Poem - ‘Babel’ (Magma 32)
My poem Babel appeared in Magma 32.
The inspiration was Bruce Nauman’s ‘Raw Materials’ exhibition at the Tate Modern. Nauman lined the walls of the Turbine Hall with loudspeakers playing a motley collection of voices - you can hear a virtual version of the exhibition here.
Bashō on the road
Fleas, lice
and a horse pissing
next to my pillow!
via Bashō
Snow Business
Market people!
I will sell you this hat
with its snow-umbrella
Via Basho
Spam or Poetry?
David Armano has just posted about changing his perception of some spam e-mails from ‘nonsensical gibberish’ to ‘poetry’. It reminded me of the time I used a series of spam e-mails to create a piece for a poetry class assignment.
I’m usually unconvinced by ‘found’ poetry (it feels a bit like cheating) but this was good fun, and the spammer/computer was a pretty good poet. S/he (or it) stuck to three-line stanzas with some beautifully fractured recurring phrases. I’ve never been so disappointed when someone stopped spamming me!
Here’s the poem:
Re: \/1CODDIN, CODEI1NE. V1AAGRRA, XANAA; C1AAL1S, \/ALLIUM & MORE MEDS AT CHEEAP shining end off
leader light beautiful out wife
similar promised
here find or
companion yours supposedto similar
fascinate allow edge or out added
teach very wife sandwich
halogen phipps toastmaster coincident refractory
ellipse myrrh inn oaf incommensurable
lignite apiece
anything edge am
a evening again studied reference suddenly
the raise happened goes
benefit why side out different
how being wrong yours
human young respect servants
teach my promised why is corner
purpose next explain
off tying companion letters companion different
letters latter beautiful find
immediate here supposedto
make why companion whom fly supposedto
Poem: ‘The Move’ (Magma 35)
My poem ‘The Move’ appears in Magma 35. I will be reading it at the launch reading next Monday 3rd July.
Poem - ‘Bookmark’ (Magma 27)
My poem ‘Bookmark’ was published in Magma 27.
I was thrilled to appear on the same page as Mark Doty - but the editor Tim Robertson assured me this was pure coincidence.
Bookmark
For Paul
To me you were incessant,
pestering, encroaching on my time,
a fly that kept landing
and landing on the page
and had to be brushed aside.
To you I was incredible,
sat on my arse with a book
while you waited with a ball
and a carpet of flawless grass
rolled out to touch the sky.
Now I have all the books I want
on shelves beyond harm’s reach
and time to read them twice
but the field has shrunk to a photograph
and we’re both too big to fit inside.
Poem - ‘Astonishment’ (The Wolf - live audio)
My poem ‘Astonishment’ was published in Issue 3. of The Wolf magazine. This page has a recording of me reading it at the launch.
Here’s the text:
Astonishment
For Isobel, aged 4 months
You’ve just arrived from nowhere.
We can see it in your face. Enthroned
on your royal blue rocking car chair,
you lift a clean astonished gaze
to meet our clean astonished faces,
as if you can’t believe we can’t believe
you’re here. As if life were always like this.
We’ll do our best to break the news gently,
we’ll make you laugh, we’ll make mistakes,
we’ll teach you to be Isobel,
to play the game we always play
that constitutes our life together –
but don’t believe all we say.
~
You can’t hear me yet, so I’m writing this
for a girl who’s climbed the stairs to her teens,
who can turn and hear my younger self
telling how Once upon a time
a fairy princess with a Tintin quiff
held court in a Greenwich flat
where Anton, Paul, Jane, Lee,
her Mum and Dad and I
played awkward courtiers in jeans
and t-shirts, and drank her health
to excess; while she sat and mused among us
with her wrinkled hands and lucent gaze,
ancient and slow as a tortoise,
quick and light as yesterday.