Here is a sample poem by our April guest poet Kate Noakes. The poem is from her new collection Sublime Lungs, which will be published by Two Rivers Press on 21 April. This is her ninth full collection. More poems after Easter.
Kate will read at the Cheltenham Poetry Festival on 14 April. There is an online launch on 24 April. You can find the schedule of online and live launches on Kate’s website
Kate Noakes Breath of Fire
For Easter, try egg blowing
David Attenborough stood on an ostrich egg to demonstrate its strength once. ‘The toughest egg in the world,’ he said. He may even have jumped on it for emphasis.
Of course, no-one had drilled it and sapped its yolk with mega-breaths and an extra-thick straw, which is how it withstood his weight, unlike the three souvenirs we bought in Oudtshorn, their weakness apparent under failing coving.
They smithereened the carpet and needed hand picking, the hoover’s inhalations proved weak. We’d have been better off buying feather dusters from the hawker pitched outside the super-market. They’d have been easier to carry home.
Cliff Yates was our guest poet last November. You can read the poems here. As I was going through his New & Selected Poems (The Poetry Business, 2023) to select a set, I came across the poem below.
It’s even sweeter on Valentine’s Day…
from Another Last Word
EXPENSIVE CHOCOLATE
There are eight pieces. She has two and gives me one. ‘Confiscate this,’ she says, handing over the rest. ‘Hide it, or I’ll be tempted when you’re out.’ When I get back, the drawer’s open, there’s one piece left, and a note on a scrap of paper: NOT VERY WELL HIDDEN.
CLEARING UP
She’s cooking Sunday lunch and I’m clearing up. ‘It’s ridiculous,’ I said, ‘you spend time getting things out of cupboards and I spend time putting them back in.’ ‘Not enough time in my opinion.’
BIRTHDAY
‘You’re being nice,’ she says, ‘you’ll be running out of steam soon. You’ve been nice since 7 o’clock, that’s 3 hours, 10 minutes.’
DANCE
‘It’s great the way we dance around each other,’ I said, ‘when we’re getting the meal on.’ ‘We only do that because you get in the way.’
SATSUMA
‘I can’t be bothered with this satsuma.’ ‘Give it here,’ she says. ‘Can’t peel a satsuma, can’t peel an egg. We’ve been married how many years, and I’ve made no progress with you whatsoever.’
WRITING
‘I had to work on that one,’ I said, ‘because you didn’t actually say that. I am in fact writing these poems.’ ‘That’s what you think.’
ENTERTAINING
‘Some of these make me sound terrible,’ she says. ‘It’s because you find me so entertaining. It makes me worse when you start laughing.’
LUNCH
‘Apart from the salad and potatoes,’ I said, ‘what did we have for lunch?’ ‘If you can’t remember what we had for lunch I feel sorry for you.’
GETTING IT RIGHT
‘I’ll get it right one day.’ ‘I doubt it,’ she says. I laugh. ‘It’s not funny really, is it?’ ‘No,’ she says, ‘but at least you’re hopeful.’
PHILOSOPHY
‘You’re too hard on yourself,’ she says, ‘when I wake up I just want a cup of tea and then I want to be entertained by life.’
FISH
‘What we need is a special pan for fish and a fish spatula.’ ‘No,’ she says, ‘what we need is for you to eat fish.’
COLOURING PENCILS
She’s at the kitchen table, going at it with her new colouring pencils. ‘I had some when I was little,’ she says, ‘but I was never let loose. It was always What’s THAT supposed to be? or Where’s the SKY?’
Photo credit: Andrew Taylor
Biography
Cliff Yates was born in Birmingham and has been publishing poetry since the 1980s. His New & Selected Poems (Smith/Doorstop, 2023) brings together work from various collections including Henry’s Clock (Fenton Aldeburgh First Collection Prize; Poetry Business Book & Pamphlet Competition), Frank Freeman’s Dancing School (Arts Council England Writers Award) and Jam (ACE Grant for the Arts). He taught English at Maharishi School in Skelmersdale and wrote Jumpstart Poetry in the Secondary School during his time as Poetry Society poet-in-residence, following the success of his students in poetry competitions. He has led courses for, among others, the Arvon Foundation and the British Council. Read more on his site here
was nearly impossible: he was half-hidden, curled up and surrounded by layered samples, a palisade of aged earth.
I appointed myself as his research assistant, proofread grant applications, sprinkled adjectives, added a thousand here and there.
He was as moody as most men, his weathervane creaked. His interest in football, horseracing reduced to a fixation with mud and grass.
The rare times he sampled me he tut-tutted about saliva, breathing rates, confidence intervals; swore as the expensive equipment disappeared down my throat.
It is a pleasure to introduce our February guest poet Rob Miles. I do not know Rob personally: we have been Facebook friends for some time. I bought a copy of his recent collection Dimmet which was published by Broken Sleep Books. See below the poems for Rob’s biography.
The glorious cover image of a murmuration was designed by Aaron Kent. Dimmet is a West Country word for dusk, twilight. Katherine Towers notes of the collection: ‘These are poems of great precision and delicacy’. I’ve chosen four poems which demonstrate these qualities.
Dimmet
His hands still bronzed, still baling-raw. His voice no longer snared, whisper-low as decades ago, in this same field, he guided me
to not disturb that horse; circling quietly, its half-scattered straw an ingot melting, and my thin flames no match for such a sunset anyway.
*
On this, another near-to-night, it’s clear that he has no more kept his mind from wayward sparks than I have closed my eyes
before any fading fire, ever since recalled a slow white shadow steady on its dial in the always almost dark.
Café Poem
Just when I think there is nothing so boring
as someone else’s childhood a toddler
in dungarees is guided around our table
by his puppeteer parent, arms up, in a vertical sky-dive, or
like a drunk, when walking is more about not falling
every step forward rewarded with a double high five.
I whispered to the dog
that she’d been a winner a Crufts champion
at least twice. Once she saw off a Dobermann, burglars, a werewolf
even the odd Sasquatch. I reminded her
as her old eyes darkened that she had saved lives.
Making Way
A keeper, you said of the house, but I’d sensed everything trying to make its way: those errant velvet fingers from your orchid pots; the oak putting on its chain mail of ivy and moss and losing; the birds we fed still pinned to their shadows; crisp wasps electrocuted by views through grubby double glazing, and you just weeks before, showing your wrists as if uncuffed, asking for my thoughts on a fragrance.
Biography
Rob Miles is from South Devon, and he lives in Leeds where he is Fellow in Film Studies in the Centre for World Cinemas and Digital Cultures at The University of Leeds. His poetry has appeared widely in magazines and anthologies, recently in Stand, New Welsh Review, The Scores, Spelt, 14 Magazine, Ink Sweat and Tears, One Hand Clapping, Poetry Wales, and four Candlestick Press pamphlets. He has won various awards including the Philip Larkin Prize, judged by Don Paterson, the Resurgence International Ecopoetry Prize, judged by Jo Shapcott and Imtiaz Dharker, and the Poets & Players Prize, judged by Sinéad Morrissey.
Lucy Newlyn describes Dimmet as ‘the best collection of contemporary poetry I have read in a long while’, and John Glenday writes: ‘When it’s done as well as this, there’s nowhere on earth poetry can’t go.’
It’s been a long time since I’ve been out to fill that well. I’ve had health issues and sat at home with the black dog. The exhibition of Joan Miró’s sculptures at Beelden aan Zee is almost closing. On a cold and sunny Tuesday, I got two trams to Scheveningen.
Pair of lovers playing with almond blossom
Beelden aan Zee is the only Dutch museum specialising in sculpture and it’s in a great setting. The authorities in The Hague insisted that the building should not be visible, so it’s hidden inside a dune, and it is mostly underground. From the terrace you can only see the sea, not the busy boulevard. All the materials have a sandy colour. Through plenty of glass in the roof there is a lot of light.
In his studios by the sea in Mont-roig del Camp and on Mallorca, Miró’s love for sculpture was given a huge boost. The (natural) objects he found on his walks were incorporated into sculptures and assemblages, along with everyday objects. The giant clothes peg (painted synthetic resin) was a design for a prestigious project in Central Park, New York. It would have been at least 14 metres high, though it was never realised.
You can see the objects in this bronze sculpture: a paint tube, plastic bottle, spoon. Miró’s bronze sculptures were created using plastic models that he continued to shape until he found them good enough to cast.
The sculpture Monsieur et madame (Sir and Madam) is made of painted bronze. Two different objects form a couple. A square, red-painted stool stands for the man. On top of it is a rectangular white box with a face on it. The round, black stool represents the woman. It has a yellow egg on it. A playful, archetypical representation of masculinity and femininity.
The Monument is the first sculpture as you enter the main hall. You can see some of the light coming through the roof.
It was hugely inspiring to see how Miró continued to innovate and be curious well into his 70s and 80s.
Rachel Davies and Hilary Robinson have been friends for over 20 years. Friends call them the ‘poetry twins’. They are both accomplished poets and you can find their biography below.
An altogether different place, published by Beautiful Dragons Squared, is a joint project. In 2022 Hilary’s husband was diagnosed with vascular dementia; in 2023 Rachel’s partner with dementia and Lewy bodies. In the introduction they write ‘dementia is a catalogue of cruel diseases’. Living with and caring for someone with dementia ‘you come to know grief by slow degrees’. Through poetry Hilary and Rachel ‘found a joint space to laugh, cry, find context and write out their experiences’.
The collection is sold to raise essential research funds for dementia charities in the UK. It is a privilege to share a selection of the poems here: Brainworm and Seven ways oflooking at a husband are by Hilary. Rachel wrote Degrees of Challenge and This is not apoem about dementia which was awarded 2nd place in the Hippocrates Prize 2024.
Brainworm
There are many crap poems online for those who care for loved ones with dementia. Dementia has a symbolic flower – the unimaginative forget-me-not. I’ll have none of that shit. I want the gristle of it, the offal, brain-spatter, white matter of it. Show me the MRI with extensive vascular changes, let me count the dead parts of the brain so I can explain, daily, what ails my love. I watch Dirty Great Machines, find Big Bertha in Seattle, tunnelling machine on steroids moving at thirty five feet a day. Something has wormed its way into the tiny vessels inside his head over years and now whole sections of his once-sharp brain have died. It’s our Golden Wedding Anniversary this year. I don’t know who I’ll be celebrating with.
Seven ways of looking at a husband
1 Straight on. Taking in his 2-day grey beard, his nostril hair and ear fuzz. His smile.
2 Side profile. Noticing his cute nose, the same shape as our daughter’s.
3 From the bedroom door. Noting the cocoon he’s made of the duvet.
4 Across the kitchen. See, he’s forgotten how to toast his fruit tea cake, make coffee.
5 From the driver’s seat. Clocking his wince as you pull out safely onto the busy main road.
6 Across the care home corridor. Seeing his smile grow, then his arm around you, his whiskery kiss.
7 On the care home terrace. Look, he can’t turn his head to where you point. Misses the squirrel.
(L) Hilary with David (R) Rachel with Bill
Degrees of Challenge
I’m watching you struggle to break the seal on an ice cream wrapper and I think of the time you redesigned the roof of Piccadilly Station, worked in millimetres to ensure each pane of glass
fitted exactly into the space you’d drawn for it. I remember the night you clipped on a safety harness, climbed onto the roof to inspect each perfect joint, came home buzzing but satisfied at day break.
Tomorrow you’ll shuffle out to the Age UK minibus, the driver watching you don’t slip on the wet steps; but tonight you’re making a major task
of breaking into a Mini Magnum. I know better than to offer help; eventually you’ll pass it to me, say I’m sorry, I can’t seem to
This is not a poem about dementia
I am opening the windows and doors letting in fresh air to blow dementia down the lane like giant tumble weed
I am clearing out drawers and wardrobes filling black bags with hallucinations donating them all to the Age UK shop
I am having the Lewy bodies serviced unblocking its pipes flushing confusion down the drain with the incontinent waste
I am partying like there’s no dementia raising a cake with bicarb of dementia licking up the fluffy dementia crumbs
I am sleeping peacefully in the quiet night dreaming a poem that has absolutely nothing to do with dementia
Biographies
Rachel Davies is a mother, grandmother and great-grandmother and a retired primary school headteacher. Her poetry is widely published in journals and anthologies and has been a prize-winner in several poetry competitions, most recently, the Hippocrates Prize 2024. A selection of her work was published in Some Mothers Do… (Dragon Spawn Press 2018). Her debut pamphlet, Every Day I Promise Myself, was published by 4Word Press in December 2020. Since retiring she has achieved an MA in Creative Writing and a PhD in contemporary poetry, both from Manchester Metropolitan University.
Hilary Robinson has lived in Saddleworth for most of her life. She met her husband, David, at secondary school. She gained a BA (Distinction) and a PGCE and became a primary school teacher. After a successful career, Hilary retired and started a Creative Writing (Poetry) MA at Manchester Metropolitan University and gained a distinction. Her poetry is published in print and online journals, and in several anthologies. Her poetry has also been set to music by RNCM students of composition. In 2018 some of her problems were published by Dragons Spawn as Some Mothers Do… and this was followed in June 2021 by her first solo pamphlet, Revelation, published by 4Word Press.
It is an immense pleasure to present this month’s guest poet Sarah Mnatzaganian. Poems from her award-winning pamphlet Lemonade in the Armenian Quarter were featured here before. Today’s poems were chosen from the dozen that were included in Slow Movement, an exquisite small journal designed, created and stitched by poet Maria Isakova Bennett. The photo of the cover doesn’t quite do it justice.
The sequence was one of four winners in the 2022/2023 Coast to Coast to Coast poetry prize. Maria wrote ‘Slow Movement is a sensuous sequence of love poems expressed through the colours, sounds, materials, and obsessions of cello making and sailing.’ The sequence is dedicated to Robin, the cello maker; poems were previously published (Poetry Wales, Magma, Poetry Salzburg).
Bogle
Two wedges of maple are ready for the vice. The cello maker scans the silken surfaces for flaws but the wood looks clean as buttermilk.
He leans and pushes translucent ribbons, tissue paper thin, through the plane’s grey mouth. Stops. A failed twig-hole, a dark finger of incipient rot
points from the joint accusingly. He groans, grabs a back-arch template, offers it to the knot. Smiles. He’ll outwit the bogle this time.
He heats hide-glue in the pot and rubs the joint until it gels and bites, the halves aligned and left to dry. Next week, he’ll flip the plate like a stranded tortoise
and hunt the blemish with his keenest gouge until he holds a hollow brindled shell, bogle-ridden wood chips snapping at his feet.
Laying up
Salt-bitten snap shackles slump down the forestay and surrender to the pull of his thumbs. He drags an impossibility of canvas over the guard rail while I hug the rest free of the wire.
The sail crumples like a giant wedding dress, crocodile-toothed with zigzag thread. It’s time to climb down to the queasy buoyancy of the old polystyrene pontoon, to stand fifteen feet from him
and guess where in this pale tangle of cloth to grip with my left hand; how far to reach with my right. We’ll tighten the white distances between us and fold each crease over into a taut edge
until we make a concertina of the sail. He’ll nod and fold his end towards me, two foot at a time. I’ll do the same for him until our halves meet and lie without stretch or slack,
my luff to his leech, head to his foot, clew to his tack, throat to his peak.
Bridge
He’s in the kitchen, leaning over the hob, dropping a bridge blank into the frying pan.
I start to speak but know he can’t reply. He’s counting down the seconds till it’s time to flip
the steaming bridge, to press and count again. Twenty, twenty, ten, ten, five, five. Done.
He stands the bridge to cool. Takes the next. I’ll kiss him then, to pass annealing time.
Twenty to please my tongue and lips. Twenty more to tighten breasts and scalp. Ten, ten
to spice my skin. His free fingers stroke a slow five, five around my willing ear.
As the church bells began ringing, we were off – like thoroughbreds out of the starting boxes. We’d arrived on Saturday, inspected the spacious and comfortable rental property. Then enjoyed a delicious fish dinner at No. 1 Cromer Upstairs.
My morning flight from Schiphol landed at Norwich. The views of the coast and the Broads reminded me of other times. The poem was first published in The Pocket Poetry Book of LOVE (Paper Swans Press, 2018).
With love to my five talented poet friends…
Cromer, August
Curved around Cromer Pier a twitching mass of legs, sturdy calves, socks, sandals. Fathers scoop up bait, wind black thread onto pink plastic spools. An old couple, in matching anoraks, watch a thin man, wheelchair-bound. He shakily lifts his thermos flask.
I thought of you then and the creaking stair lift, the plastic roll-up seat, raising her in and out of the bath. The small wooden cart you made so she can travel through the orchard inspecting the new fruit with her crooked hands.
This coming Tuesday it’s Valentine’s Day. Here is an early poem that hasn’t featured on the blog before. It was published in the Tees Valley Writer, Autumn 1995, and Highly Commended in their annual competition.
On the beach
Against the sinking sun gulls ride the waves. Our dogs bark and chase their tails. Try to run with a lone jogger who braves
the east wind whistling. Your son trails in your wake, attempts big steps. Laughter peals: a scene lifted straight from some fairy tale.
Heaped grey boulders mimic a colony of seals. Not long before love winters in my heart. I need to tell you how it feels
to be together, yet growing apart. Your craggy face seems so much older clouded in a bluish hue. I brace myself to start
as you place a hand on my shoulder but all I can say is It’s getting colder.
National Apple Day falls on the 21st of October. It was created in the UK by the charity Common Ground in Covent Garden, London on 21 October 1990 to raise awareness about the importance of diversity in different communities. Apparently, there are about 7,500 varieties of apple grown globally. In my local Hoogvliet supermarket I can find six: Kanzi, Pink Lady, Golden Delicious, Granny Smith, Royal Gala and Jazz.
Celebrations take place in the UK throughout October, so go to a fair, take part in an apple peeling contest, bake or eat an apple pie. Here in the Netherlands, traditional Appeltaart always has a good dose of warm spices – cinnamon, ginger, nutmeg. They are baked in a spring form and have a lattice crust. I will have mine with a good dollop of sweet whipped cream, thank you.
My poem is somewhat melancholy. It has the feel of a tanka – the first three lines giving a description, with emotion and reflection in the last two lines.
carefully quartering soft red apples into a compostable bag – I still wait for the letter that will never come
Acacia Publications 