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Sunday, January 29
Four haiku from Todd Grant
by
Helen Ivory
on Sun 29 Jan 2012 16:02 GMT
fog rolls along the moors a chilly night in Sussex Mrs.Woolf's library * grandpa's old watch found in a dresser drawer it's been 1:30 pm forever * night time silence one car passes by the crickets stop chirping * the bleakness of winter watching the snow fall my hair turns white *Todd Grant has had works published in different anthologies such as Arborealis and Grassroots. He belongs to The Ontario Poetry Society. Saturday, January 28
Nikolai Duffy's 'Plainchant'
by
Helen Ivory
on Sat 28 Jan 2012 18:20 GMT
Plainchant (Voyages) All day we travel and the way is hard going. For fourteen weeks and two days we have been those souls in the wilderness. But now must we pack up and be gone from this thicket. Take this way and be good. When the mountain is in view all will be well for there or thereabouts we will come across a stream and our guide will be waiting. We will rest a while and read from the Book. Only then will we move on. All of our progress depends on the will of others. It is imperative that one’s boots are comfortable. O Lord, hear me, Lord, hear my prayer. Each day the blending of voices in this hiding hole, the sound of my soul, of all that I am and must be. And all these voices together in such a small space, so close to my heart. How we come together is singular and perilous. Help, Lord, or we perish. One afternoon, it was the middle of October, the sky was leaden and broke over itself and then us. We walked in furrows along the edges of what once were crops. Four flocks of crows, not always easy to make out, took their own paths between the fields and trees. When they nestled among the leaves all for a moment seemed gone. ‘O Lord, Lord, this night and all these nights the long lasting of my prayer.’ For long hours already we have walked north along byways while they lasted and then, when they gave out, we have taken to the mud. Let it be remembered how we have travelled, talked, eaten and slept with a chorus almost constantly in our ears. You have redeemed us, Lord God of Truth. And then this night, suddenly and without seeming spur: all this history, once learnt by rote, by stern necessity; long desks stained with wax and ink and the scribe of human hands, all these long hours of learning the fabric of what I already believed and knew without need for counsel the way a voice encountered on an otherwise unassuming day carries with it a name in your heart. How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a strange land? When going our separate ways at the mossy stones, knowing things I did not perhaps or just the anxieties of his name, our guide held me by the shoulder, the coarse wool of his cowl brushing my cheek in that damp breeze, his palm pressed like glass to my shoulder, and said, ‘Please be careful.’ I looked at his face, hair whitened by sky and skin sodden with salt. I said, ‘Believe me, I am.’ And sitting by a gorse bush soon after I heard his words again and I knelt down and I prayed. *Nikolai Duffy teaches at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has published various poems essays, and reviews in various magazines and journals. His chapbook, the little shed of various lamps, was published by Red Ceilings Press in September 2011. Thursday, January 26
Bill Winchester's 'The edge of a continent'
by
Helen Ivory
on Thu 26 Jan 2012 20:11 GMT
The edge of a continent
I’d filled the XL fast food soda cup with 2 Budweisers and I walked out of the motel to the beach. There was no one out there except for the seagulls and sandpipers. The waves came up over the beached sea weed and then went back out. It did it over and over again. I’d been told in elementary school that it had something to do with the moon, the way the waves worked that is. It was about 3 in the afternoon. The city where I lived was way behind me on the highway. I’d left suddenly. I found that I did that sometimes. It confused people that I knew, they’d call me up and say, “hey, let’s get some Italian food.” And I’d say, “I’m not there.” And then there would be a long pause and I’d have to make up a story about the whole thing. So, I sat there on the beach, with the Italian food and the phone calls way behind me. I drank the beer through a straw and I watched the moon pull the water back and forth over the surface of the Earth. In elementary school they’d taught me the surface of the Earth was called the crust. It was thin and right below it there was fire, fire, fire. *Bill Winchester writes fiction and poetry Wednesday, January 25
Robin Houghton's 'Night Visitors'
by
Helen Ivory
on Wed 25 Jan 2012 18:11 GMT
Night Visitors
We come when the moon looks away, when cats crouch unblinking under cars and we know they won’t talk, or care, when people are watching TV, as the street claims a moment of peace. You might hear a noise outside, something closing, a cough. Ours is a private ambulance, half parked in your blindspot, on yellow lines, we are too busy to be noticed, in our black suits and soft soled shoes. First the knock, then in with our bag, upstairs through the murmuring white faces, offers of tea. We come for Joan. Everyone’s glad she was here, at least in her own bed, even dried out like this, a broken bird. Our work is gentle, discreet. Just when you look away, we leave. Don’t trouble yourself about Joan, or us - we’ll do the same for you, one day. *Robin Houghton has had work in The Rialto, The North, Iota, Agenda and other magazines. She is a a copywriter and internet marketer and is based in Lewes, East Sussex. Her poetry & photo blog is at http://eggboxrobin.posterous.com/ Tuesday, January 24
Charles G Lauder's 'Tree of Desire'
by
Helen Ivory
on Tue 24 Jan 2012 18:01 GMT
Tree of Desire
Were there ever a tree of desire ladened with the fruit of temptation it grew in her back garden. Juices streamed down beaks stained feathers like drops of rain when the peach flesh was pierced. Tin can lids and mirror shards tethered and twirled from the branches like music lured the rooks with visions of a lusher crop their beaks denting against glass and metal while some pause to stare and groom their glossy darkness still others keep away the glare of their greed shames them. The old lady who set the trap waits rifle in hand as she waited for the neighbor’s dog who came to steal her chickens. Her granddaughter sees from the kitchen window a tree of icicles in the middle of summer a shimmering white dress of reflective stones she hopes to wear some day. *Charles G Lauder, Jr, was born and raised in San Antonio, Texas, and now lives in south Leicestershire. He has been widely published internationally in American, British, Irish, and European journals. His pamphlet, Bleeds, will be published by Crystal Clear Creators in 2012. Monday, January 23
William Bedford reviews Alice Oswald's 'Memorial'
by
Helen Ivory
on Mon 23 Jan 2012 20:15 GMT
Alice Oswald, Memorial (Faber and Faber, 2011) pp.84, £12.99p
Alice Oswald’s Memorial is “a translation of the Iliad’s atmosphere, not its story”. That Oswald is a classicist – she read classics at New College, Oxford – and a distinguished poet herself is obvious throughout this exciting work. Critics since Arnold have tended to praise the Iliad for its nobility, but in attempting to recreate the atmosphere Oswald is concerned with what ancient critics called Homer’s enargeia, or “bright unbearable reality”. To achieve this enargeia, she has abandoned the Iliad’s narrative drive in what she uneasily describes as a “reckless dismissal of seven-eighths of the poem”. But the focus on brief biographies of the dead derives from the Greek tradition of lament poetry, and the similes owe their form to pastoral lyric. Opening with a list of over two-hundred names of the dead, Memorial “presents the whole poem as a kind of oral cemetery”, with the inevitability of death removing any possibility for narrative drama. But it is precisely this accumulating elegiac effect which creates the “unbearable reality” Oswald is trying to evoke. An example will have to serve to give a sense of this extraordinary work: Come back to your city SOCUS Your father is a rich man a breeder of horses And your house has deep decorated baths and long passages But he and his brother weren’t listening Like men on wire walking over the underworld CHAROPS died first killed by Odysseus Then Socus who was running by now Felt the rude punch of a spear in his back Push through his heart and out the other side poor Socus Trying to get away from his own ending Ran out his last moments in fear of the next ones But this is it now this is the mud of Troy This is black wings coming down every evening Bird’s feathers on your face Unmaking you mouthful by mouthful Eating your eyes your open eyes Which your mother should have closed Like when the wind comes ruffling at last to sailors adrift Trying to manage the broken springs of their muscles And lever and lift those well-rubbed oars Making tiny dents in the ocean Like when the wind comes ruffling at last to sailors adrift Trying to manage the broken springs of their muscles And lever and lift those well-rubbed oars Making tiny dents in the ocean A family comes alive in the memorial lament, but the facts of death could apply to any fallen warrior, even the absence of conventional punctuation helping to generalise the experience. Oswald has chosen an almost prosaic language to register the horrors, a form of courtesy allowing the horror of the last five lines their full force. A force given added dignity and gravity by the repeated similes, a kind of Greek chorus commenting dispassionately on the details of the lament, again serving to generalise the experience. Memorial is a lament for the dead of all wars: the friends who die side by side “In a daze of loneliness/Their conversation unfinished”; the boy who was a famous hunter but dies “Wanting to be light again/Wanting this whole problem of living to be lifted/And carried on a hip”; an only child whose loving parents “didn’t think he would die/But a spear stuck through his eye/He sat down backwards/Trying to snatch back the light/With stretched out hands”; a young warrior full of life “Running at a man thinking kill kill” only to die himself, and be left so that “In years to come someone will find his helmet/Shaped like a real head.” Oswald succeeds magnificently in evoking a “bright unbearable reality” which has chilling relevance for us today. It is a reality where everybody is “Somebody’s darling son”; the orders for massacre clang with dreadful familiarity: “kill them all/Even the unborn ones in their mothers’ bellies”; men who were “not really” fighters at all but “more” farmers floundering clumsily on the battle-fields until death “Tin-opened them out of their armour”. A live performance of Memorial would be an astonishing event. The force of the repeated similes only fully comes to life when read aloud and following their individual laments. And even here, Oswald shows her technical mastery. Hector’s is the last death to be lamented, but Hector “died like everyone else”, a passing remark which reveals the deeper significance of the work. And as if to allow the poem to enter our memories forever, the similes which follow Hector’s death are not repeated, but printed singly page-by-page, surrounded by the white silences of death. We can hear the gradual fading of the voices. But they are not gone. This is truly the terror of war: Like when a dolphin powered by hunger Swims into the harbour Thousands of light-storms of little fish Flit away to the water-shaken wall-shadow And hang there trembling. ....reviewed by William Bedford Sunday, January 22
Nicola Belte's 'Scissors, Paper, Stone'
by
Helen Ivory
on Sun 22 Jan 2012 12:00 GMT
Scissors, Paper, Stone
Glitter and glue. Paper. Scissors. Child’s ones, with red plastic handles and blunt edges. Safe. She’s making decorations, poking out her tongue, like I do. We sit side by side; her, snipped from me, the diamond gap that gives a paper snowflake shape. Precious. Me, formless without her. Paper dolls, holding hands, impossibly orange and purple and green. I fold the paper for her, and think of black crepe chaos, creased up like an accordion; me, concertinaed against you and the wall, in the darkness of our room, cutting her out of nothing. She draws a human, carefully, and runs the scissors around the outline, slowly; especially gentle around the fold, ensuring that the chain remains intact. She delicately opens them up, determined not to tear them, smiling as they jiggle and bob, multiplied, but one, between her outstretched arms. She gives them smiley faces, and scarves and hats and buttons, and I hang them across the window in her bedroom. They watch her sleep. I watch them. I think of those dolls pegged to the pylons, screaming in the breeze; their cries just static in the night. I think of them cluttering up the guttering, blocking the drains; see them impaled on a litter-picker’s spike: arms splayed, severed, alone. I see the drawing pin stigmata on her small, sticky palms, see her falling, leaving behind a prick of chipped paint, invisible, on the great stone wall of the universe. *Nicola Belte lives in Birmingham, U.K, and writes fiction. You can find her here: http://nicolabelte.blogspot.com/ Saturday, January 21
Donal Mahoney proposes...
by
Helen Ivory
on Sat 21 Jan 2012 12:00 GMT
Cats At Their Bowls Lapping
This time there’s a postscript: “If ever I cook dinner for you, it will be Coquilles St. Jacques and Jefferson Davis Pie.” Imagine Angela, after all these years, rising and gliding to check on my pie, wouldn’t that be something? Angela, come to Chicago, and bring all of your cats. I’ll watch those cats in your lap napping, you in my lap napping, the cats at their bowls lapping, and I in my chair laughing. Angela, bring all of your cats and come to Chicago to make Coquilles St. Jacques and Jefferson Davis Pie. *Donal Mahoney has had work published on Ink Sweat and Tears and other publications in the United States, Europe, Asia and Africa. Friday, January 20
Tess Jolly's 'The Hatch'
by
Helen Ivory
on Fri 20 Jan 2012 12:00 GMT
The Hatch
Each night I do the rounds, monitor hearts’ contractions by lamplight’s gleam, press nerves down crumpled spines and wrap skin round bones as paper holds a watermark’s ghost, graft cells onto glass-bound wings. I feed drops from a pipette to soft beaks: they mewl and bleat, furl wrinkled fists around my little finger, lift oversized heads to the moon. When slack muscles strengthen I cup them to the hatch carved beneath the eaves, watch silhouettes thrash from my open palm. My shoulder-blades bristle and bruise as I hunch in a suit of feathers, transfer new blood to empty tubes. *Tess Jolly lives in West Sussex with her partner and two young children. She has had work forthcoming in Iota, The North and Magma and was highly commended in last year's Mslexia Women's Poetry Competition. Thursday, January 19
Hilary Mellon reviews Tim Lenton's 'Running with Scissors'
by
Helen Ivory
on Thu 19 Jan 2012 12:00 GMT
Running With Scissors: Poems by Tim Lenton(Published by Jokerman House, 22 Aspland Road, Norwich NR1 1SH, 2011, Pamphlet: £3.00 22pp)
Tim Lenton is a fine poet who deserves much wider publication and recognition. He is a former newspaper sub-editor and columnist and has also taught writing of different kinds. He has written poetry for many years. His first collection Mist and Fire (also by Jokerman House and available at £4 – 50 post free in the UK) came out in 2003. His second Off the Map came out in 2007, the same year that he won the Fish International Poetry Prize. He is a member of InPrint, the visual arts and poetry collaborative group. The poems in this pamphlet were all written during Lent of this year and came out of a personal project to write a poem a day for 40 days. In his introduction Lenton tells us that many of the poems were inspired by everyday events, and some by extraordinary events, like the tsunami that struck Japan. One on this theme begins When the water rolls back/ and the pavement settles/ like a used blanket/ under new friends// we hear the clock ticking/ somewhere out at sea: … and continues with Soon we will be collecting time,/ trying to lock it away/ so that it cannot hurt us … (‘Aftershock’) The themes of temptation and denial run through a number of Lenton’s poems, sometimes part jokingly as in I will give up my attempt on Everest/ I will give up lemon curd, because/ it tastes like vaseline … I will give up emptying the rubbish/ and the contents of my mind/ and a cold east wind/ and snow in August (‘Giving Up’) and sometimes more sternly as in Cruel April springs surprising sun:/ blitzkrieg rays/ from an innocent sky // leave me exhausted,/ open to any argument// If you were to tempt me now … (‘Temptation’) Amongst his other poetic talents, Lenton is a superb minimalist and a master of the unexpected yet perfect ending, as in Someone should unlatch my head/ and leave it wide open// so that my prayers/ can float straight up to heaven/ instead of clinging like bats/ to the inside of my skull// radar rebounding off/ padded walls (‘Bats’) He is also a photographer, a fact that is sometimes directly reflected in his poetry. This can be seen in the opening of ‘Send Someone Else’ where Spring sun fixes river margins/ like a photograph,/ and nothing moves,/ not even yesterday’s prayers … Sometimes it is rather more indirectly, as in the wonderful image Bare, thin branches/ against a flatfish sky … (‘The Bell’) Lenton is a Christian and his poetry often echoes this. For me, there is something powerfully profound in how he explores his faith, as in ‘Unable to Sleep’ where half-forgotten monsters/ walk brash ancient paths/ … and kick me awake/ … telling me/ that it’s all just stories/ and there was no garden/ … But I do not believe them:/ I know a holy word when I hear one -/ a word untangled,/ set apart/ from the mess we’re in … The poem from which the pamphlet takes its title (‘Running With Scissors’) ends with this wonderfully sharp (forgive the pun) image: Next time you see me/ if I rise from this bed/ I will be cutting through/ risking it all/ running with scissors Lenton takes risks with his poetry and they work. So take a risk and buy this pamphlet. ...reviewed by Hilary Mellon
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