When I was ten
Mum fell in love with Uncle Phil.
She always said to me it didn't mean
she loved Dad less,
only this time Dad found out
and rammed Mum's pink plastic hairbrush
down his best mate's throat.
***
The day they let Dad out of jail
he ran down the street in his socks,
shoes flung over some hedge;
knowing of nowhere else to go
he came home.
He'd kept his key and used it now.
It's as well we'd not moved
or he'd have gone straight back.
He boiled the kettle for coffee,
used the loo and looked around
at what was our life still.
He told me later how he needed shoes
but the only ones he could find to wear
were mine and Mum's. She'd binned
all his stuff – hoping, he supposed,
he'd not come back to know.
So there he was in pink stilettos,
heels hanging off the back,
walking like it was something new,
holding onto furniture that used to be his.
He gave up on the shoes, left our house
in his socks, picking his way down the road
avoiding stones
Mum came home from work
and without stopping to wonder why
she scooped up her shoes,
like stray children's toys.
She saw the lid left off the coffee jar.
Your dad's out then, was all she said.
You'll have him back, I accused her,
too old to believe in fairy tales.
I'll not, she replied,
eyes fixed on nothing,
smiling in spite of herself,
not if he doesn't ask.
• Juliet Humphreys say "About me: I would like to be a poet who teaches but too often it is the other way around."
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Friday, August 31
When I was ten by Juliet Humphreys
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 31 Aug 2007 02:30 PM BST
Thursday, August 30
Robert Creely and Robin Robertson reviewed
by
Reviews Editor
on Thu 30 Aug 2007 03:59 PM BST
In the first our book reviews postings Jo Kjaer reviews Robert Creely's last collection and our new book reviews editor Matt Howard reviews Swithering by Robin Robertson.
On Earth by Robert Creeley University of California Press (2006) 100pp, £12.95 ISBN: 9780330441681 Robert White Creeley, May 21st 1926 Arlington, Massachusetts – March 30th 2005 Odessa, Texas. Creeley’s last collection On Earth was being written when he died in March 2005, and contains over thirty new poems, many touching on the twin themes of memory and presence. These were written understanding death was imminent, (he had emphysema). The poems have fragility and his particular brand of prosody born out of the Black Mountain school of Projective speech achieves this as if it had been invented for his leaving: In the sky stars flash by. Boats head for heaven. (from 'The Puzzle') His sparseness on the page is in direct contrast to his reputation for conversation; he spoke, communicated, and discoursed with a huge audience and shared himself and his poems with an ease and openness rarely found in literary creators. If he talked to explore the meaning of life before achieving economy in his poems it was done without artifice – nowhere is artifice evident in Creeley. His last poems recall friendships and intimacy as he gives death a side-ways look – aware but still in charge. Writing about a fellow poet, junkie and overlooked hero of the Beat underground, John Wieners, Creeley minces words finely, without sentiment but with wry humour and rare imagist lyricism: There is music in pain but not because of it, love in each persistent breath, His was the Light of the World, a lit match or the whole city, burning. (From 'For John Wieners') Creeley was always writing about a character called Robert Creeley. Using a limited vocabulary of ordinary words – 'here', 'there', 'the', 'you', 'one', he retells his experience in a variety of closed yet aligned ways. He knows the inevitable shortfall between desire and fulfillment and views these voids as productive elements so that the absence in his form or rhythm becomes an interval of all our experiences, as if you hear him thinking as you read: If that has to go, it was never here. If I know still you’re here, then I’m here too and love you, and love you. (From 'Old Song') Creeley was attentive to the mind’s processes which meant, to him, an existential confidence in uncertainty, and it is for this above else I love his works. Uncertainty is a challenging subject to focus on for most of one's 78 years, without producing a voice of negative portent. His work rarely appears in prominent anthologies; this maybe due to a prodigious output but without any one defining poem or the sparse presence created by his minimalist approach. 'The Puzzle', 'When I think', 'After School', 'Sad Walk' and 'Caves' show him calling on his life to show itself one last time as if to check in that library of his mind for anything he still needs to respond to with amazement or regret. And it is almost impossible, even if you've never met Robert Creeley, to read from 'Caves', 'Try lying in the dark/ ask someone to turn off the light./ Then stay there till someone else comes.' without hearing his voice, rough and warm with its signature end stops finally asking us: Which way to go up down backward forward ? (From 'The Puzzle') I wish I had meet him but I’m glad to have found him – his understated lines come over to me as a huge lesson in less is more. • Jo Kjaer has been awarded the 2007 Cafe Writers Commission to write a pamphlet of poetry on Norfolk Swithering by Robin Robertson Picador (2006) 96pp, £8.99 ISBN: 9780330441681 The book’s blurb clarifies the two meanings of the Scots verb swither ‘to be doubtful, to waver, to be in two minds; and to appear in shifting forms.’ This protean impulse energises Robertson’s third collection through meditations on loss, relationships and an easily worn eco-spiritualism. Actaeon from Ovid’s Metamorphoses looms over the collection and is present in two central longer poems. Actaeon is turned into a stag after unintentionally seeing the goddess Artemis bathing, he is then killed by his own hounds. ‘The Death of Actaeon’, one of many ‘afters’ in the collection, is wonderfully treated by Robertson’s assured voice. In the moment of his realisation, Actaeon is drawn ‘torn between shame and fear’; this sense of masculine guilt and loss broods through all of the poems. Robertson shifts gear with his theme in beautiful poems addressed to his daughters, refreshingly moving the writing from simple explorations of the split of masculine and feminine and away from traditional goddess poetry. In ‘Leavings’ and ‘Donegal’ Robertson explores the inevitability of letting his growing daughters go in moving lyrical lines; in the latter poem he draws himself on a beach watching one daughter swimming ‘his hands full of clothes, full of / all the years, / and the daughter going / where he knew he could not follow.’ The poems dealing with adult relationships are less even. True, there are examples of the tender lyric that we have come to expect from Robertson such as ‘Net’ and ‘Bow’. However, pieces such as ‘Crossing the Archipelago’ and ‘The Custom-House’ that deal with the end of a relationship seem less successful. Robertson has previously explored sex and sexuality in his earlier collections, most memorably in ‘Wedding the Locksmith’s Daughter’ from Slow Air. Poems on this theme in Swithering such as ‘The Glair’, ‘Asparagus’ and ‘Rainmaker’ appear out of place, indeed it is hard to see how they made the grade for such a strong collection. There is less risk taking with form in this collection than in A Painted Field and Slow Air. Aside from the Actaeon poems the majority of the pieces are shorter and in the main Robertson seems to find his voice most comfortable in shorter, sparer lines. Notwithstanding this the collection as a whole presents a good deal of formal variation that rewards sustained readings. Robertson has always presented an economical and muscular voice, one that is particularly adept at capturing the natural world. This is present in abundance in Swithering in poems such as ‘The Park Drunk’, ‘The Lake at Dusk’ and ‘Entry’. The drunk who wakes to ‘the morning’s soft amnesia of snow’ sees: …each bud like a candied fruit, its yellow picked out and lit by the low pulse of blood-orange riding in the eastern trees. Writing of such physical exactness, allied to the human – here it is the tramp’s drinking ‘to close the biggest door of all’, is where Robertson’s voice excels; even if the vision is bleak. Overall Swithering is a brooding collection that has only the briefest of positive glimmers. Mostly these appear through versions of Neruda and Montale. Swithering must surely represent further evidence of Robertson’s place in the first-rank of poets writing in Britain today. Overall Swithering is a pointed work with a clear trajectory. There are poems here that will unsettle but engage, some too have every chance to endure along with the weight of their burden which Robertson captures poignantly in these lines from ‘Trumpeter Swan’: …you can’t hold on to the height you find, you can never be taught how to fall. • Matt Howard has just completed the Advanced Poetry Diploma at UEA and is about to start an MA in creative writing at Manchester Metropolitan University. Tuesday, August 28
Harry Katz and Hannah Aaron - two poems by G David Schwartz
by
Charles Christian
on Tue 28 Aug 2007 10:00 AM BST
Harry Katz
My best man what went wrong
Its been years since we went out drinking And months since we playing pool Hey there my best man, was my wife so cruel I am sure he is well Although time must tell I haven't seen him is ages Through sandscrip books and pages Yes I know this is so true And I am telling you That my old bud Harry Katz Did never and shall not eat no rats Harry Katz Hannah Aaron I am still caring About the school About the team and about you Lovely Hannah One of my first Ladies to love And talk to with fun Intelligent girl and not even spoiled In those days of roil • G. David Schwartz is the former president of Seedhouse, the online interfaith committee and author of A Jewish Appraisal of Dialogue. Currently a volunteer at Drake Hospital in Cincinnati, Schwartz continues to write. His new book Midrash and Working Out Of The Book is out now and can be ordered via Amazon. Friday, August 24
Two haiga by Jeffrey Woodward
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 24 Aug 2007 02:02 PM BST
The first of these haiga is probably a bit of a sore point for people in the UK who have had to put up with a long, wet summer!
  • Jeffrey Woodward has also contributed some haibun to IS&T. Wednesday, August 22
Two haiku by Juliet England
by
Charles Christian
on Wed 22 Aug 2007 11:24 AM BST
Rejection
Dumped in Pizza Hut And it took me Four Seasons To get over it. Telephone Haiku One four seven one You’ve no new calls to return And no friends, either. • Juliet England is a regular contributor to IS&T Monday, August 20
People with no heads - by Colin Cross
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 20 Aug 2007 11:01 AM BST
PEOPLE WITH NO HEADS
he was an artist although he no longer painted she was a poet although she no longer wrote she was also his model and the mother of his six children whom they raised together for a while we were quite close but then our paths took different directions although whenever I saw one or both of them occasionally over the years we would always stop and talk then one night I saw him on his own in a pub and he told me she had left him and was now nursing in London "people with no heads" he added I assumed he meant she had become a nurse to the mentally ill for surely the decapitated were beyond nursing • Colin Cross lives in Norwich (England) and has numerous poems published in small press zines throughout the UK, Europe and USA. He has also had work broadcast on radio stations in Holland and California and recently recorded the CD Welcome To The Real World Big Hugo. For more check out www.myspace.com/colincrosspoet Thursday, August 16
News flash - US announces winners of annual anti-vanity publishing competition
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 16 Aug 2007 08:04 PM BST
We don't normally carry news reports on IS&T but we are making an exception for this as we can never warn people enough about the perils of vanity publishing and bogus competitions...
"Winning Writers in the US has announced the results from its sixth annual Wergle Flomp Humor Poetry Contest. Erica Angle-Newman of Alta Loma (California) won first prize and $1359 for her spoof poem Pumpernickel: A Poem Written in Mock-Shelley – a total of over 900 entries were received from around the world. "The Wergle Flomp Contest makes light of the low standards of widely publicized 'free poetry' contests sponsored by 'vanity contest' organisers. These will typically declare most entries to be 'semifinalists' to flatter authors into buying expensive anthologies containing their work, as well as personalized plaques, tote bags, trophies, and tickets to conventions (as much as $595 apiece) where everyone receives an 'award'. The Wergle Flomp Contest encourages poets to "make up a deliberately absurd, strange, laugh-out-loud humor poem" and submit it to a vanity contest as a joke. The best of these 'bad' poems receive cash prizes from Winning Writers, sponsor of the contest. "Vanity contests waste poets' time and money, and replace constructive feedback with empty praise that inhibits their artistic growth. When poets find out they've been had, their confidence is shaken. As one Winning Writers reader said of her experience: "I...thought it was the greatest thing ever when I became a finalist. I also unfortunately purchased the book my poem is going to be in. That was a $60.00 lesson I won't soon forget. But the damage that they did was to make me unsure about my work." "Wergle Flomp is the alter ego of British poet David Taub, who submitted several works of semi-literate gibberish to Poetry.com. He received a semifinalist announcement letter praising his "unique talent and artistic vision", with an offer to include his work in the anthology Promises of Love. Winning Writers reproduces Wergle's poems, and Poetry.com's fawning praise, on its website. "Jendi Reiter, judge of the Wergle Flomp Contest, said of this year's winning poem: "Angle-Newman's mock-tragic ode to a cat run over by a Mary Kay saleslady ricochets from the heroic to the mundane with profane speedbumps along the way. A memorably bad poem is often completely oblivious to inconsistencies in its poetic voice, a trait that this poet exploits to the fullest." Submissions for the seventh Wergle Flomp Contest are accepted through until 1st April 2008. Entries are accepted online only and there is no fee to enter. See the complete guidelines and this year's winning entries at www.winningwriters.com/contests/wergle/we_guidelines.php • For the record: Ink Sweat & Tears does NOT charge for posting poetry on this site + authors and poets retain full copyright on their work + we DO NOT run poetry competitions.
New poetry by David McLean
by
Charles Christian
on Thu 16 Aug 2007 09:55 AM BST
revenge of the hollow men
here we lean our headpiece against sweet oblivion and worship this dreamless kingdom where our eyes are closed against night's loveless sky and morning's boringly dawning sun mourning the columns love erected against our traced days the meanings engraved on night's dainty lace and all our wasted embraces facing our warm and brave enclosure here my spacious saviour within reach with your fingertips that list love bright on my unbowed back your anguish's twisted rack and we save days in our coffin's coming coffer for man is but a lack and this is his dead land this is his dead land his dead land indeed and we are a mirror-play of reasons the trough in which we feed our need we wait our final twilight meeting the skeletons handshake and kind Cadaver's meetly greeting our rat-skin coat Ra's midnight boat and nothing within that final finishing where bodies embody the beetles' relish and nothing within but nothingness and missing sin • David McLean says "I was born in Wales though I have lived in Sweden since 1987. I have been published in numerous magazines and e-zines. In September 2007 I shall be "poet in residence" at www.poetsletter.com and in August 2008 "centre stage poet" in Decanto. More information is online at www.myspace.com/david_mclean and www.hecale.com/words.htm It's pretty obvious who is the inspiration for all of these." Monday, August 13
Sunflower Seeds – a new vignette/prose poem by Juliet England
by
Charles Christian
on Mon 13 Aug 2007 02:07 PM BST
Sunflower Seeds
Everyone in Lorca knows Jose Joaquim. He stands in the bar, happy among his laughing posse. This place, this ancient Spanish town of golden stone, where he was born and where he will die, is his world. He knows and wants no other. He has taught half the people here, the other half know him anyway. He wears the clothes of a man ten years older: a battered brown suede jacket sagging over bony shoulders and a thin blue V-necked sweater, with the shabby grey flannel trousers he wore for that morning’s lessons. His fingers curl around his drink. The floor is sticky with its carpet of tissues, toothpicks and the shells of hundreds of tossed away sunflower seeds and cigarette ends. The detritus of a hard evening of what the locals call marcha. How to translate? It's the craic, the fun, but it is more than that. No English word comes close. It is 3am, and in a couple of hours tonight will be thrown away like a sunflower seed shell. For June evenings like this one are as plentiful as sunflower seeds in Lorca. Outside, it is dark, a thick, Spanish night, its intense claustrophobia mirroring life in Lorca, where your evening’s sneeze is discussed at length next morning by old men wheezing over their first coffees of the day. Jose Joaquin’s once luxuriant dark hair has begun its backward march from his forehead. One hand wipes it briefly, mid-gesture. His eyes, dark as coffee, blaze with animation, the eyebrows above working his forehead. He throws back his head at a joke. That summer’s hits, to be forgotten by the fist tremble of autumn, rage from the jukebox. In one corner, a couple has started to dance. The air groans with its raft of mingling scents –perspiring bodies and an alcoholic sweetness jostle with aromas from the bakery across the road and its hot bread slippery with pulped tomatoes. Some drinkers have spilled onto the street, where the glow of streetlights is more forgiving than the harshly striplit Bar Alambique. Suddenly I realise that all this is over. These friends, this bar, the endless milky coffees, the flat, the students I have tried to teach. This is the fag-end of my year in small-town Spain, just as these final two hours before dawn are the fag-end of the long night. For the others, there will be other evenings, but not for me. I am unwilling to let it slip away, savouring every sight and sound, every scent. I think of Jose Joaquin, who met me when I arrived, bewildered and sitting on my suitcase at the station, adrift on the sun-swept morning. His memory will not be thrown away so easily. I will remember him in England, in a city that will seem empty and strange. I go up to him and kiss him on both cheeks. He touches my shoulder lightly, and we say goodbye. We both know we will not see each other again. • Juliet England was bitten by a monkey belonging to the writer Arthur C Clarke in Sri Lanka when she was a child but has since recovered from the experience. Friday, August 10
New haibun by Charles Hansmann
by
Charles Christian
on Fri 10 Aug 2007 12:24 PM BST
Seduction of the Poem
I am talking you away from the lover who promised to be faithful – that isn't a typo, and that lover's still me. Get into the car. That's all that it takes. You're being talked to the place where nothing you choose determines what happens. For haven't you wanted to ride in the rain with the top down ever since watching the wind blow the spume off those waves at the cliff house? I tell you we are going to go fast. That way the windshield's an upright umbrella and your thin cotton shirt will not start to reveal you. I don't have to know. It's your adventure, not mine, and right now you don't care what is under your clothes. Right now you are watching the streak of these wipers for that dry explication that lies between lines. And this corner we are turning – this corner that's maybe no more than a bend – puts behind you any notion that anyone who knows you still has you under tabs. For now you are my sweatheart. In this grip our world's glove turns the wheel that will steer us. In this fist our palms lie palm to palm. last sign the turnoff closed • Charles Hansmann's work has appeared previously in Ink Sweat & Tears – he says about IS&T "Your interest in that undefined area where prose and poetry merge plays out also in the categories of prose poem and haibun. I like work that can go either way." |
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