This morning I went into Manchester city centre for my appointment with Anthony, the hairdresser. He too thought that everything is “a notch down”, quieter, people being subdued. I admire the bee tattoo that his colleague had done last week on her upper right arm. From Cross Street I can see flowers spilling out from St Ann’s Square, the balloons gleaming in the sun.
today the sun shines
on us and the sleeping dog
being shaped from sand
Just two hours ago, while I was sorting and filing cuttings and poetry magazines, a police helicopter was directly overhead. Then I saw this photo on an issue of Poetry News:-
THE PEOPLE YOU LOVE
BECOME GHOSTS INSIDE
OF YOU AND LIKE THIS
YOU KEEP THEM ALIVE
The photo is of a light installation by Robert Montgomery. It was going to be shown at National Poetry Day Live, 2015.
Lize Bard maintains a high standard with her daily haiku – Out of Africa, but this has an extra dimension.
it was just last week ~ I too picked a sunflower ~ yet I got to live
©Lize Bard
Yesterday it was six years ago the poet Linda Chase died after a short illness. My poet friend Keith Lander has kept the email “Dear List” alive that Linda started years ago. It arrives on Sunday with a long list of all the poetry events in and around Manchester. Linda also started the fabulous Poets and Players series of readings. They’re held at the Whitworth and attract a sizeable audience of well over a hundred.
I was on the first poetry course that Linda ran in her Village Hall in October 2004 and from then I regularly attended other courses she ran or organised. She helped me become a poet and my debut collection is dedicated to her memory.
Look at lindachase.co.uk – the on-line archive for sample poems, background information on her careers – stage costume designer and Tai Chi teacher – and some wonderful photos that show her generosity, energy and spirit…
This poem by WisƗawa Szymborska, published in her Selected Poems View with a Grain of Sand, starts with two questions:-
Under what conditions do you dream of the dead?
Do you often think of them before you fall asleep?
The poem consists of five five-line stanzas. Some lines are shorter, some longer, but they are all questions.
It’s a striking title – we want to read on, but I can only say that I find it easier to think or dream of the dead people in my life than to write a poem that’s entirely made up of questions. I promise to give it a go. Meanwhile, below is the haiku that was published in the British Haiku Society’s Members’ Anthology (2002) under the theme Hidden:-
on her skin
a pattern of purple lines –
radiographer’s map
You will find this interesting and useful article on the website of the poet Martyn Crucefix. He gives examples of poems under each of the 14 headings. I came across the article just the other week, timely as I’m doing a Poetry School course held at the Manchester Art Gallery.
Martyn has divided these 14 ways into five subgroups:- Through Description, Through Ventriloquism, Through Interrogation, Through Giving an Account and, finally, Come At a Tangent. He suggests people try to write one a day for the next fortnight.
I doubt I’ll manage one a day, but I’ve taken heart from the article: I have lots of abandoned ekphrastic poems, because one tutor was adamant that such poems have no merit if they merely describe!
I ran away to sea many years ago. In 1969 I arrived in London as an economic migrant and went to register with the “Aliens Office”. P&O Lines Ltd had offered me a job as a WAP (Woman Assistant Purser) and I joined my first ship, the Arcadia. The small flags on my blue uniform jacket and white dresses showed that I could speak Dutch, French and German to all the European passengers who were going to start a new life in Australia and New Zealand.
The haiku below was first published in the 2004 Members’ Anthology of the British Haiku Society. The theme that year was “Other”.
down on the quayside
the band playing; their faces
already smaller
Happy World Poetry Day!
To honour International Women’s Day I’m posting this poem about a woman. It was first published in The Best of Manchester Poets, vol. 2, published by Puppywolf (2011). I aimed to give the reader enough clues (the Gauloises cigarettes, the stubborn streak) for them to be able to guess the identity of this woman before they read the final lines.
It’s a good prompt: with which historical figure (famous or infamous) could you have gone to school, college, university with? Did you even sit next to them in the classroom? What were they like then?
Joan
One of the girls I went to college with
was Joan who’d left home early.
She smoked Gauloises, had a stubborn
streak, wanted to study philosophy.
We thought she was depressed; she cut
herself and once put out a cigarette on her arm.
I wish I’d asked her why. I can see her now
with that hair cropped short, staring straight ahead.
People shouting, the smoke, the crackling fire.
Too hot, I need to step back.
I’m chuffed to learn that my prose poem Broken biscuits has made it into an anthology of poems about Yorkshire, published by Valley Press. The proofs came through the other day. I am in good company with many well-known poets including the current Poet Laureate Carol Ann Duffy.
The launch is in Leeds on Saturday 18 March, a few days after I’m launching Another life in the International Anthony Burgess Foundation here in Manchester. A good many poems in the book were written there in the Engine Room.
I admire those poets who perform a piece from memory. I’ve decided to learn Broken biscuits well enough so I can perform it from memory: Is there poetry in broken biscuits? Discuss. The short answer is yes, provided it is articulated in the unashamedly Yorkshire, tongue-in-cheek, twinkle-in-the-voice tones of … (insert name of a very well-known poet living in Barnsley)…
The new Orbis arrived yesterday and I was very pleased to see that it included a review of my debut collection by Noel Williams. It’s a perceptive review, identifying my wish for more to be intended than said in my work, the unexpected insights that result from shifts in viewpoint and the surrealism. The review ends:-
“The simplicity of some of these poems belies their subtlety. It’s a collection written with an intelligence that’s wicked, weird and insightful.”
With that I’m off down to London in a few days to read at Fourth Friday (which is at a temporary venue in South London while the Poetry Café is being refurbished). I’m reading with Wendy Klein who was a fellow student at the Writing School.
Acacia Publications 