this Blue Planet.
Munayem Mayenin
Editor
London
June 2005
The Poet's Letter Poetry Anthology of New Voices
Alan David Pritchard
Girija Shettar
Nan Archer
Laura Mowforth
Bryan Harrison
Sean Burn
Robert Furness
Domino
Alan McKean
Davide Trame
Kauser Parveen
Sarah Lee-Snape
Alan David Pritchard
Born in Cape Town, Alan studied English at Rhodes University and went on to
teach at primary and secondary schools in both South Africa and the UK. He is
presently Head of Product development for a leading accelerated learning
company, producing books, courses, and resources. He has written three plays
for secondary schools (published by New Theatre
Publications) and productions thereof have won festivals in South Africa and
Wales. Many of his poems have appeared in magazines and poetry journals
worldwide. He now lives and works full time on the Isle of Wight.
WEARING YOUR JUMPER
They say Jacques found you hanging
from a beam above the staircase banister
and that your tongue was bluer than deep purple
and your skin was quite green.
They say the smell hit them next
and that Jacques nearly collapsed
when your body had to be cut down,
your clumsy dreadful weight uneasily carried away.
Some say your eyes were bulging,
others claim they were closed,
but all agreed the place,
though now quite gloomy,
was immaculate –
which says a lot.
You dangled, apparently,
like a pathetic metaphor – the desk sergeant
filing the report was admired
for his poetic flair and dark sense of humour.
(Like a lost punctuation mark,
he mused later over visions
of appearing on television)
Some say they will never forget the sight
and to themselves admit that it was actually
disgusting
and Jacques had been sick soon afterwards
all over his new boots – his brand new boots.
For weeks they spoke of nothing else
at the salon where you used to work.
It is rumoured that Brandon, who found you first,
was inspired a while later to devise a new marketing
campaign
for Hang It All Enterprises,
as well as being approached to do the set design
for a rising boy band concert.
He always had a neat way of dealing with death.
The reason, of course, was obvious:
recent ex-boyfriends shuddered
when they heard the news,
which is just as well.
I wish only to know
what you were wearing
the day you died.
Go to Top
THE TERRIBLE TALE OF A MAN TOO BRUISED BY LOVE
There is this man who builds his house on the edge of
a cliff
so he can watch disasters occur below him.
The cliff fringes a wasteland
(no helicopter-Hollywood shots of an idyllic retreat –
no)
and it takes him weeks to walk to the nearest shop.
“Damn inconvenient,” we tell him so, “139 miles to the
nearest
advertisement. No electricity for the house. Nothing.
Just wasteland and sea – the one’s just wetter than
the other,”
we tell him, adding, “the butt-end of nowhere.”
But, he doesn’t listen. He builds his house on the
edge of a cliff,
where he lights candles to warn passing ships not to
get too close, and they always do,
and the rocks eat them up.
I’LL
NEVER ALLOW ANYONE NEAR ME AGAIN
he howls into the sound-scoffing wind,
and then goes back to lighting useless candles
which the wind blows out because he has no windows
just holes in the wall.
Shack is a good word. Can’t really
call it a house.
Bollockshrinkingly cold,
which is why we used to bring him blankets
(we’d drop them outside the bullet-proof electrified
enclosure surrounding three sides of his shack
surrounded
by hidden landmines)
and we’d find them – the blankets – later,
washed up on the shore.
The wind’s fierce up there, ‘especially this time of
year.
Comes a time, he stops his bi-annual trip for supplies
(lots of toilet paper)
and we hear nothing for months –
‘cept when one of the old-timers electrocuted himself
putting canned food too close to the fence.
We all want to help him, you see.
Listen to me talking about him as if he’s still alive,
no – he’s
long gone now. Just a pile of rocks –
we still can’t get too close –
looks that way, like a makeshift grave
without a headstone, without a cross.
Pity.
He had a nice arse.
Go to Top
OVERLOOKED
A good kid:
never any trouble.
The sort of kid other parents wished they’d had:
calm, content, caring, quiet –
his name might sound almost familiar.
After his mum shouted at the eldest for putting his
hand up the neighbour’s skirt, and doors banged, and
glass broke,he made her tea, held her hand
while she disintegrated on the sofa.
The rows then became more frequent: his brother had
found drugs;his sister, an older man. He,
by getting on with his homework, found
he could avoid being shouted at, could avoid
having to compete for attention.
When her husband forgot to invite her
to the new year’s eve party, he swept up the glass
she said she’d dropped, and, at midnight,
they shared champagne from a coffee cup
while she sat at the window, staring at the storm.
But that is not what this is about.
He fell in love – it was an overwhelming thing –
at fifteen while changing for PE;
he had tingles he knew he could keep only as secrets.
cursed with the insight that creates torment in poets,
battered by more than mere adolescent longing, he
wandered home to find the front door window broken,
his mother in tears.
Just before Christmas he decided to write
it all down, decided to let the words tumble without
restraint,like the products of a storm. He knew
that it was the most significant letter he’d ever
write; understood, when it was done, that loving alone
is not enough; that having it read would destroy him.
When the noises became nasty, he’d read it again,
trying to curl up within the sentences, as if that
alone would save him. Yet, each time the shouting
rose, he’d hear their voices reading his words, and
something,sometimes the very thing, would sound
wrong, ring false, and he’d scratch it out, as if that
would make them go away. The letter gradually
disintegrated, clichés crumbled and everything that
could be mocked, removed. What remained oddly
resembled a poem, something only the receiver could
appreciate.
He posted it. On New Year’s Eve he
drank champagne with his mum after receiving
a rude call from a boy who made his flesh tingle.
But that is not
what this is
about.
Go to Top
CONSEQUENCE
So this is how it happens then:
a hunchbacked crow perched upon the pylon
cackles obscenities at the hobo kicking
a skull as if it were a metaphor
along the street. The hobo
aims for the goalposts of his mind but
he won’t score.
The girl with the scruffy face and tangled hair,
the one who misses her cat,
looks up at the black bird scooping down
onto the half open garbage can, and then looks away as
the can wobbles like her restraint -
its contents tumbling onto the already-littered
pavement.
The bird, squawking like a disapproving stepfather,
flaps to the fence. The boy
who lives next door, the one with whom she is not
allowed to play,
the one with the home-made stolen catapult, takes aim.
Such is our scene.
Such is the Saturday afternoon sun
that it sticks to the flesh like the smell of sweat.
Pensioners draw their blinds so they can better watch
their televisions, eager not to miss
the repeat of a conundrum on Countdown.
The hobo tries to justify his lifestyle to the skull
while the pavement wobbles before him. It is not a
human skull.
It used to answer to the name Titbit, but now bears
the scars of the boy’s prowess, and explains the
dried-on tears that the girl never wiped away.
It would be fun to make the skull suddenly come alive
and talk back
to the human, but hobos probably have weak hearts.
The girl finds a fragment of glass near her bare feet,
and almost wishes it were a diamond.
The crow thinks it’s a miracle the hobo manages to
kick and stay upright; the skull thinks
it’s a miracle it hasn’t shattered by now.
The boy has chosen a rusty Pepsi bottle top. The
teenager
to whom the catapult had once belonged,
had made it from the rubber of a tyre tube he had
found at the scrapyard around the corner. He doesn’t
miss it much.
The boy moves out of the shade to take better aim.
He watches the bird. The bird watches the hobo. The
hobo stares
at the skull, and the girl watches the pensioner
drawing the blinds while the sun glares at them all.
The skull of the cat which once belonged to the girl
now sitting wondering what it would be like to have
grandparents
has tumbled into the gutter and cracks into five
pieces. Five.
It lands next to a large weathered elastic band
which the hobo mistakes for a necklace.
The girl holds the shard of glass to try to catch the
light.
The hobo holds the elastic band and tries to catch his
balance and begins giggling at his mistake. The boy
squints
as he releases his missile.
Had the pensioner stayed at the window,
she would have seen the boy dart back into the
shadows.
The crow had gone by the time she got up
to check on the commotion.
All she saw, she said later to those who never tire
of hearing of such things, and even those who do,
was the little girl clutching her bloody eye,
and the drunk man laughing with an elastic band in his
hand.
“Awful,” they’d say, “to have missed the end of
Countdown.”
© Alan David Pritchard
Girija Shettar
Blackfoot Freedom
I read the genesis tales of the Blackfoot.
And on my way to work a cry
Sprang up from newly watered heart –
Hai’ yu Hai’ yu!
A squirrel ran across the path of my wheels –
So close I could see the lay of his fur.
Momentarily stopping, he crossed
The path and ran into the brush.
Shock wedged further open the inner doors -
From throat to guts.
I was one with Nature
Hai’ yu, Hai’ yu!
The real thing is far below.
It’s wide, vast, kind and true.
Nature is that.
If you know not Nature -
How can you say you live or love?
Lost
Once lost is Destiny, what then doth become of thee?
To sing unto the sky and trees, the great winds that howleth round –
To drift where to that wind doth blow, intending always thus to follow.
For once the Path is crossed with leaves,
Once the Way hath clearly ceased -
No more expression of one’s self
Then what else is there for to hold to?
But She that wild and greatest Nature
Who rules our life and loves our steps -
Even when they only stray.
Ode in Love for What has been Lost
Lord, I miss the honesty of Red-Feather life;
I miss the truth of the Wild-Feather wind;
I miss the warmth of the Many-Feather fire;
And I miss the love of my True-Feather friends.
I miss the simplicity of their honest gaze upon the world.
I miss their hurting-true perception of the world.
I miss their high and truthful attitude to all things.
I miss their depths.
I long to return to those days and those ones.
I long to make amends, to avoid my wrongs.
I wish my imperfections had not been so foul.
I wish I could - somehow.
How can I be what that Time showed could be?
How can I re-gather the Feathers of glory?
How can I give my love absolute
To those meek but sun-gold champions of the Great Cosmic Good?
With You What am I?
If you see me from outside only,
I will disappear.
But if you see me from within,
I mount - a growing fire.
How you see me, I become,
How you see me, I see you –
A law I can’t escape.
Pure Love, Not Animal Magic
But a simple heart –
the deep love of a simple heart –
What is more precious than that?
Please keep your animal magic,
your nature tricks –
your grabbing and grasping, reaching and clasping
is too strenuous, and ugly too, for me.
You cry: Protect yourself, Your art!
But what am I and what is art but the Eternal and the Infinite?
Will I find that by running with wild horses?
Will I express more truth or better by trampling on those slower than I?
This rule suits queens and kings of horsepower.
But my rule, darker, is more profound:
Winning me the earth and her warm heart of gold.
The Morning Sky
The early morning sky white-grey
A cold, still, peaceful, meditative grey
Hangs upon the water droplets
Curtaining the island’s face
“Kau-Loon” – “Go in peace”
I hear it say.
Lost Flowers
Where oh my lovelies are the flowers today?
Has someone stolen or thrown them away?
Who will replace them now darkness draws near?
What can one do with a heart full of fear?
Destined Families
Sometimes it happens that
A family is meant to be
¾ souls of scented flame
Alight together through eternity
Arriving on earth to help each other work.
No mistake are such sweet allies
¾ Not to be made light of such precious bonds
Deep gratitude for them must be
In heart and mind, eternally.
Girija Shettar
Nan Archer
Christine Irvine is 37 years old and married with four children. She was born, and has lived all her life in Northern Ireland. She has been writing for many years but started writing poetry seriously last year after finding some old scribbling from school. So poetry begun again with Christine and here we present her works for your perusal and enjoyment. Her favourite poets are Phillip Larkin, Seamus Heaney, Ezra Pound and Sylvia Plath.
City Girl.
Caught in driving winter rain I press my misery into a shop front.
My skin crawling with leeching cold, my senses grey.
Laughter, raucous and brash,
Turns my face to the world.
Towards me charges a city girl,
All thighs and gob,
Dragging her ludicrous man like a fresh kill.
I shrink from her feral breasts.
Too late; they squeeze into my refuge, panting.
Her coarse peroxide mane flicks into my eyes.
I feel her hot sweet breath on me,
As she turns to kiss the man pressed close against her.
His arm is around her; his bony hand clings tight.
I am consumed by her,
She throws back her head and shrieks with laughter
I will drown in her pink convulsing throat.
I shrink deeper, camouflaged in mediocrity.
Her white thigh strains against her skirt, touching mine,
And I am suddenly disconnected and adrift.
I do not exist here,
Beside this convulsive creature of colour and light.
Where I barely touch life, she bites with strong white teeth.
For here is life eaten raw, gulped down in bloody lumps.
The rain stops and she lurches away,
Her man, warm and happy, in her wake.
I watch for a while, whether in relief or regret I cannot tell.
The crowds part before them, close in hungrily behind.
Love In Middle Age
We do not deserve this love we hold,
Slung loosely between us like an unloved teddy bear.
We have not been careful with it.
Unspoken resentment has weakened the stitching,
Worn thin the velvet fur.
I fear for its safety, this shabby old bear,
This worn and tattered passion.
I will keep it for us.
I will wrap it up in tissue-paper days and years,
In a box with memories of camphor,
So it will not be destroyed by squabbles,
Intemperance, or spite.
Inviolate, it will wait there,
For when we are old enough to be trusted.
But sometimes, when we are warm and still and all alone,
We must open the box for a while,
And let out little attic sighs of kisses,
So we don't forget it is there and come across it
Years from now, moulded and lost,
And weep in impotent sorrow from the loss of it.
Paper
I write myself down on scraps of paper,
Spilling from my bounds onto white paper.
I fold myself once, twice, three times
And tuck myself away in corners.
I do this so that I can live my life,
With no fear of violence.
Within the dry folds of my moderate life
I am contained and tolerable.
I find myself all around the house,
Spilling from drawers, fluttering from pockets.
Fragmented, demented,
Bloody with spilled ink.
The Undiscovered.
Languishing in dark waters,
I wait, like some barnacled galleon, to be discovered.
For someone to look deeper,
And, drawing back the living strands of kelp,
To gasp and point at this treasure buried deep.
But the sailors do not see my voluptuous sides,
Do not look beneath the barnacles to trace the carving on my prow.
My magnificence remains unawed.
I have seen breeds of woman, beautiful and useless,
Dipping delicate limbs to trace the waves,
Long fingers threading shimmering light,
Weaving their obvious spells.
Sports cruisers all.
Such creatures are always willowy and fair,
Dazzling the sailors in reflected light.
How can I compete with their sleek white lines?
With so much beauty all around,
How can I charm the sailors to look down,
Down beneath the refractory waves,
To where my seaweed fronded masts
Strain their broken fingers to the light?
New Car
I look at them every day.
Chrome-plated, perfectly smooth.
Sleek lines of bumpers winking at me,
Insouciant, bold,
And I am tempted, oh yes, very tempted.
And my hand strays to hover over silken seats.
My hand longs to stroke unbroken paintwork.
Leather, my senses fill with the scent of leather.
Glossy, polished vinyl.
I am giddy with longing to feel the engine purr beneath me,
To sink in luxury, to be cocooned in it.
I deserve this, I tell myself.
I’ve struggled daily for years and years and years…
Just a test-drive, nothing more, no harm in that.
I slide behind the wheel, excited and something more…
Guilt. Guilt. My hands are on the wheel.
Leather like buttermilk hugs my thighs and back,
Warm with promise, sleek like lies.
I look out of the window.
My old car squats there, sullen, unkempt,
Driven to rust and disrepair
Infinitely safe.
HP paid up.
One careful woman driver.
Nan Archer
Laura Mowforth
laura mowforth.I am english how ever I have been living and working in Tuscany for the last eight years, a passion for poetry and music, my work touches on a variety of topics as well as cultures.My family still live in England but having been recently widowed this has strongly influenced my life and indeed my style of writing and I have decided to remain here in Italy with my son.The Italian air has strong influences on my creativity.Anyway, enough of my rambling and on with some examples of my work:
Jagged Stone
Standing over the creek of jagged stone
watching the firelight,the heat she knows
burns the embers of her heart
rejuvinates her soul
cast away the sadness
stop the rocks from rolling
all the play is slowing down
Watching the firelight
darkness is her nightgown
watching the flames
memories crown
the red-headed being
raging bones
standing over the creek of jagged stone
one infront of the water
one behind on land
one to kick out the fire
barefoot on the sand
with one the air he gives me
I inhale with all his soul
the other stifles my oxygen
I can not reach this goal.
The Nigerian Man
there's a man praying for his life
they're sending him to prison
and that's the best news he's ever had
stability has always been missing
Ignorant police are laughing at him
for his stench of the galèra
another difference amplified
is that of his colour
but this is the stronger man
superior to those weaker
I curse those whop don't give a dam
about the destiny of my soul brother
when someone begs to be thrown in a cage
rather than be murdered on his homeland
the situation already fills me with rage
then you lock cuffs around his hands
this is a spirit special and free
his heart to me is warming
if i were rich no shackles would have he
but I know his is freedom dawning
There enough bad souls to be trapped ina cage
for the good to be trapped in darkness
let the light shine his prison bars
and let my hope be his guidance
Stones
Grey stone bolder on the side of the road
on the side of the road
as I approach a little closer
I see this stone has bones
A poor grey bundle
dusty filthy mop of hair
strings covering hands
what statue is striken here?
head bound like his or her mind
an object of no sex
or a person once with reflexes
feeling,rights
crouched,crushed down
hiding out of sight
heart-tearing
where are her parents?
far from her mother's loving arms
but this has always been home
a street rat
A stone pole
there so long a part of this cracked road.
Paradoxical Sleep
Pitter patter
chitter chatter heart strings
over active mind not allowing you time to rest
Insomnia settles in uninvited
by now she's like an old friend
"goodnight my love"
"goodnight sleep well"
- rest until the dawn
while I lie here listening to the voices
of the land of silence.
Emmerging slowly from the shadows
are my companions,
the family of Fears.
I have names for them all:
there' s Mr Paranoia
he's the first at the door;
there's Mrs Problem solving cleaning the floors
of my head;
and there's old Debt slumped at the foot of my bed.
there's pretty little Sadness caressing Angel's tears
and there's Mr and Mrs Madness
dancing to Worrie's whistling
Look over there,
why it's Mr Optimistic singing
but jealously is pretending
to keep her green soul indifferently busy
Shocked Love looks outfrom the window
and quickly locks her door
but they force themselves inside
All this gate-crashing of my mind
where am I to hide?
Please help me if you can
show me how to rest
trust me, never doubt me
maybe if this miracle should present itself
then I'll have slumber yet.
Milestone
Turn up at another gig and
plug in your electric guitar
accept compliments from eager teenagers
while your agent smirks on from afar
well you think you've really made it
when in the dressing room awaits champagne
all your so called friends are waiting
well you're the only one to blame
moving, screaming, screeching, shaking
make the most of who you are
just cos you played in a coupled of places
does not make you a superstar
go home, find that your wife has left you
have to pay a nanny to get the kids from school
then they're crying that they really hate her
can't you see the fame has hurt them too.
But that's the life
scorns your die-hard agent
other tours booked
other places to go
didn't realise when you signed this contract
that you'd also be selling your soul.
Bryan
Harrison
Bryan Harrison is a primary school teacher and Literacy Consultant working in Bradford, West Yorkshire. He is 26 and has been writing poems for for roughly 2 years to his own "amusement" before starting only recently to send off my entries for competitions.
The Difference You have Made
If I had half of your qualities, I would be twice the man.
In a place full of darkness, you switched on the light.
When everyone else treated me with contempt and disdain,
you encouraged me and treat me with respect.
In a land of confusion, you provided the answers.
When others around me could only see my failures,
you praised and built on each of my successes; no matter how small.
In a world of isolated silence, you created conversation.
When those surrounding me chastised and mocked me,
you inspired and loved me.
In a room full of fear, you held my hand.
Whilst there were some who waited for the worst,
you never expected less than the best.
You were more than just a teacher…
You were a mentor, an inspiration and most of all a friend.
I only hope that I possess half of your qualities and can make a difference
in a young person’s life, as you have with mine.
If I had half your qualities, I would be twice the man.
Go to Top
Memories Gone By
How quickly time can rob the memory, taking away those things we love.
A smile imprints the mind but briefly, laughter rings, before fading in the
ears.
All remaining focus on sadness, words attempt to rekindle times gone by.
Hands clutch around favourite memories, eyes close to recreate loving
portraits.
Regrets take to the stage like seasoned actors, standing and bowing before
the mind.
Tears decorate the gathered masses, landing on hymns describing loss.
Only the few still hear that laughter, or can vision the smile that once
provided hope.
Cling to these actors in the mind, allow them the second curtain call.
Suicide Mind
As the pavement draws near, I ponder my dear, if the decision I’ve made is
the right one.
Or should I have tried, maybe broke down and cried, for some sympathetic act
you might have done.
I see to the right, flying my suicide flight, a family out enjoying the
sunshine.
Could that have been us, holding hands on the bus, reminiscing on tales and
fun times.
I gaze to the left, on my descending quest, at some girls playing tig in the
playground.
Would our children have been, full of laughter and dreams, if I’d stayed on
the building safe and sound.
But none of that is important, these are meaningless thoughts…and my
decision to jump has been made.
Will you have been worried, when my body was buried, what image of you this
portrayed.
Or will you cry mock tears, then confirm my worst fears and go back to her
house to get laid.
Go to Top