Speak Easy (2)

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Speak Easy was formed at Stretford’s Sip Club by Dave Hartley in August 2015 as a spoken word open mic before the team of Andy N, Amanda Nicholson and Steve Smythe joined forces to take it over at the end of 2017. The night moved to Chorlton Cum Hardy’s Dulcimer Bar in August 2020 and has carried on being a welcoming, supportive, friendly and encouraging night since welcome to both experienced and newcomers with all acts given equal opportunity to perform with everybody who reads being headliners.

(See the end of the post for details and links to social media for Speak Easy, Andy N, Amanda Nicholson.)

Andy N

Andy N is the author of 8 full length poetry collections including ‘Return to Kemptown’ and ‘The End of Summer’ and co-runs Chorlton Cum Hardy’s always welcoming Spoken Word Open mic night ‘Speak Easy’. He runs / co-runs Podcasts such as Spoken Label, Cloaked in the Shadows and Storytime with Andy & Amanda and does ambient music under the name of Ocean in a Bottle.

Three x Winter Haiku

Walking in darkness
your front door briefly lights up
in the heavy rain. 
*
Ripping out the trees
lighting hit the forest hard
flooding the river
*
Sleeping in winter
the trees hibernate alone
awaiting for Spring. 

*

Amanda Nicholson


Amanda Nicholson is an author, poet, podcast co-host and copywriter. She has written several books as Amanda Steel, including Ghost of Me. Amanda’s poetry has been broadcast on BBC Radio Manchester. She Has a Creative Writing MA, and has had articles published by Jericho Writers, Reader’s Digest UK, Ask.com, and Authors Publish.

Do All These Labels Make Me Look Fat?
 
Like blank sticky labels pressed to my skin
I write on some myself
While people scribble their own words
Over time, the ink fades on some
and others fall off
The one labelled daughter is half peeled off now
Older labels remain stuck fast
But buried by new labels
So people rarely see
Unless they get close enough
And there is always room for more
Some are like tattoos
Only more painful
And others wash away easily

Links
Speak Easy:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/speakeasymanchester
Twitter: https://twitter.com/speakspokenword
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/speakeasypoetryspokenword/
Recordings of Night: https://andyn.bandcamp.com/

Andy N Poet:
His blog: http://onewriterandhispc.blogspot.com/
His books can be found on Amazon etc.
Ocean in a Bottle is at: oceaninabottle.bandcamp.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/andynstorytellerpoet
Twitter: https://twitter.com/aen1mpo
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/andynpoet/
Tiktok: https://www.tiktok.com/@andynwriter

Amanda Nicholson

Her blog is: https://amandasteelwriter.wordpress.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/AmandaSteelWriter
Twitter: https://twitter.com/Amanda_S_Writer
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/amandasteel37/

Ode of sorts…

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Last Saturday I had to go to the pharmacy in Playa Blanca, Lanzarote to get some over-the-counter medication. It’s an ode of sorts alright…

Normal service will be resumed…

To ‘my’ condition

I salute you: you have staying power.
You arrived out of nowhere 28 years ago.
How odd you only woke up in Manchester,
while you slept through London.

I refuse to call you mine, the two ‘ ’
symbolise handcuffs, shackles.
On long journeys (flights, trains)
I wear dark trousers, a dark dress.

You have grounded me many times,
I’ve been bent over, clutching my bike,
scared to go to the shops in case I
don’t make it to a loo.

An acronym close to that computer firm.
There are dress codes at IBM, I have you know.
Irritable? Yes, often. I’ve been pissed off,
imagine bowels as a curled-up, snarling cobra.

Syndrome is, I believe, where spectators
gather to see retired pilots take off
in noisy small planes. Banking
is a dangerous manoeuvre.

Friendship

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Friendship is the theme of this year’s Poetry Week, celebrated in The Netherlands and the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium through 400+ events. It starts on Thursday 26 January. Miriam Van Hee (B) and Hester Knibbe (NL), two poets who have been friends for almost 40 years were commissioned to write five poems each for a book. In a recent interview they said that trust and curiosity are key elements for a friendship to endure and last.

Anyone who spends over 12,50 Euro on poetry books during Poetry Week will be given a copy. It’s not hard to spend that sort of money, as poetry books are expensive in The Netherlands!

Here is my poem on the theme of friendship: memories of a long weekend in Vienna in 1994.

Vienna

I would gladly return,
walk with Wendy through
the rain to the museum,
see the Hunters on the Hill –
tired, wet dogs, in the Little Ice Age
when frozen birds fell from the sky.

I would gladly go back there,
view grey buildings slide past,
hear the clanging bell.
Schwedenplatz, umsteigen.
A trolley bus securely attached
to the two lines above.

Speak Easy (Stephen Smythe)

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It’s a pleasure to introduce Stephen Smythe. He has been involved with Speak Easy since it started (at the SIP Club in Stretford) and that’s where we met. The SIP Club closed during the lockdown and Speak Easy then moved online. I was able to take part from my caravan in The Netherlands, along with poets and writers from London and the US and elsewhere.


Stephen Smythe is a Manchester writer who achieved an MA in Creative Writing from Salford University, in 2018. He was shortlisted in the Bridport Prize, Flash Fiction category, in 2017, and was also longlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award, in 2018. He won The Bangor Literary Journal FORTY WORDS Competition, in 2022, and was placed third in the Strands International Flash Fiction Competition, in 2021, for his 1000-word story.


His book of forty x forty word stories published by Red Ceilings Press is due out later this year.


Here are two prize winners to give you a taste…

KLEPTO


Bridget took stuff from her work colleagues after they’d gone home. Pens, post-it pads, sweets, even family photos. People suspected her, but couldn’t prove anything. When the company introduced hot desking, Bridget became confused and sometimes stole from herself.

(Winner of the Bangor Literary Journal FORTY WORDS Competition, 2022)

COLD CALL


‘Wait!’ Dad yelled down the phone.
He put his specs on. ‘That’s better, I can hear you now.’
He listened intently, frowned deeply, then hung up.
‘A conservatory?’ He snorted. ‘Your mother would kill me– if she were alive.’

(Second place in the Bangor Literary Journal FORTY WORDS Competition, 2019)

Links to 1000-word stories


Love Your Neighbour


The Fourth P (weebly.com)


Al Pacino of the Welsh Valleys (weebly.com)

Granny (weebly.com)

Poetry
Sommelier 2020 – Janus Literary

The Other (Michael Conley)

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The Other has been running in Manchester since January 2016. Michael Conley and Eli Regan organise the event where writers are put in pairs to read and perform each other’s work, with plenty of time beforehand to prepare. It is a fascinating idea.

During the pandemic The Other moved online and I took part in a memorable Zoom session where I was paired up with Adam Farrer. The Other is now ‘live’ again. Dates are on Facebook and Twitter. Sessions also raise funds for Manchester Central Foodbank.

It’s a pleasure introducing Michael and a sample of his writing.

Michael Conley is a poet and prose writer from Manchester. His first prose collection, “Flare and Falter” was published by Splice and longlisted for the 2019 Edge Hill Short Story Prize.  His latest work is a poetry pamphlet published by Nine Pens, called “These Are Not My Dreams…”

At The Park, A Grown Man Has Got His Head Caught In The Railings
 
Possibly somebody loves,
or at some point has loved,
this man. But it’s hard to imagine
right now. It’s hard to imagine
that for most of his life
he hasn’t been stuck 
at this ninety-degree angle,
fists flailing, jeans sagging
at the waist. He’s so angry
with the railings, 
with the soft mud under his boots
and especially with the teenagers
who are laughing at him
from the picnic benches.
 
You could empty a whole tub
of vegetable oil onto his neck
and tug him out by his belt loops
but he wouldn’t thank you for it.
And of course you can’t ask him
what he was trying to do
in the first place.
He doesn’t know 
what his pain looks like
from the outside.   

Website: https://ninepens.co.uk/2022-poets/michael-conley

Storks and happiness…

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Credit: Michael Schwarzenberger via PIxabay

Storks are said to bring happiness. The bird has been the official emblem of The Hague for centuries. Until the beginning of the last century, storks with clipped wings walked the many fish markets in the city, keeping the streets clean.

I hope this new year will bring health and happiness to you and those you hold dear. The poem is from my new collection Remembering / Disease published last October by Broken Sleep Books. It first appeared in the online magazine Dust, edited by Tara Wheeler.

Storks also feature in my poem High wind. It was selected as one of 20 poems by a jury for the Poetry Archive’s Poetry Archive Now! Wordview 2022. You can see and hear me read it here.

Waiting

The water meadows
are waiting
for the storks to return

always invisible
the other side
of her face

in this book
there is snow
on every page

even an old potato
can be turned
into a Christmas stamp

the naming of colours
is not a science.
I vote for bird’s nest grey

Enxaneta

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Credit: Makamuki0 via Pixabay

My thanks to poet Annie Muir for this seasonal poem from her pamphlet New Year’s Eve. Best wishes for your own New Year’s Eve – wherever you are. See you in 2023.

Enxaneta

In Barcelona it is 38 degrees
and a little girl screams with mimicked joy –

she is all eyelashes, all eyes,
all teeth and gums and tongue.

I hate her through the eyes of her big sister:
half a plastic broken heart tied around my neck,

I climb a fence to watch the castellers.
They huddle, arms up as if reaching for a throat,

others climb them like stairs, feet clinging to backs
like tadpoles on their first legs,

it doesn’t stop, more like ants than people
but with muscle and bone and white trousers,

two little girls heading for top,
one takes her place below, the other

is no longer a child but the star
at the top of a Christmas tree,

her arm pointing up is the man on the moon,
a clock striking midnight on New Year’s Eve.

She slides down the legs of her supporters,
relieving the mountains of tension from their shoulders.

Biography

Annie Muir lives in Glasgow. Her debut pamphlet New Year’s Eve was published by Broken Sleep Books. Pre-pandemic she handed out poems on the street outside local libraries, and has a podcast – Time for one Poem – aimed at complete beginners to poetry.
@time41poem

Food Match

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Credit: Life-Of-Pix, Pixabay

A Christmas Day poem with my best wishes for the day and with my thanks to Matthew Stewart. In his pamphlet Tasting Notes (Happenstance Press) he pairs poems with notes about the Zaleo wines from Extremadura, a region with several UNESCO heritage sites.

Food Match

It glistens on the wooden stand,
a black trotter pointed upwards
as if offering a hoofprint.
Now cut a slice so thin that steel
is visible below the meat.

Place it across your tongue and wait
for the marbled fat to melt. Sip
un vino tinto. The tannin
grips, hugging the ham — both of them
start, suddenly, to magnify.

Credit: GerardBarcelona, on Pixabay

Biography:

Matthew Stewart works in the Spanish wine trade and lives between Extremadura and West Sussex. His second full collection is due from HappenStance Press in November 2023.

There are a few copies left of Tasting Notes. Contact Matthew direct via social media.

Above Redmires

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The poems of James (Jim) Caruth have featured on the blog before. Here is the link. Last year his new collection, Speechless at Inch, was published by smith/doorstop. It was shortlisted for The Derek Walcott Poetry Prize 2023.

The striking cover image is of Janet Mullarney’s The Straight and Narrow. Made in 1991 of painted wood, it measures 228 x 320 x 137 cm. It’s in the collection of the Irish Museum of Modern Art.

Here is a seasonal poem from Speechless at Inch:

Above Redmires

It was mid-December, a back road
through the low hills that nurse
the city’s northern edge, when I came upon

a flock of black-faced ewes
crowded in a corner of a field,
a squeeze of tattered wool and clouded breath.

I stopped the car to look around,
searching for a dog slipped the leash
or a fox tasting the air along the hedgerows

but as far as I could see
there was no other living thing
between those frightened sheep and me.

Biography

James Caruth was born in Belfast but has lived in Sheffield for over thirty years. He has had several pamphlets and a collection published: A Stone’s Throw (Staple Press, 2007), Marking the Lambs (Smith/Doorstop, 2012), The Death of Narrative (Smith/Doorstop, 2014) and Narrow Water (Poetry Salzburg, 2017).

Winter Sun Speaks

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I am delighted to feature the poem Winter Sun Speaks by Maggie Reed. We first met on a residential workshop several years ago. The picture of winter sun is also by Maggie.

Winter Sun Speaks

I birth my cry through cloud layers
push my weight low over the southern horizon,
strident, desperate, slanting over the hills
forking through trees, splintering ice.
I blind drivers on the school run.

How I ache for summer skies, to leap and arch
over the earth, spread light, energy and love.

But for now my shriek, my low level beam, insists
my right for the few hours I’m allowed
to crisp up these dark winter days.

Biography:

Maggie Reed lives in the Malvern Hills, Worcestershire, having spent much of her life in Cumbria. Her current collection Let Small Wings Fly was self-published in 2021 to accompany the Arts Council funded travelling art exhibition ‘Mappa Marches’ that visited libraries and art centres across Herefordshire throughout 2022.

She has been published in several journals, including The North, Orbis, Poetry Birmingham, Pennine Platform, Three Drops from a Cauldron and Poetry Village, and has been included in anthologies such as This Place I Know (Handstand Press, 2018), Places of Poetry (One World, 2019), When All This is Over (Calder Valley Poetry, 2020), Poetry of Worcestershire (Offas Press, 2019) and In the Sticks (Offas Press, 2021). She won the Poem and a Pint competition (judge, Carrie Etter) in 2019.