1 I discovered Pome only a couple of months ago and am enjoying the poems very much: an interesting range and they are short, even very short. As I understand it, Matthew (Matt) Ogle originally posted the poems some years ago and the project has restarted via Tiny Letter.
Here is an Issa haiku, translated by Robert Hass. Since I am a paid-up member of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to House Dust, it speaks to me …
Don’t worry, spiders, I keep house casually
2 Monostich – a poem or epigram of one single line. The title is important and may be long, longer even than the poem. My recent example from a course I’m doing:
While it rained, we went out and put the poster on trees and lamp posts in theneighbourhood
It needs heart and courage (lebh in Hebrew) to wear a pochet with conviction.
3 Here is a short poem by Carl Tomlinson from his Changing Places. It has a haiku-like quality. Carl is the May guest poet. I look forward to sharing more of his poems with you then.
August
All along the bridleway some kind of rain is trying to shake off the wind. The land feels thinned.
A great many thanks to my fellow poets who responded splendidly on Facebook to the George Perec ‘e’ challenge. It’s a feast. I hope you enjoy the selection. I send them and you warm Easter greetings.
Steve Smythe: Send me every gem she ever kept. Steve Smythe: Beef, beer, weed: perfect. Helen Kay: Helen expects eleven eggs every week. Sarah L Dixon: Every beret fells seven men even when they tend seeds, mend fences, then recede. End. Steve Smythe: Best strengthen the steel sheep pen Hannah Mackay: Chew seven spelt seeds. Renew every few weeks. Steve Smythe: Feel the breeze; expect red cheeks. Hilary Robinson: Send me the new bed, fresh sheet-bedecked. Janet Sutherland: She expects her energy ends here. Barry Fentiman-Hall: When Ben went there Jen went red. Sarah J Bryson: He knew every beech tree grew free, the breeze renewed, endlessly. Katy Evans-Bush: She’d never pre-empt these seven, then exempt. Angi Holden: Envy the clever shepherd – the twelve speckled sheep he secretly keeps chew where the endless greenery stretches between cherry tree edged beech crescents. Sue Kindon: The Beer Fest swells the seventh tent; breezy revellers emerge, three sheets teetered. Oz Hardwick: The elect erected dressy needles, yet clerks scythe empty chests. Pam Thompson: We’re held, spent – thresh sleep/speech event, feel stress. Rachel Davies: When we’re elderly trekkers the knees need rest Sarah Mnatzaganian: Eyes drench every element when they weep. Stephen Payne: He prefers terser sentences. Vanessa Lampert: Yes the egg never left me, yes the elf then wept, even better, he grew mettle greener, severed the tree then tweeted the red hedge news. Sally Evans: she emerges even when she expects endless reverses.
By way of bonus, here is poet Rod Whitworth’s contribution – using only ‘i’ and ‘y’.
I
I mind (with liking) this child imbibing milk. Lit with infinity, it insists it is big. Bit by bit — spiting my might, my right — it fights my will.
I find sticks in bins igniting nightly, kindling my illicit still. Timing it by twilight I skip by drinking whisky, singing in high winds, rhyming, rhythmic. By limp light I’m writing mythic signs my child might find inspiring. I sigh.
It is an enormous pleasure to introduce this month’s guest poet Hilary Robinson. We met many years ago on writing workshops in Manchester.
Hilary Robinson
Hilary Robinson has lived in Saddleworth for over 40 years. Publications include The Interpreter’s House, Obsessed with Pipework, Strix, The Morning Star, Riggwelter, Atrium and Poetry Birmingham and several anthologies including Please Hear What I’m Not Saying (Fly on the Wall Poetry 2018), A New Manchester Alphabet (Manchester Writing School 2015), Noble Dissent (Beautiful Dragons Press 2017), Bloody Amazing! (Yaffle/Beautiful Dragons Press 2020) and The Cotton Grass Appreciation Society. In 2018 twelve of her poems were published in the first joint DragonSpawn book, Some Mothers Do . . . alongside Dr Rachel Davies and the late Tonia Bevins. Her poem, ‘Second Childhood’ was shortlisted in the 2016 Yorkmix Poetry Competition.
Hilary has collaborated with composition students from the Royal Northern College of Music as part of the Rosamond Prize and was involved in the 2016 Leeds Lieder Festival. She is currently collaborating with composer, Joseph Shaw, on an opera to be performed at the Royal Northern College of Music.
In June 2021, Hilary’s debut pamphlet, Revelation, was published by 4Word Press. Hilary has an MA in Creative Writing from Manchester Metropolitan University. The central section of Revelation is a series of poems which explore the aftermath of betrayal in a marriage. From this section I have selected four poems. Nikolai Duffy says that these poems ‘sing with a lyrical precision that is as authentic as it is unflinching.’
Revelation
And I beheld the last seven years open up before me and they gave up their secrets.
And I beheld my beloved’s face concealed by a fine beard and his feet that were turned to sand.
And I beheld seven office chairs, unoccupied except for two, on which sat my beloved and his shame.
And surrounding my beloved and his shame were all the places they had been while I had slept on in our bed.
And all the places they had been were also all the places he had taken me. And I wept that this was true.
And I beheld his eyes turn to streams as his remorse descended from him. And lo — his arms reached out for mine.
And I tightened my golden belt around my waist, knelt down by his side and said that I forgave him.
That September
Every time he went to the window he saw them. Gangs hired to find us, gangs armed with torches burning even though it was early September and still light. Gangs getting closer.
He’d let everyone down, his partners, clients, staff, his family. Most of all he’d let me down in ways I’d never imagined. Now they were at the end of our drive. Now he’d found a way to stop the fire he’d caused.
It took four of us to prize his fingers from the Swiss Army Knife’s twin blades. I never knew what happened to that knife. I wiped blood from his hand, found the doctor’s home number.
The rest is a history of ashes, scorched earth of a marriage that somehow bore new life after hospital, after ECT, after many hours of therapy. This house still stands.
Brittle
In the kingdom of glass everything is transparent, and there is no place to hide a dark heart. Vera Nazarian, The Perpetual Calendar of Inspiration
To become glass, learn to make yourself fluid as egg-timer sand.
Hone yourself to brittleness with just a little give to accommodate rough winds.
Research your ancestry — try to enter the mindset of silica.
Practise the occasional sharp look, the cutting remark — hide in the shadows.
To become glass, give in — become transparent; melt into the view from this bedroom.
Trying to Take my Husband to the Antica Carbonera
There is no chance I’ll find the Calle Bembo with its kinks, its turns, its lamps hanging above shops of antique Murano beads, its shiny cobbles and those buskers trotting out Vivaldi through the season. No chance I’ll find what translates
where Cath and I ate wild mushrooms cooked four ways and spent so much they brought us Limoncello on the house.
Yet here we are. This is the first Venetian street our feet touch on the way to the Al Codega. The food is perfectly seasoned. Tonight we’re on the roof. I have another angle on this street.
I discovered a book programme on Dutch TV. It’s called Brommeropzee (mopedonsea) after a Dutch short story. There are two presenters. Based on my brief observation, I would say: she is E for Empathy, he is E for Ego.
One item was an interview with Guido van de Wiel. He has previously translated Perec’s 1969 novel La Disparation (A Void) into Dutch – see the cover. Like the original, the text does not include a single vowel ‘e’.
In 1972 Perec published a companion piece Les Revenentes (The Exeter Text). In the interview Guido showed long lists of words containing only the vowel ‘e’. He has worked on this translation on-and-off for 12 years. The translation follows the original in form (lipogram) and content.
Brommeropzee issued a challenge to viewers: compose a coherent sentence of at least 10 and at most 30 words, using any consonant, but only the vowel ‘e’. Here is my sentence: De beleefde kreeft heeft even geleden en elders negeert de kwelder de heen-en-weer regen.
Translated: The polite lobster has suffered briefly and elsewhere the salt marsh ignores the to-and-fro rain. There are no rhyming sounds as in my Dutch original, but you get the flavour.
If you like a challenge, compose a (decent) sentence of words using only the vowel ‘e’ and send them to me via the Contact page. I’ll publish a selection in a few weeks.
It is a huge pleasure to introduce this month’s guest poet: Hamish Wilson whom I met four years ago when I attended a workshop at Garsdale.
Having taught in schools for 31 years, Hamish moved to Cumbria in 2016 to set up and run The Garsdale Retreat, http://www.thegarsdaleretreat.co.uk, a residential creative writing centre. This has allowed him the time and space to develop his own writing career.
The Garsdale Retreat
He has had poetry published in two anthologies: This Place I Know – A New Anthology ofCumbrian Poetry (Ed. Darbishire, Moore, Nuttall/Handstand Press, 2018) and Play (Ed. Taylor, Williams/PaperDart Press, 2018) and was shortlisted for the following competitions: WoLF poetry competition in 2017 and 2018 and Write Out Loud’s Beyond the Storm (Poems From the Covid Era) in 2020. He has also had poems in Culture Matters and The Morning Star.
In 2019 he performed Parallel Lives, (a sonnet sequence with live music, film and photography, exploring the creative lives of John Lennon and Dylan Thomas) at The Brewery Arts Centre, Kendal.
Written in 2020, Lockdown Journal is a sonnet sequence which explores his experience of the pandemic between 28 March and 21 April, reflecting on daily life in Garsdale as well as the wider world.
I asked Hamish to select three sonnets from Lockdown Journal as a way of marking the second anniversary of the pandemic.
Saturday, 28 March, 2020
The road is quiet. The weekend bikers who came back with the curlews, have not returned. This first weekend of Covid lockdown’s like a languid bank holiday without the burn
of off-comers. Spring greens on regardless, daffs trumpet; lambs skip, suckle; horned Highland cattle shadow on the fell; lapwings test their stuntman wings, plummet to earth (as planned).
At home, virtual visitors ease the time with supportive texts, puzzles, You Tube vids; parodies of songs, coronavirus rhymes, zoom-conferencing and Happy Hour bids.
The News At Six brings contact nationwide, a thousand UK people now have died.
Friday, 10 April, 2020
Days which bleed to other days still make their mark, Good Friday’s on regardless and they fear we’ll enjoy it with dangerous outdoor larks. We’re shown deserted beaches, seaside piers
which forecast what they hope the weekend brings; ‘Your front door’s safer than a protective mask…..’ cut to bench taped like a crime scene, chained up swings: stay-at-home’s fine-enforced now not an ask.
Up here, where social distancing’s the norm, our walk on Blea Moor fell is not policed – the only drone, a distant train, informs we’re not alone and breaks the blanket peace.
A sky lark ascends, arpeggios on high, coal-black speck of dust in the empty sky.
Tuesday, 21 April, 2020
Larks, invisibly high, white noise the sky, we climb the tussocked sea towards the cairn, the railway shrinks to Hornby, lapwings cry like broken squeaky toys. Spring warmth returns.
In shirt-sleeves, we zig-zag slow to summit, pause to watch a matchbox car surprise the Coal Road, before we reach the sunlit limestone and meet a ram skull’s hollow eyes.
The news is billed as good as we’re prepared with twenty thousand beds to match the needs of future patients in intensive care. The experts tell us now we can succeed
to break the rise in deaths, to turn the tide. Up here, we see our house, our tiny, tiny lives.
Yesterday I talked with friends about Cambridge. That brought back memories of a one-week workshop at Madingley Hall with the poet Lawrence Sail. Madingley Hall is a 16th Century building just a few miles from Cambridge. It is set in seven acres of splendid gardens and grounds, designed by the famous Capability Brown in the 18th Century.The weather was good the week I was there and we would all find a quiet corner outside and get writing.
Credit: Pasja1000 via Pixabay
Writing prompt
One of the exercises was about personification. We mentally went through the alphabet and stopped at a letter that resonated with us. What kind of life does that letter have? What do they want and what is difficult for them?
The poem Trying was published in my debut Another life (Oversteps Books Ltd, 2016).
Trying
Trying not to be like one who has gone before. Allocated a slot at the back of the queue: a circle dancer with a club foot.
Striving to become the symbol of perfection. Dragging a tail, leaving tiny furrows on the rough terrain.
Trying then to hide in foreign places. Archaic words spoken with a twang: Qua, quorum, quota, quasi.
Tomorrow is the first Monday of the month when the 4,000+ alarms through the Netherlands are tested. This alarm-and-warning system was set up after the Second World War. The monthly test stopped after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and for a period the sirens were only tested once a year. The government wanted to introduce a warning system by mobile telephone, but this did not prove effective. So, from September 2003 the monthly sounds can be heard for exactly 1 minute and 26 seconds.
The alarms aren’t rung if the first Monday falls on a religious or national public holiday, or on the national Remembrance Day of 4 May. This month, the Dutch people will be reminded beforehand that the sound is just a test.
On Monday I am sending the final manuscript of my collection Remembering / Disease to Aaron Kent at Broken Sleep Books. I have chosen a poem from the new book that includes a siren and want to thank Isabelle Kenyon of Fly on the Wall Press for first selecting it.
Credit: TBIT via Pixabay
Voice
I’m scared of the voice that tells me to let go of the wheel it’s an old man’s harsh gritty cold pushing me that time Monday sunny A487 heading for Porthmadog
black figures carry bags home whatever home might mean
silence only sirens calling the dog-end of the year
falling is kind of doing something you can fall sideways head-first backwards I have worked all these years to stay upright running like a rabbit on a metal track
If the United Kingdom was still in the EU, I could have carried on driving on my British licence for another five years here in NL. I discovered recently I only have a few weeks left to convert the UK licence into a Dutch one!
Because of my age, I need a medical. Getting booked in with a local GP would have taken too long. Online I found ‘Rijbewijsdokter.nl’ and I and got myself an appointment for yesterday morning at a hotel in Leiden. The regional bus from The Hague stops right in front. The hotel has a great location: by the side of the Old Rhine river, close to Leiden station.
Eyes ok, blood pressure ok, urine ok. The medic did the form online after I left. It’s an automated process, a few hours later the confirmation came that I’m fit to drive. I’ve put in a request with the Town Hall for an urgent appointment to sort out the paperwork.
Totem
Three years since I gave away the blue hatchback for a pile of dirty £20 notes.
I made sure I removed it from its space behind the handbrake where it had kept me safe on motorways, on narrow lanes in Cornwall, Devon, Suffolk, on roundabouts in Holland with their shark’s teeth. Kept me safe for almost thirty years.
A bunny from Liberty’s in King Street (long since gone). Fluffy ears, tiny brown boots, denim trousers.
I am delighted to introduce this month’s guest poet Sue Kindon. We met on Zoom during lockdown 1, through a mutual poet friend.
Sue Kindon lives and writes in the French Pyrenees. An enthusiastic member of the local slam team, her greatest achievement to date is an award for a poem in French.
Kindon was Runner Up in the 2021 Ginkgo Prize (for Eco-poetry); and has two pamphlets to her name – She who pays the piper (Three Drops Press, 2017) and Outside, the Box (4Word Press, 2019). The poems in the latter were sparked by the box moth plague that devastated the landscape a few years ago.
I’ve selected five poems from Outside, the Box, to give you a taste of the range and humanity of Sue’s poems.
Box Moth (Cydalima perspectalis)
white moths haunt each hedge all summer their larvae gorge on our ancient ways
The House of Running Water
We’re so far off the mains, I cross myself, or is it my reflection? Our drinking water isn’t purified, sobbing in glugs from a faery underworld just beyond the spring line. Boils, frogs, plagues of grass snakes are there none. The kitchen tap dispenses an incessant stream in spite of some newly-converted saint bottled up in supermarket plastic. Every day an elven-prince strikes rock with his divining rod and sets loose unchlorinated magic: we drink deep, until our inner walls cascade with the stuff.
I could never return, now my mind is clean as the washing on the line. Townsfolk have forgotten how the old world flows. It must be something in the water.
Bernadette
I thought of you as a sister from the start. You were the one who insisted I worked in the shade, you saw that my fair skin reddened in the southern sun trap of the presbytery walls. Your straight larkspur back bent for hours as you laboured to remove chiendent and petty spurge.
You would go missing for a quick smoke outside the tall grey gates of our temporary eden, and I felt the loss, sure as the last petals falling from the climbing rose. Then you’d be back, tending the last geranium and offering a kind word I might not understand.
So much more I wanted to say: and now I’m gaining confidence with the language, it’s already winter, and the gates are shut.
On Safari
Death came to me as a zebra crossing my path. I’m not ready yet, I said, and he stepped aside.
As I passed by, I admired the pull of perfect stripes, the kiss of dark mane
and I was nearly fooled by his op-art trompe-l’oeil invitation to step into his black-and-white-wash skin
and set down my bright sorrow. I was dazzled by the glow of skeletal zebra ribs
until I saw the shadow of famished lion at the tunnel mouth and smelt the jitter of my blood on parted lips.
Jardin de Curé – Damage Limitation
Our prayers have kept the moth at bay – and careful spraying – chemicals have underplayed their part.
The volunteers have withered up or died. A few stalwarts welcome late summer visitors but when it comes to weeding, they pull the flax and leave the nipplewort.
Nettles flourish by the chapel wall. Self-seeded marjoram annexes the cabbage plot.
At least the box hedge is intact. Our prayers have kept the moth at bay.
A big ‘thank you’ to Ramona Herdman for today’s poem. It’s from her wonderful pamphlet A Warm and Snouting Thing published in 2019 by Emma Press. Ramona will be guest poet later this year, after her collection with Nine Arches Press has appeared in print.
Two cats on a Valentine’s card
For one bribed instant, they sat in a heart shape: double-tail-curled rumps the heart’s bumps, heads close enough to bite. You can see they don’t fool each other an inch, don’t try.
This is one split-second’s flicker in a ticker tape of sniff, cuff, hiss, hysterical arching, pantomime affront, huff off, real pinching hate, play-fight, indignant alliance.
Everyone in on this – the animal-handler, photographer, graphic artist, printer, shop assistant – knows it as cheap con, nothing like the on and on of coupledom.
If you buy it, fool, do it knowingly. Write I am the cat who walks by himself. Some nights I choose to curl close. That’s it. You want my heart? OK. My heart’s like that.
Acacia Publications 