Tag Archives: Easter

Perfectly eggspressed: Easter brunch

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.

Eating a Croissant in a Graveyard – writing prompt

St Mary’s, Totnes in Devon

For Easter Sunday I have chosen this poem by my friend Kathleen Kummer. The title is intriguing, the details are precise: we sense they are based on the poet’s own experience. Then there is the reference to that well-known Stanley Spencer painting of the Resurrection. You can see it here. Does it work for you as a prompt?

I asked Kathleen about the graveyard. It’s part of St. Mary’s Church, a Grade I listed building in the centre of Totnes, Devon. Perhaps, I could have worked it out for myself: the poem mentions the iconic ‘steep hill’ in Totnes. Kathleen and I have walked up and down it many times, and hope we can do so again soon. Easter Greetings to you all!

Eating a Croissant in a Graveyard

I’m eating a croissant in a graveyard, grassed over.
People come here to rest, eat a sandwich.
(I wish I’d bought something less flighty, like
a scone or an Eccles cake.) The graves
are few and not recent. There’s a table-top tomb,
ideal for a picnic, but respect is shown:
low voices, no chirrup from a mobile phone;
people sit on the wall or the grass. I’m expecting
that Labrador to cock his leg, but he doesn’t.

Across the street, the bustle of the market
just reaches us, and I think of the dead
around me, of how this town was theirs,
that they walked up the steep hill, stopping
to speak to their friends about their simple,
complicated lives. When I close my eyes,
I see them clambering out of their graves,
as in that Resurrection painting
by Stanley Spencer, looking dazed,
but as if their discomfiture won’t last long,
with the green hills they knew around them,
the sky blue and summery. And surely
the warm-hearted townsfolk will welcome the dead.

It’s as if I’ve banished them by opening my eyes.
The place is empty, but for two men
in wheelchairs, parked with their backs to the view.

High Street, Totnes in Devon