Diane Di Prima – A New Year poem
Hi all, prompted by Robbie’s email to use the website! Here is a poet I am just discovering, a female beat generation poet… I had been thinking, I know about Allen Ginsberg, Frank O Hara and some of the other men but who were the women of that breakthrough movement. Here’s one of them, Diana […]
The Playhouse
Every show seventy beeswax candles flicker and burn in the iron chandeliers. The player’s breath writhes in the flames a handful of minutes is all it takes to tell the best and the worst of us love and betrayal blazes in the eyes of the crowd. They go home to their own story, the players […]
Birthplace
On his eightieth birthday, up at the lake first snow, ‘ensilumi’, fell in spirals of white garlands through the dark branches of spruce and alder. The old gang of party-makers climbed out of their station wagons and picked their way across the ice towards the old smoke sauna. Inside, the enormous mound of rocks spat […]
Night Fishing
In the obscure dark of night river, poised on rock, the shag preens itself; head tilts this way and that, beak catches gold from a streetlamp.
Poem from open mic night
Come dander through the valley When summer’s ease has loosed us we dander through her lanes sky-wide and tree-tall lush. Some days when world has noosed us we spangin through fields crop-deep and farmer-booted. But oh my love my heart turns cold when you are wrapped in winter secrets and hake and hurl the long […]
The Verb – poems as friends on the radio!
at the end of the week I was a bit surprised and then terrified to find myself on BBC Radio 3s The verb – ‘cabaret of the word’ hosted by Ian McMillan talking about The Poetry Exchange. As you know – the project invites people to come and talk about a poem that’s been a […]
The Poetry Exchange
Most of you already know about my project The poetry Exchange – talking to readers about poems that have been a friend to them and then creating bespoke recordings of the poem for them? I think I mentioned a while ago we have created a podcast, you can listen to the first four episodes here, and/or […]
The Therapist Gets An Eye Test
The Therapist Gets An Eye Test The circumference of his face hung like one of saturn’s moons blurry in the middle-distance of the two-metre square dimly lit room. “Look towards me and follow the tiny light” he spins her gently to the right – swoooooosh “look up to the ceiling and down to the floor” […]
Redolent
This is not in response to the brilliant April prompt which I will endeavour to have a go at, but is an attempt at a mirror poem, prompted by the great conversation at Monday’s meeting. (i wasn’t sure where to post it) Redolent We are more present when we go revealed now in the same […]
Loyalty (this was from the prompt, but it took me somewhere else..)
He was your animal twin, wilful and independent, nothing lap-dog about him, always running on the perimeter of distance a human voice could call him back from. Something geometric in the positioning between you, a kind of invisible thread making time, distance and solid matter irrelevant. I swear, when you were away he […]