May 2013
3 posts
5 tags
Having A Coke With You: A workshop on poetry, pop...
Date/time: Thursday 23 May 1-2pm
Max number of participants: 18
What participants will get out of the class:
Looking at the work of poets including Frank O’Hara, Tim Wells and my own work we will be exploring the role the stuff people love plays in poetry. From Coca Cola and Northern Soul to vintage clothes and bric-a-brac we’ll talk about how ‘all the stuff they’ve always talked...
4 tags
Here, For Your Amusement
Colourwise I’m more meadow than hedgerow
though I have wooden clothes pegs and underneath
it all I’m comfortable as a smock. Less wild than a meadow.
I expect you will wonder what this is all about – well it’s wrong,
like giving names to the eggs in the box.
Here is a picture of a horse very proud of itself.
Here is a drawing of a flower, from hundreds of years ago
– you will still find...
April 2013
2 posts
March 2013
7 posts
3 tags
Even I Sometimes Press the Beauty Spot on my Face...
and if I could for just one minute lift my head from its dead daffodil slouch and stop delaying life I might find the magic chink in my self doubt that its possible to walk straight through and I’ll be hydroponically charged drowned in UV light and I’ll feel only in the merest possible terms and my eyes will flourish like ranunculus friends will be waiting for me at the party in the form of a...
10 tags
Poem for Claire Trevien
Coquelicot! That’s how I’d describe your hair,
like how I’d imagine a cosmocrat’s to look –
absolute pigment, primed for plumes and space minerals.
I love how I can always locate you in a vociferous
room and that you’re more costume than wardrobe. Not
everyone can be as you are, and that’s as well as a tucked in sheet.
Tell me I’m buttoned up the right way. That we will never not
reason it’s...
9 tags
Poem for Heather Phillipson
Hocus and Pocus died not of over-feeding (as we’d first thought), it seems
every goldfish in town went that night – pouf! – and no one, not even the
academics, have reached an agreeable hypothesis as to why.
Tiny’s lips set against me. Apparently, I was blame not just for this but all
heightened drama so keen I was for anything. Still, the Great Goldfish Demise
entered our cosy folklore...
LITTLE GIRLS SOMETIMES
walk too fast without checking where they are going and wander off without their mummy they are not allowed to do that they must be able to see their mummy at all times and little girls will one day become big girls and when they are they will let their little sisters wear their clothes because they will be in big girls clothes and when they are a big girl they will be allowed to have hot drinks...
3 tags
Camellia Stafford talks about her forthcoming...
What is the working title of your book?
The original working title is a line from a poem: if you want to hear music en route, you have to sing. Feedback deemed this title to be too long and too cliche, bringing me back to reality. Briefly I had a Letters to the Sky phase. I’ve not completely rejected that but currently The Butterfly Stroke is my favourite. The ridiculous and...
8 tags
The Next Big Thing
Emily Berry tagged me in the next big thing project, where writers talk about their new projects. You can read her responses here. I’ve already been tagged but because I am so contrary I am going to answer the questions again to test the constancy of my thinking.
What is the working title of your book?
For a while I was working with ‘To Be Her Pavilion’. Now I’m not sure. Suggested titles...
February 2013
5 posts
Poem on Janine’s Birthday
Just as I woke, you stomped into my head and I thought of everything that makes me admire you: not just your sass and nerve, (although it does deserve an explicit mention ) but how Neverland it is to spend time with you, like a pop-up theme park – each day can be abundant with vivid wants, like how you’re era-less, confident as a portrait, inconsolably hungry, you talk easy as an...
Spoilt Victorian Child
past the trees, fairies spoilt sugarcake
past the stairs, servant smocked in grey
past the butterfly shrug (fearful babes)
past tiger-cheek disfigured with rouge
past green trees ...
3 tags
But we can’t marry each other
who’d pick up the bills? And people would look at us
and think: cousins? But I am thankful that it’s ok to use you as prop
and aren’t you just a packet of Ras El Hanout? Makes everything
taste better. I didn’t like the idea of you with someone
but I saw you together and nothing quickened. You have to test these things,
the heart can be both prissy and pudgy. Apparently not looking for it
makes...
January 2013
7 posts
Issue Two Poems In Which →
Issue two of my poetry journal Poems In Which is now live. Edited by me and Nia Davies and featuring new work from 26 poets including Fran Lock, Jen Campbell, Tim Wells, Mark Burnhope, Kirsten Irving, W.N. Herbert and Jon Stone.
4 tags
Pretty Please
In the yard there’s waning snow
like clabbered milk, but mentally
I’m in an August-bleached field
and you have threshed a stalk of grain
for me to drink my cider
through. We identify as summer people.
There each lowered tone lifts,
burs caught on our socks are the sand
walked home from the beach. A suite
of songs sing California.
At night I prefer you lax – on, not under,
a...
Penning Perfumes: Three questions for Camellia... →
penningperfumes:
Camellia Stafford’s pamphlet another pretty colour, another break for air is published by tall lighthouse. Her first collection of poems is forthcoming from Salt Publishing this autumn. Her poems are due to appear in Oxford Poetry, Magma and The Pre-Raphaelite Society Spring Review. She will be…
5 tags
Reply In Which (After Sarah Crewe)
I mention lately I’ve lacked a honeyed mood,
delicates have evaded me. Again I’ve spent too much
trying to ornamentally tile my life. The sofa’s worn
down where I always sit and though my diary’s
clogging up I don’t know how to project.
I am ashamed to want a someone. Social
engagements are propelled by wine,
as unease goes up, eyeliner goes on. Sometimes
I imagine you in your kitchen,...
8 tags
6 tags
Poem With Hearts
heart cinched in
left out in the rain
bloated heart pumped full of drugs
heart written longhand in a letter
potential heart
my heart your heart dear heart
heart in top hat and tails
lonely cold sentimental heart orphaned heart
high maintenance heart heart...
6 tags
WatchMeeting DA Powell
December 2012
4 posts
7 tags
Your Year In Review
There was real snow. The little white record player
played Grandma’s records. Your hair was Narnian and people
said you’d lost weight. You couldn’t decide how shrill was too shrill.
Soup was austere, robust and recipes were exchanged.
Mould slunk along the windowsill, but you cleaned it off,
it’s likely no one would have known. Insomnia made demands
January through March. Your heart went...
13 tags
The Next Big Thing
Sophie Mayer, Queen of pop-up publishing projects Catechism, Binders Full of Women and Fit to Work among other delights asked me to take part in this blogging project which asks authors to answer questions about their book: The Next Big Thing (you can read her answers here!).
I’m focusing on my debut poetry collection, working title To Be Her Pavillion, which will be published in 2013.
Where did...
7 tags
Love Poem To A Bauble
All year I’ve waited to unwrap her from the mille feuille
of tender tissue, watch her pirouette on a golden thread.
We all have favourites.
I said goodbye to her in January,
laid her devout in a box with The Angel for company.
The others are in sets: an ancient wooden nativity
unstable as jelly, the brittle glass baubles, like foil-dash
...
6 tags
Friend vs.
Well he rubbed up against you the right way, it was correspondence –
but really, that boy was a chain of fairy lights to throttle yourself with.
Whittle down to the truth now –
Babe, this was always going to happen.
Don’t let him reduce you to a pip-squeak, he’s not worth
those mouse-pink eyes –
.
...
November 2012
3 posts
7 tags
Sarah Crewe reviews Easy Rhymes a.k.a by Michael...
In the houses of pseuds, poets and musos, debate over what constitutes the difference between song lyrics and poetry takes place every Friday or thereabouts, depending on whether or not BBC Four is coming up with Whistle Test goods that night.
Easy Rhymes continues to spark this one up throughout. In the introduction, Conroy himself labels the pieces “poems/lyrics/whatever you call them.” It’s...
2 tags
My New Poetry Journal Poems In Which
First issue now live. Poems In Which features work from Wayne Holloway-Smith, Sophie Collins, Camellia Stafford and many more. Issue 2 will be co-edited by Nia Davies.
And What of You and I?
We have accumulated mutual dust, but I have learned this means little and I can’t take mine back now. I am reminded of a note passed to me by a boy at school, how easy it is to steep meaning into the scantiest of exchanges. And dust isn’t a medium! I place myself in a league of your friends, lovers and acquaintances based on appraised attractiveness. This vexes me. No, we have only this dust,...
October 2012
3 posts
sophie e collins: Yesterday I made a cento →
sophie-e-collins:
I found all of the poems whose lines I used via the search term ‘desk’. Untitled Dressed to kill or inflict a wound, in the reading chair, like one of the saved. White blossoms open on my fingertips. There were others to whom she would have talked, the part-Cherokee teenage genius (maybe). Rain. The weather has turned. It will do that.
3 tags
From Poemland by Chelsey Minnis
Poetry is like waking up drunk in a lemon yellow room…
It is a print-pattern of overblown flowers and pudendas…
It is like tearing off your bandages in your sleep…
And a good-by note left in a cash drawer…
September 2012
9 posts
2 tags
11 tags
Me talking poetry, reading poems and choosing some... →
8 tags
Cat Power →
My poem for English Pen’s Poems for Pussy Riot project. This is one of many poems which will be translated into Russian and handed over to the band to show our support for them.
6 tags
Highlights In The History of Concrete →
This poem was commissioned by Anthony Adler of Hatstand, and takes its title from a Diagram Prize-winning book.
9 tags
Poems? Quick! Hide!: New Poem →
pmsqckhd:
Sharing
I dislike the way you shoplift conversations. The other day
we were talking about Katie’s garden and all of a sudden
you just took the garden out of that conversation and soon
we were all stuck in your garden with these drinks in our hands.
I find it unpleasant when…
I AM INTERVIEWED HERE →
9 tags
August 2012
9 posts
Come Love - Vispo
amyewrites:
For Thea.
3 tags
DON'T PLAY WITH ME, COS YOU'RE PLAYING WITH FIRE →
5 tags
A New Poem In M58 Magazine →
