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
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Wednesday, November 14
Two new poems by P-T Diep
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 14 Nov 2007 04:14 PM GMT
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! |
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