Friday 15 March 2024

Not there


There's a place, I think - 

a path, an avenue of trees,

and a church at the end

and a graveyard

and behind

there are fields that lead down to the sea

and the light is glowing on the water

and a boat moving slowly

and there are birds

so tiny on the shore

and the distant call of gulls

and I'm walking

and I'm still

and I hear it

and I feel it

and it's where I want to be

and am not.




First published in Seaborne magazine

Saturday 9 March 2024

Normality will return

And those who were undervalued before

will be undervalued again.

And those who were vulnerable before

will be vulnerable again.


And the things we vowed to remember

we will forget.

And the things we vowed to change

will be unchanged.


Normality will return

with all its inadequacies.

And more people will lose the fight.



I've posted this before, but it seems right to post again this week, nationally and globally.





Friday 1 March 2024

Too early, too late


It was only March

but already bees were on the blossom,

blue tits were nesting,

too many things were happening too soon.


He said he'd heard it on the radio,

The Last Spring - by Grieg,

and I, thinking it a good thing to do,

bought him the CD.


We sat and listened to it together

and he said nothing.

Not thinking, I said it was beautiful

and he said nothing.


The days grew longer

and the time shorter,

the blossom faded

and the blue tits left.


When he died in May

then I knew what it was he didn't say.





First published by Indigo Dreams Publishing

Sunday 25 February 2024

Different versions of me

I've been thinking about, and reading, poetry, rather than writing it, lately. I've been looking back at lots of my old poetry and wondering how I manage to have such an inconsistent style of writing. I didn't come up with an answer. Nor to the question why so many different types of my poetry have been published - and so many haven't. Right poem, right place, wrong poem, wrong place, rubbish poem, etc... 

The following poem, which is unusual even for me, got accepted for publication, but I withdrew it after about 18 months of waiting for it to be published, because I was having a bit of a breakdown at the time and just got cross, which was unfair on the publisher (maybe?), but I couldn't deal with it then. I could resubmit it somewhere else, but I think it stands as good a chance of getting read here as it would anywhere else, so...


The end of the world happened


in a hotel bar on the edge of somewhere

where a man of a certain age

had just been told, without a hint of irony,

that he could check out any time he liked,

and having polished off the nuts

and another double, decided

to say yes to the woman in the lipstick

the same shade his wife had worn before

and knew for once he wouldn't have to pay


and


in a carpark outside a pub in Dungeness

where a woman of a certain age

had just been told, without a hint of irony,

that she could check him out any time she liked,

and having had her cod and chips

and Sex on the Beach, decided

to say no to the man who looked like

all the others and the shag on the shingles

and settled for a fag on the edge of nowhere.



Friday 16 February 2024

In the beginning (a child's puzzle)


Dad: Look at this poem - what do you think?

Me: I think it's about love.


Mum: Poet emerges from fish?

Me: Keats.


Brother: What shape was Keats' DNA?

Me: A troubled Felix.




Sunday 4 February 2024

Frustration

I wasn't going to write a post this week. 

It's been another week of frustration. Trying to fix the gas boiler - the hassle, the expense, the lack of resolution - 'a new one is a better option' - yes, if I happened to have that kind of money, which I don't. And then seeing what not having it working has done to the electricity bill which has just come in. 

And then trying to get a doctor's appointment, and a hospital appointment, and medicines, and any kind of comprehension of the stress that's causing.

But then, I thought, as I'm already fuming, I'd write something about how annoying some tweets and posts are when it comes to poetry. Don't get me wrong - there are some open discussions about poetry - where people are genuinely asking for ideas, and discussions about a poem or a pamphlet which accept their subjectivity, and/or are descriptive rather than judgmental. And there are really supportive people out there too.

But the ones that make me angry are the ones where people don't just say what they think. They say, or imply very strongly, that they're right, and therefore everyone else is wrong. You don't like something - fine. Don't tell me I shouldn't like it. And vice versa. You don't think the form of the poem is right - fine. That's your opinion. It doesn't make it a fact. And so on.

It's hard enough for people to put their work out into the world, or to try to connect, without being told that what they've said or done is wrong, when what is really the case is that one person's opinion differs from another's. Some things are facts. Some are just opinions. I wish people would remember that. And be kinder.

Sunday 28 January 2024

Little things that matter

There are two worlds, it would seem. There is the bigger world where all the news is bad, on a scale that we struggle to comprehend, let alone know what to do about, except protest. And there is the smaller world which is our individual life and the lives of those closest to us. And we struggle to deal with that too. And poetry takes on those struggles.

The struggles themselves are evoked, but always too, it seems, the clutching at something that could give hope. And those straws that are clutched at seem to be the little things - the touch of a hand, the texture of a rock, the sound of a bell, the smell and taste of food, the colours of a flower... so many possibilities.

But even these are ambivalent - because it can be the last touch of a hand, a rock that cuts, the bell that tolls, the food from a homeland long lost, a flower that is dying...

The daily rituals that provide some comfort can at the same time remind us of someone who is no longer with us to share those rituals. And nature, which everyone seems to turn to (or are, at least, encouraged to turn to), likewise holds sorrow as well as joy - the sea we used to walk to together, the erosion and destruction...

But so rarely does a poem seem to hold no hope. Despite the struggle, the feeling of powerlessness to change things, the losses, the poet seems to need something to hold onto - the moments, the little things that matter.

And when I'm trying to find something to hold onto:


blackbird's song at dawn

nature's continuity

blackbird's song at dusk


But even then...