UNHEARD OF
Bodies in cars
Headlights and horns
Me first
Not paying attention
To any other homosapien
Trivial
Is all contact
Staring at the perception
Under our gray matter
What table of contents
We must attend to
Meantime
Shrugging all
Mannered methods
Behold the stampede
What rare find
The novelty of respect
A simple gesture to gift it
Yet none
Will take the first step
• Hailing from the Southside of Chicago, Tim Kucharski was a frontman for local hardcore veterans Insult to Injury. Since that time, he has continued to craft words of urban blight and human plight . His work can be found on the Internationl Library of Poetry and www.thugworks.com A new book of his work will be out in Summer of 2008.
|
||||
|
Recent Comments
Who's there?
Search
RSS Newsfeeds
Main Page RSS
Login
Categories
Poetry Podcasts
Month Archive
|
Friday, November 30
Unheard of - new poetry by Tim Kucharski
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 30 Nov 2007 07:25 PM GMT
Wednesday, November 28
Two new concrete poems/caligrams by Christopher Major
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 28 Nov 2007 02:38 PM GMT
UNTITLED
(so as not to offend the Sudanese Government) 0 0 ( ' ' ) ( ) Y ( ) ( ' ) ( ) ( ) TERMINAL? This fine line that flows to terminate at these flexing fingers. Shortens by half its length. Suddenly grows darker . Transports away cravings as he removes the makeshift t o u r n i q u e t • Chris Major is a regular contributor to IS&T. Check out the right-hand sidebar fr details of his new e-book. Monday, November 26
A pair of 'water' poems by Mark Leech
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 26 Nov 2007 11:36 AM GMT
Of Water
This distance is all flood. A kiss intended might drown a metre short. Let drop a stone upriver where water eases through the bridge, and no ripple can puzzle through to me in Hammersmith. But we will swim dreams. You'll breathe mists all week to cuddle me. I'll be a fleck of rain, a nightlamp on our window so you know I haven't felt the tides withdrawing from uneasy shores. One hand each side of heaven will cup the sun, top the current with our thoughts, light the flow up and down with messages. We swim dreams. You float an egg on the river. It hatches in the kiss I launch upstream, home. Of Water 2 (11.8.07) This loving is all rivers. You may overshoot our landing stage and reach with dripping oars towards the shore, my stretching hands, or in a sudden ebb I’ll sit, slack, surprised, until your forceful push restores the chopping of waves across my bow. Who is the water? Who the bank? We both contain the soft embrace of earth, we both can flow, or surge, or clap against the rocks. When you got into this boat with me, we cut the course we rowed. Since then, we’ve grown to let the current lead us on, taken new cargoes from the reeds. Who is the water? Who the bank? I love this journey to the sea. • When not being pursued by long-dead poets, Mark thinks about his forthcoming collection – London Water – to be published by Flarestack. www.myspace.com/markleechpoetry Sunday, November 25
New blog from IS&T contributor
by
Charles Christian
on Sun 25 Nov 2007 06:45 PM GMT
Regular IS&T contributor Gwilym Williams has just launched a new blog on poetry related topics. You can find it here... http://poet-in-residence.blogspot.com
Ben Borek podcast now available
by
Charles Christian
on Sun 25 Nov 2007 10:18 AM GMT
We've now got a podcast available of Ben Borek, the author of Donjong Heights, reading the prologue from the book – you can see a copy of its cover in the righthand column. Just click on the attached MP3 file. Donjong Heights
is published by Eggbox Publishing www.eggboxpublishing.com/store.html
– price £7.99 (with free
P&P to all UK orders).
 1 AttachmentsFriday, November 23
Leaves by Gill McEvoy
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 23 Nov 2007 08:44 PM GMT
Leaves
Folded boats of pink almond leaf float down pavements in the wind, bright coins of beech jink and shuffle in the pockets of the trees, crumble of dry tobacco dust in gutters, the tulip tree is holding on to leaves of bright green, bantam bronze, refusing to let go, the horse chestnut frees a last enormous leaf which settles on the ground. An upturned hand. Open to anything. • Gill McEvoy Wednesday, November 21
Prinny's Eye - a new prose poem by Mandy Pannett
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 21 Nov 2007 07:12 PM GMT
PRINNY'S EYE
The Brighton Lanes are popular with tourists, draw people through them like the moon on waves. The occasional person, or small pebble, may be left behind and lost. It reminded her of a pebble, the round of it, its hard to the touch; his eyeball, just the one, copied and painted for her like a portrait but much better than that, set in gold as a locket to be worn on a chain. The fastening was intricate, a secretive catch; not many people could guess she was wearing the Prince Regent's eye. Maria Fitzherbert would keep it for ever, nestled and safe on the pulse of her throat, long after the days when his eye began wandering, roving far from her, forgot it had promised to see her as his wife, shut itself tight to avoid inconvenient vows. • Mandy Pannett runs an arts cafe, supports two local writing groups and enjoys giving readings and running writing workshops. She has two poetry collections from Oversteps Books: Bee Purple and Frost Hollow. Monday, November 19
The Poetic Revolution Begins Here by Julian Stannard
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 19 Nov 2007 06:37 PM GMT
The Poetic Revolution Begins Here
Questo bombardamento poetico sulla città vuole lanciare in tutto il mondo il Manifesto di Genova della Rivoluzione Poetica… Lawrence Ferlinghetti is at the controls of a helicopter and is swooping dangerously over the Doge’s Palace. The helicopter dislodges a statue and soars up towards the one accommodating cloud. It hovers and feigns and then it turns to pepper the city of Genoa with incantatory poems. The Carabinieri take a few disparate shots and you can see Ferlinghetti shaking his fist whilst preparing to drop a particularly lethal dose of André Breton. The Genoese scatter and duck and hurtle towards the underground which hasn’t been built. All the alleyways of the old quarter are laced with poems that wind their unchallengeable way back to Walt Whitman. You can see Ferlinghetti quite clearly now dapper in his blue shirt. He’s caressing the sexual organs of the city. • Julian Stannard teaches creative writing at the University of Winchester and has published two collections with Peterloo Poets. Sunday, November 18
Tobias Hill reviewed by Brian Cole
by
Charles Christian
on Sun 18 Nov 2007 10:17 PM GMT
Love in the City
Nocturne in Chrome & Sunset Yellow by Tobias Hill Salt Publishing (2006), 67pp, £8.99, ISBN: 9781844712625 ‘Nocturne’ and ‘Yellow’ sound strange in the title of a collection of poems - would this be poetry of music and painting? In a way it is; elegiac verses transmit the essence of Hill’s love for London, his unsentimental nostalgia for his city, the Thames and Londoners, and evoke Elgar and Monet. Running through it like a river is change, death and rebirth, dispossession and repossession. Hill celebrates the new while at the same time mourning, but holding, the past. Hill was new to me but I felt an immediate connection. No Londoner, past, present or would-be, can be unaffected by his lyricism, gentle rhythmic tone, simple yet sensual language, economy of method, rhyme and delicate but powerful affection for this city. He takes us deep into a London of ghosts, old lights and names, greasy spoons, tide-washed steps and polyglot humanity, where rich meets poor, nature the man-made and the present the past. ‘I will never have seen enough of you’ he says, in the final line of ‘October’. Memories are stimulated; close your eyes and you could be on the green island of Primrose Hill, looking south at dusk, when the sky is yellow and the office windows needles of chrome light; or on a night train, rattling into Victoria on a high curve, the ramshackle yellow-lit streets swilling mysteriously below you. It is a London of ‘pizza ovens, Peking duck and piss, / the air half-edible and wholly foul’. We visit numerous people and places; Hampstead Heath; L’Algeroise; John’s Kabul Café; railway gangers working through the night; a young couple inexpertly clearing their derelict garden. We even take a trip to Paris, and Matisse, but soon come back. Hill’s voice is very English, reserved but not inhibited. He uses an easy narrative, as befits someone who also writes novels, and infuses his lines with tender vulnerability. He suspends before the reader the imminence of change, and of the attendant regret that is both inevitable and accepted: Daffodils wave their yellow heads at her and suddenly she thinks of poetry: beautiful things. The perfect words you say only later, too late, driving away’. (from ‘Yellow’) Hill is unfussed by form and writes in flexible, natural stanzas. It is his rhythms that are so beguiling and gives his simple language a rare beauty: In the garden the goldfish are nuzzling at heaps of soft late summer rain. If I could have only one thing, it would be some moment like this, when one small fact puts all the facts right, when the rain clears the London air and my thoughts lie suddenly clean and bright in the strength of their own wellspring. (from ‘September’) Not all is sadness, sweetness and light. Hill’s voice is far from gritty, but while there is none of a city’s brutality here, we do encounter bailiffs, bouncers and a religious madman. Of the thirty-two poems, twelve make up a series ‘A Year in London’. The rest of the collection is concerned with various aspects of London and its denizens, as in ‘Five Ways of looking at my Grandfather’, a work of some personal poignancy but one which sits oddly with the collection generally. Acute forensic skill is not required to enjoy Tobias Hill, yet his poems offer more and more with every reading. • Review by Brian Cole Friday, November 16
Two poems by Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 16 Nov 2007 10:25 AM GMT
IN HIS BEARD A COLLECTION OF SWEET BREAD
On the emergency room table a bearded man being examined was found with ants in his beard. Each ant carried crumbs of sweet bread, which they could not enjoy because the nurse who cleaned the man's white beard, swept the ants away, some with malevolence, as she pinched the ants between her little god fingers. FALSELY ACCUSED I was accused of chasing or following a woman around. I was told I did something wrong and that is a lie. All I know was that I was on the street. I was hungry and now I am here. I don't know where my green card is. They took it from me. I don't know where it is and I don't see what business it is of yours to ask me such things. I don't have to speak to you. I was falsely accused. • Luis Cuauhtemoc Berriozabal says "I enjoy reading the work in IS&T, especially David McLean's poetry. Recently, my poetry has appeared in Beat the Dust, Munyori Poetry Journal, and Kendra Steiner Editions. I work in the mental health field in Los Angeles, California." Wednesday, November 14
Two new poems by P-T Diep
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 14 Nov 2007 04:14 PM GMT
Tanka
Pine cones filled with snow litter the feet of tall firs pointing ever skyward, hairs on the back of the world draped with miniature stars Falling false weightlessness of F thrills, as branches breAk time stutters, turns, tumbLes earth mocks the sky and fLees blurring – stomach churnIng. Dirt becomes profouNd – a final restinG place. • Phuoc-Tan Diep is a regular contributor to IS&T Monday, November 12
Two pieces for Remembrance Day
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 12 Nov 2007 08:03 PM GMT
Yes, we are a day late but here are two pieces (one by Maureen Weldon and the second by IS&T editor Charles Christian) with a relevance to Remembrance Day on 11th November. Not so well known these days is that November 11th is also St Martin's Day (or Martinmas) and that good weather on the 11th is know as a "St Martin's Summer".
EL ALAMEIN 1942 They came one by one El Alamein – the khaki inferno, of smoke, oil and yellow tongues. For every one that lived two comrades died. Now a million ghosts move silently buried in the ever moving sand, or talk in old men's dreams. • Maureen Weldon adds "I wrote this poem for my father who served with the British Army throughout the Second World War. My father did, thank God, return home after the War." HAIKU St Martin's Summer butterflies still flittering over poppy wreaths • As well as editing Ink Sweat & Tear, Charles Christian will be the editor of the British Haiku Society's 2008 members' anthology. Sunday, November 11
New taiga by Pamela Babusci
by
Charles Christian
on Sun 11 Nov 2007 09:26 AM GMT
 • Pamela Babusci is an American poet and artist and previous contributor to IS&T. She describes 'taiga' as made-up term for combining tanka with art, in the same way that a haiku + art becomes a haiga. Friday, November 9
Willow Tree Night & Snowy Visitors bu Michael Lee Johnson
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 09 Nov 2007 08:16 PM GMT
Willow Tree Night and Snowy Visitors
Winter is tapping on the hollow willow tree's trunk – a four month visitor is about to move in and unload his messy clothing and be windy about it – bark is grayish white as coming night with snow fragments the seasons. The chill of frost lies a deceitful blanket over the courtyard greens and coats a ghostly white mist over yellowed willow leaves' widely spaced teeth – you can hear them clicking like false teeth or chattering like chipmunks threatened in a distant burrow. The willow tree knows the old man approaching has showed up before, in early November with an ice packed cheek and brutal puffy wind whistling with a sting. • Michael Lee Johnson is a regular contributor to IS&T and his latest piece has a very seasonal feel to it, for readers on both sides of the Atlantic – although over here in the UK the only chipmunks we hear chattering are in cartoons. Wednesday, November 7
Two new poems by Juliet Humphreys
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 07 Nov 2007 06:52 PM GMT
Home
This is home: you could be happy here. Spangled lights fill the hallway, a painted smile. From the outside it sounds like a party – high-pitched screams, music turned up way too high. Look around you, no-one's laughing. Smoke crawls into their throats, everyone's trying not to breathe and some succeed, lie sleeping. Clamouring hands reach out to nothing; erase the lights, the colours, everything. Autopsy The boy, as he had been, who'd loved her first, lay before her sleeping, dreaming – she was sure – not gone as it said. She wanted to hold his mangled heart, feel for signs of care, instead she allows a finger to glide over those lips as if to kiss them but there is nothing, no quiver, and it isn't the same so his curled fingers she gently eases between her own – here we are she says to him now, the two of us, the living and the dead. • Juliet Humphreys say "About me: I would like to be a poet who teaches but too often it is the other way around." Monday, November 5
for Sharon by Gary Kissick
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 05 Nov 2007 08:55 PM GMT
for Sharon
I know I said I loved Helena Bonham Carter, but since I've met you, Sharon, I've gone off her. It's true I said I hated that shameless whore Madonna, but since you said you like her, I've gone on her. Your pin-up boy is love's hegemonic: Darcy dripping pride and prejudice. The wounded voice of Bobby Dylan you called a cow in need of killing. Twice forever. Two divorces. One's much safer betting on horses. Love's a menace. Love's a yoke. Love's an egg in tennis. Let's break it gently to our frail mothers first. Then I'll call Helena, you Colin Firth. • This poem comes from Gary Kissick's new collection Another Kissing Couple Has Exploded which was published by Gatehouse Press (see link in sidebar) last month. Saturday, November 3
Two poems by Amanda Weeks
by
Charles Christian
on Sat 03 Nov 2007 09:41 AM GMT
Caroline Street
Curry and chips? Mmmmmmmm Queue Shove Push Fight Coppers Cell You’ve had your chips Tanked for the memories Down and out on all-day bender I recognise your voice Before I even turn round. “Oi, nutter!” you call “Pint of lager and lime and a packet of cheese and onion?” It’s as though we saw each other yesterday – Not fifteen years ago. We drink and laugh At funny things we did together, Talk of the places where we used to mosh – All of which demolished now, Replaced by the New Cardiff, A place we can’t afford to live. We reminisce about the music we loved Now called “old skool” And the musicians we wanted to be Now called “veteran rockers” And feel old. And long to go back And listen to Anthrax. You laugh at the make-up I wore And joke that my skirts resembled belts And mock my taste in boys. You seem to remember everything about me Except one crucial thing – “Why did we stop being friends?” you ask I pretend I can’t remember I don’t want this good day ruined, But you had a new girlfriend called Donna Who didn’t like the fact that you had female friends. When I phoned you, upset, you asked me not to call again For fear of upsetting Donna. Fifteen years have passed. I’m glad you didn’t end up with her And that your new woman has no problem With you having female friends. Theoretically, we could be friends again, Realistically, I can’t be arsed. But thanks for the beers, Neil. • Amanda Weeks lives in Pontypridd, South Wales with husband Carlos, four-year-old son Travis and a cat called Rita. She began writing eight years ago when, at 27, she decided to pack in her job as a collector, invent a pile of A levels and study creative writing and drama at university. She has had several short stories published in anthologies. She has written for several music magazines. Her Welsh-language screenplay Catastroffi was broadcast on S4C in 2006, and she's had a further two screenplays optioned to Tornado Films. She recently came third in the Welsh Poetry Competition. She is currently writing a novel, and is adding to her poetry and short story collections. She is currently working as a supply teacher at Ysgol Gyfun Cwm Rhymni. Previously, she's worked as a drama tutor and as an actress. This is her first appearance on IS&T.
Review: Separation & Overlap - a three ring circus of poetry
by
Charles Christian
on Sat 03 Nov 2007 09:30 AM GMT
Separation and Overlap, a Three-Ring Circus of Poetry
• Slide by Brendan Hawthorne, produced by Poetry Monthly Press, £7-99 from 20, Wharfedale Street, Wednesbury, West Midlands • The Pig by Peter Lewin, Flux Gallery Press, £7-95 from 33 Orders Lane, Kirkham, Preston P24 2TP • Catch a Falling Tortoise by Paul McDonald, £7-99 from Cinnamon Press, Meiron House, Glan yr afon, Tanygrisau, Blaenau Ffestiniog LL41 3SU Ex-saddle maker Paul McDonald is a lecturer in American Literature at Wolverhampton University and both ring master and clown in the arena of this review. His interest in literature comes through with poems about Bukowski, Gertrude Stein, and Delmore Schwartz, in which we learn that beer isn't for sipping, wine not for sniffing but both for gulping. Gulp! And Delmore is an old man at 47 and down on his luck, whereas Gertrude is lucky that Alice Tolkas knows one other genius, Picasso, and he is willing to do Gert's portrait.. Lewin is the man who spreads the sawdust in the ring, his literary persons are the lecturer, who believes himself an undiscovered Ezra Pound and thinks today's poetry is crap; and one Liam, who is Bukowski, Lenny Bruce and Jerry Lewis all rolled into one. Hawthorne is up all night moving the big top to its next destination. He has had one succesful major poetry book published, in which he massaged his readers with a bit of what they were looking for, and now he wants them to share with him the traumas of staying up all night worrying about the arrival of the answers to everything in life (... and how to get some peaceful sleep!). There are wild animals in Lewin's circus, head-bangers living in hostels, mothers who look at their sons and say Who the fuck are you? while Hawthorne is always walking tightropes between suicide in steel grey rivers and walking home with a bag of chips, and McDonald is clowning about. He throws pies in the face of his old science teacher concerning his toupee, tells of a kid playing hide and seek with no one bothering to look for him, and stays in a hotel that displays Liberace's truss in the lobby. McDonald lectures abroad, and also likes his holidays, and there are poems of his visits to Athens, China, and Vegas, whereas Lewin is more at home in the Lancashire area, his childhood cocking a doodle do at the newsreels in the cinems, his adult life partaking of over-cooked cabbage, visiting charity shops. Hawthorne, except for a rain-rattling stay in a caravan, is mostly at home nursing his moody delinquent of a liver (too many brandy-snaps?), observing the painted trout of a trolley lady in the town's bus shelters; the ghost train of fairground lying in a ditch. Hawthorne's range of mood can be wider than this, but the tightrope, the trapeze, and the lion's cage, with an occasional hug of one of the sequinned ladies, is what he wants on this current billing. He is intent on putting over the wanderings of his mind during the sleepless nights of middle aged twenty-first century man. There's lustful propositions, perfume like a thorium injection, and constitutional bullying amongst other things. It's an evening performance not a child's matinee. McDonald says that games of silly buggers often end in/tears and points to the murder of Joe Orton, and so he is careful to announce the end of a comic poem, like having your back massaged with a slug, with a crack of his ringmaster's whip and moves quickly on to hunting for crabs off the pier, Buildwas Abbey, or discussing his mate's vow to have the balls of the boys who stare at his young daughter on cocktail sticks, with squares of ham and cheese, if they dare to touch her. This is a book that throws itself into your face like the torn printed-paper from the clown' s bucket, and leaves you soaking it all up. Lewin charts the violent intent of the wolf that sits outside the door and waits for the latch to lift. He is the blade of the flick knife, the sperm at the crime scene. The poet's packed his bag and said goodbye to the circus, and wants to get on, but is wary of thinking he's Philip Larkin, or doing a Phd. in English Lit. and bragging about it. He's good at sticking three darts in every subject, but should perhaps try the rifle-range and shoot from a different angle occasionally. He smears cheese on the settee, spills coffee down the back of the telly, send the cat running up the curtains, and he's only been asked to look after the babby while his daughter gets on with her knife-throwing act. If you pitch your tent on similar fairgrounds-for-comment, you'll love this volume. If Hawthorne was thinking of changing his job its too late now, he's stuck his head in the lion's mouth and done the roaring sounds. Now he's waiting in that ghastly 3am hour of fear and dread, for the seal of approval. The ball is in the air, and we shall see if this brave attempt at doing something different, without a safety net, has come off. The show as gone on and now its up to you audience. Go on feed your brain, you can't live on candy floss forever! • Review by Geoff Stevens Thursday, November 1
Tenfold increase in visitors since launch
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 01 Nov 2007 07:54 AM GMT
Time to pat ourselves on the back and feel just a little bit smug. Our latest web traffic statistics reveal that a total of 3800 distinct hosts – that's the digital equivalent of subscribers – visited the Ink Sweat & Tears site in October. This is a 10 times more than visited us in January when we launched and (we think) justifies our claim to be the fasted growing poetry website in the UK, if not the known universe. (OK, we're just guessing on that last point.) We also clocked up just over 8000 page views (and each page holds approximately 20 poems or pieces of prose).
In other news... • We've clarified our submission terms, at the request of a US reader, to point out that we do not pay for contributions – this is because we have no money. Because payment is so unusual in the UK, we didn't think it necessary to mention this but apparently you can earn some money in the US, hence the clarification now. (And, of course, we certainly do not charge either for submissions or to access the site.) • Also, just for the record, we do not accept public funding or Arts Council grants etc, as we do not like the idea of a bureaucratic tail wagging our creative dog. However this also means we have even less money that most other poetry publications in the UK – even tho we do reach a much bigger audience than most of them! |
|||
