*
This issue of London Grip features new poems by:
*Wendy French *Peter Kennedy *Teoti Jardine *Rob Yates *Jan Hutchison
*Mohammed Kamran *Antony Johae *Nancy Mattson *Ian C Smith
*Mary Franklin *Colin Bancroft *David Flynn
*Christopher Mulrooney *F M Brown *Sarah Doyle *Allen Ashley *Robert Nisbet
*Michael Thomas *Kerrin P Sharpe
Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors
A printer-friendly version of London Grip New Poetry can be obtained at LG New Poetry Autumn 2014
Please send submissions for the future issues to poetry@londongrip.co.uk, enclosing no more than three poems and including a brief, 2-3 line, biography
Editor’s Introduction
London Grip would like to welcome readers back from their summer travels with a fresh offering of new poetry. John Keats’ autumn may be a season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Ours is a season of mists and mystery since we have compiled a selection of largely elusive, enigmatic and even downright menacing poetry.
The cover picture represents the moment of collapse of the Campanile in St Mark’s Square on July 14, 1902 and seems a suitably unsettling image to match the tone of this issue. Its appropriateness is hardly diminished by the fact that the photograph is reckoned by Wikipedia to be a fake: its doubtful provenance merely contributes to the atmosphere of uncertainty. 
The picture can, moreover, be somewhat tenuously related to Kerrin Sharpe’s remarkable sequence ‘answering the call’; and also to Nancy Mattson’s ’Honeymoon Flight, circa 1934’ and Peter Kennedy’s ‘La Galleria’ which touch respectively on the crumbling and eventual collapse of Mussolini’s regime in Italy.
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
http://mikeb-b.blogspot.com/
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Wendy French: The Red Cheeked Head
It’s my harvest festival, she explained
to the nurse who helped carve the heart
of the pumpkin before the sharp knife
was whisked away, locked in the drawer
of the old smoking room. Fag ends swept in a corner.
If only bishops had two heads some truth might emerge
and she plucked a half dead lily from her friend’s bouquet.
A weeping head made in pottery was placed
on the edge of the red flocked cloth, only crocodile tears
have centre stage. She’d once remembered the rules of Chess.
The bishop must look beyond the head to the window
which is now open for the parakeets to fly in
and drink from the sour wine.
You don’t understand me, do you? She sang inventing
words from a song she once thought she’d heard.
The ears of this pottery head are so big
and the cheeks so red but no one listens anymore,
no one hears or see the cheeks rubbed in distress.
Thank goodness for wheat grass that grows in abundance
on the edge of sunlight catching sorrow in its stems.
.
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Wendy French: Winter Weathers
Because Thor has been at work again
and no one ever answers the telephone;
and because the persistent tone of the ring
takes me down the line to where you might be
near the upturned umbrella abandoned
on Pendine Sands or blown to sea;
and because you lost umbrella after umbrella
like that, blaming the new winds,
the in-coming tide, always finding an excuse.
Because of all these signs or omens of wet sands,
ferocious clouds, salt water seeping through shoes,
the tufts of grass on the cliffs daring to raise their heads
before morning and because when you opened the door
that final time and said, 'This is it' and it was it
I have to believe you're riding the amber storm,
sailing the over-turned seas in a time I don't know.
And maybe you're still dancing and maybe
somewhere is that scarlet dress.
.
Wendy French is currently poet in residence at the Macmillan Centre at UCLH. She has two poetry collections with Rockingham press and Tall Lighthouse. Her latest book is co-authored with Jane Kirwan, Born in the NHS, published by Hippocrates press. This book is poetry, fact, anecdote about living and working under the umbrella of the NHS.
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Peter Kennedy: Paradelle of a Thousand Ships
The paradelle was invented as a hoax by Billy Collins (then US Poet Laureate). A parody of the villanelle, it is ”one of the more demanding French fixed forms … a poem of four six-line stanzas in which the first and second lines, as well as the third and fourth lines of the first three stanzas, must be identical. The fifth and sixth lines, which traditionally resolve these stanzas, must use all the words from the preceding lines and only those words. Similarly, the final stanza must use every word from all the preceding stanzas and only these words.”
A family picture shows us gathered on the lawn.
A family picture shows us gathered on the lawn.
Informal. All together. Happy with ourselves.
Informal. All together. Happy with ourselves.
A gathered family shows ourselves together,
Informal picture, happy the lawn with us all on.
I wore pale trousers, white shoes. No grey hair.
I wore pale trousers, white shoes. No grey hair.
My beard was dark then, Helen, and your dark curls.
My beard was dark then, Helen, and your dark curls.
White my trousers and shoes, pale Helen; dark was I,
Dark beard hair. Your curls wore no grey then.
One palsied daughter in her wheelchair. The others kneel, or stand.
One palsied daughter in her wheelchair. The others kneel, or stand.
A fleet of years set sail that distant day.
A fleet of years set sail that distant day.
Stand, distant daughter, fleet the palsied wheelchair years --
That, or kneel; sail her one day in a set of others.
Stand, others; picture trousers, curls, white lawn, dark family;
Hair was wore informal. A set of ourselves
Shows us the palsied day -- or a dark wheelchair;
And then the years that fleet on, all distant.
Sail, happy Helen, one with your daughter together gathered;
I, in my shoes, grey beard, kneel, pale. No her.
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Peter Kennedy: La Galleria
We went on handing the rocks
from one to the next forward in line.
It was the only means we had
to make progress in the dark.
La galleria dei partigiani -
their secret route in the war.
Now our only way through,
flooded a foot deep.
One false step and you were down
in the water with a busted knee.
We went on handing the rocks
from one to the next forward in line.
We placed them at the tunnel side
as best we could to make a causeway.
Each rearward rock was lifted,
passed forward to become the lead rock.
We went on handing the rocks
from one to the next forward in line.
Always forward.
.
When Peter Kennedy retired from his position as a consultant physician he was able to rekindle his interest in writing and poetry. He is a founder member of poetrywivenhoe.
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Teoti Jardine: Te Anau Glow Worm Caves
Floating darkly,
all bearings
lost.
Glow worms
sprinkled
overhead,
guide
me
through.
I reached
past the
why
where
silence
whispers.
There, they
anchored
me.
.
Teoti Jardine was born in Queenstown New Zealand, of Maori, Irish and Scottish descent. His tribal affiliations are Waitaha, Kati Mamoe, and Kai Tahu. He completed the Hagley Writers Course in 2011, and has poetry published in The Christchurch Press, The Burwood Hospital News Letter, London Grip, Te Panui Runaka, Te Karaka, Ora Nui and Just another arts magazine. His short stories have been published in Flash Frontier’s International Issues, 2013.
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Rob Yates: Well and Water
Outside the well is making great noises
as if some titan fish were buried
half in its stone wall, half in its water,
letting loose godwide gulps of air
that upflow and break for surface,
burst and sound
as the pale, thin rain falls
on the poor roof.
Rob Yates is currently moving and gardening his way through South-East Asia. He previously came runner-up in Oxford University’s, St Peter’s College McKay Poetry Prize and is in the process of editing his first attempt at a novel, entitled Trumbling Grandsire. He hails from Essex.
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Jan Hutchison: Walking madly in the mountains
my stick makes eccentric decisions
without consulting me
with a turn of its half-moon neck
it kicks off with side-steps
sometimes it seduces me
with a three-legged flick-and-twist
many times we crash on an icy slope -
stare up in astonishment
the stick measures the length
of our footprints
I find a crock of cloudberries
with my dreaming hand
Jan Hutchison is represented in Essential NZ Poems and many other anthologies. Her most recent poetry collection is The Happiness of Rain.
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Mohammed Kamran: Subterfuge
A sandal thrown into the gutter
A knife kept on a kitchen counter
Long lines outside the departmental store
A shrill noise in the silence of a power cut
To have an idea or to be completely clueless
about life, about love, about yourself
A life lived too fast as if in a daze
The blue seas bank heavily on the steady beaches
The last eagle over the lighthouse
flies in a descending spiral
A touch of velvet, and then of thorns
Blue eyes in a pure white face
A square made out of circles
proving nothing’s what it seems
Inside out is outside in
A calender goes on and on, for pages
Mohammed Kamran is currently with the University of Delhi, He has a published novel to his name, Listen to Me (Amazon). He has also been involved with Marxist politics among the students union and traveling in the interior of the country to work with the labourers. In Delhi. He has been writing columns for various social satirical magazines but his artistic ambitions lie with the poetry of images similar to Rimbaud and Verlaine and the psychological prose of Proust and Joyce
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Antony Johae: At First in Kuwait (after Liberation, 1991)
They put me in a hotel close to the airport.
From the enclosed room where windows didn’t open
and management supplied the air
I saw silent cars cross bridges and underpasses
or curved clover leaf to join
a four-lane highway with large hard shoulder.
Further off, blocks reached up to a petrol pall
and an unfinished telephone tower into the black of an oil cloud
aftermath of Saddam’s sabotage.
With curtains buttoned back, an inside window
looked down on a foyer where post-war,
half-dismantled scaffolding part-revealed
Tuscan marble, discreet lights,
soft sofas and flowers in vast vases.
In glass I dropped to the mezzanine
glanced through fingered magazines
thick with Dior, Givenchy, and Chanel,
eyed the guests lounging,
aproned serving girls – pretty and petite
the doormen dark, the décor anodyne
and thought I might have been elsewhere, or anywhere
– at Madrid’s Marriot or Houston’s Hyatt
or Holiday Inn, Hilton –
but for my contract weighing on me
as I waited.
Then out of plush-muffled sounds
I heard a woman’s cry reach to the roof
an ululation so profound
it moved me – to another place
a distant desert in no city state
encampment, water-hole
men attired in white
children sandal-less on sand
black-covered women chatting
– and when I returned
there was a wedding party
making for a hired room
and all the while – at once rooted and remote –
women shrilling
for the sofa-seated couple.
.
Antony Johae has taught in Africa and the Middle East. Now writing freelance in the UK and Lebanon. This poem comes from an unpublished collection: Poems of the East.
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Nancy Mattson: Honeymoon Flight, circa 1934
This is our honeymoon, so far so true.
We packed light: a single valise between us,
my new vanity case. Only the essentials
for a long weekend in Tripoli.
We leave on a wing and a whispered vow
never to return to Rome, our jobs
in plush quarters, hush-hush.
Never again to follow orders,
or smile at puffed-up little bosses.
Never again to see our village homes
or feast at our mammas’ tables. To praise
Il Duce for his gifts to Italy? Never again.
Yes, we are grateful for his first-class
tickets on Ala Littoria, his new airline,
that magnificent baby, futuristical, snappy,
better than any in Europe, even the world!
We will never forget his greasy speech
at our wedding feast, his liquid praises
to the bride. I’d rather have drowned
with a dozen virgins than listen to more.
When we are safe in the air we will laugh,
free as swifts or swallows, even eagles!
Not yet. We are still on the tarmac,
hat brims down, chins to chests,
your hands jammed deep in the pockets
of your trenchcoat, your belt knotted
tight as the grip I must keep on my
blood-red handbag. Such soft kid.
.
Nancy Mattson flew over seven time zones when she moved from western Canada to London in 1990. Her third full-length collection, Finns and Amazons (Arrowhead Press, 2012), begins with poems inspired by some early twentieth century Russian women artists but develops into a poetic search for her Finnish great-aunt who disappeared in 1939 in Stalinist Russia.
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Ian C Smith: The man who wasn’t there
He has a knack of avoiding weddings;
a dog dying, an expensive flight booked.
When reviewed together, a dossier of excuses.
It is not just weddings as anathema.
Christmases, birthdays, trigger the effect
cruising police cars impose on the guilty.
His is the face missing in group photographs
yet when he does mix he passes scrutiny.
If cornered by the insistent camera
his look is serious, a dust-jacket portrait.
In photographs of his own weddings
which he barely attended,
his mute grimaces, failed smiles
in mouldering albums, filed evidence,
could almost be presciently photoshopped.
When asked by a son how he proposed
he said he only became betrothed in leap years,
absolving himself of the consequences
and the rash optimism of wives
in one succinct sentence.
On anniversaries that pass in silence
does he press his face against a window
hearing strange songs of wrong-doing,
arms hanging limp, scorched throat aching,
or is his meticulous exile sweet?
.
Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in The Best Australian Poetry, London Grip, New Contrast, Poetry Salzburg Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, The Weekend Australian & Westerly. His latest book is Here Where I Work,Ginninderra Press (Adelaide). He lives in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, Australia.
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Mary Franklin: Fear of Ghosts
I am Shuswap. When my husband died I knew
what I had to do. I dug a hole in the ground
covered it with brush and tree trunks, sweated there
all night. At dawn, I bathed in a nearby creek
rubbing my body with branches of spruce, needle tips
broken, damp upon my skin, smelling of skunk.
I stuck them in the ground around my wigwam,
listened to their wind-blown swish, swish, swish.
Hunters would not come near for fear of bad luck.
Illness could strike anyone my shadow fell upon.
That summer I slept on a bed of thorn bushes
thrown on the floor to keep his ghost away.
One winter day I crept into the potlatch,
my heart pounding like a wolf's snared in a trap.
I caught the elder's eye. He nodded and I took
my place once again among my people.
.
Mary Franklin has had poems published in various poetry journals, anthologies and ezines in the UK, Canada, Australia and the USA.
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Colin Bancroft: Absence
It is as though the world is aware of yours
And mirrors it with its own.
No sun. No sky. Just the blank canvas
Of fog, primed with rain –
Stretched across the fallen easel of the moor
That drops off beyond the hedgerow to nothing.
Trees loom as ragged patterns cut
From this fine cloth of mist.
Sounds muffle in this hush;
Hearing the crackle and whir of tyres on the road
Is like listening to a recording of an empty room.
An absence looped over and over and
.
Colin Bancroft is currently studying for an MA in Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has previously had poems published in The Copperfield Review and Broken Wine Magazine. He has also been shortlisted for both the Manchester Bridgewater Prize and the New Holland Press competition.
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David Flynn: Hired Man
He wasn't working. Out. He wasn't tried
and true.
I didn't like him. One bit. You didn't like
his face.
You didn't like. His smell.
Rotted apples.
Sweetish.
Rancid. Son of a bitch. He stole our
money.
He stole our car. Away. They found him
deader
than our love. Is dead. They said he
suffered
a stroke. I say. He just got
too mean.
Now what do we do. Stuck with no car.
Stuck in our house. Now what do we do.
.
David Flynn was born in the textile mill company town of Bemis, TN. His jobs have included newspaper reporter, magazine editor and university teacher. He has five degrees and is both a Fulbright Senior Scholar and a Fulbright Senior Specialist currently on the roster. His literary publications total more than one hundred and forty. David Flynn’s writing blog, where he posts a new story and poem every month, is at http://writing-flynn.blogspot.com/
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Christopher Mulrooney: Fudd of Sheffield
at home with Boudica or as she says Bulldyke
guardian of the ancient pens
he wallops around the venerable city
like a cod long-shanked gravel-eyed
electrified as to his step he knows all the latest
and the earliest too their adopted son
The Green Man of sorts mainly out
a cold-blooded vegetable sort of lout
and all the stodgy gets who are their friends in pub
at Sheffield where the long knives come from
.
Christopher Mulrooney is the author of symphony (The Moon Publishing & Printing), flotilla (Ood Press), viceroy (Kind of a Hurricane Press), and jamboree (Turf Lane Press, forthcoming). His work has recently appeared in The Interpreter’s House, West Wind Review, Zettel, Indefinite Space, California Quarterly, Soliloquies, Inscape, The Southampton Review, and Meat for Tea: The Valley Review.
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F.M. Brown: On A Balcony In Nice
(after hearing a song by Francois Poulenc)
I'm on a broad balcony in Nice
A gauzy breeze persuades the perfume of the young mimosa
Up to where I stand
And induces excitement and a final appearance of life
In the desiccated scraps of older blossoms
Scratching over the courtyard flagstones
Beside me with no umbrella to eclipse it
The furniture glows so dazzling white
It seems to have a luminescence of its own
On the table breakfast is set
And a Swedish glass jug
Filled with fresh orange juice
I sip from a matching misted tumbler
One hand resting on a chair back I stare out
At a view which on other days I would find
Breathtaking or a subject for meditation, even an inspiration
Today it is just a backdrop
And no more significant
It might as well be Manchester
Except then we would need a brolly
And the whites wouldn't be quite so bright
I am waiting for a young man
At least they tell me he's young
I know his face
I have seen a photograph
I know his name
Thiery
Lady, the song says
Now you are too old to attract a lover
But not yet grown out of wanting love
There is only one answer for you
Take a gigolo
Thiery, I will say
Come in
Orange juice for you?
I will appear impassive, controlled
As I scrutinise his looks
His manner
His suitability for my purposes
Will he examine me for possible pleasure
Or purely for potential profit?
Will I deceive myself he could grow to love me?
No, no. Don't answer the bell, Marie.
Tell him that Madame is not at home.
Do your hear me, Marie?
Shake yourself, woman. Pull yourself together.
This is Manchester.
That's the milkman at the door.
Go and pay him
And wipe that silly look off your face.
Morning, Terry. What's the damage?
Bit steep this week, Mrs. Stone.
Yes, that'll be all that extra orange juice.
.
FM Brown was born in Sheffield but had to come south to soft Bedfordshire to begin writing poetry
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Sarah Doyle: The Philosophy of Stone
Sticks and stones may break my bones.
No moss upon those Rolling Stones.
Tombstone. Ragstone.
Kerbstone. Flagstone.
Heart of stone. Whetstone.
Hearthstone. Headstone.
Silverstone. Stonewear.
Sword-in-stone. Stony stare.
Millstone. Milestone.
Paving stone. Bile stone.
Let he who is without sin cast the first –
Stone deaf. Stone cold.
Stone Age (very old).
Stepping stone. Moonstone.
Standing stone. Rune stone.
Birthstone. Gravestone.
Stone Roses (rave stone?).
Limestone. Yellowstone.
Gemstone. Rosetta Stone –
Talk like an E-gyp-tian…
Dry stone. Copestone.
Sharon Stone. Soapstone.
Gallstone. Freestone.
Kidney stone. Keystone.
Stone-broke. Toadstone.
Breaking stone. Lodestone.
Stone-head. Stone basin.
Hailstone. Stone mason.
Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw –
Stone the crows! Stone me!
Stonewall penalty!
Stonehenge. Rhinestone.
Lose a stone? Grindstone.
Blarney stone. Brimstone.
Fred and Wilma Flintstone.
Sandstone. Touchstone.
And in this poem – much stone
.
Sarah Doyle has been published in journals such as Poetry News, Orbis, The New Writer and The Dawntreader, and placed in various competitions. She is Poet-in-Residence to the Pre-Raphaelite Society, and co-hosts Rhyme and Rhythm Jazz-Poetry Club at Enfield’s Dugdale Theatre. www.sarahdoyle.co.uk
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Allen Ashley: End of the Line
Now you’re painted in a corner,
your line’s finished with “love”;
you’re digging in the dictionary
with “glove”, “dove” and “above”.
You’ve angered Keats and Wordsworth,
so steal from Harry Beck
a way to take the poem on
you’ve salvaged from the wreck.
Don’t put love at the end of the line –
too late the realisation:
nothing fits and nothing rhymes
except for termination.
Don’t put love at the end of the line –
too frequently she tends
to be beyond your Oystercard;
suspended at weekends.
Brixton, Barking, Epping, Morden,
all the way to Rayners Lane.
Your car’s in hock, the night is young,
you must catch the final train.
Don’t put love at the end of the line –
you’re left with one route out.
If it’s High Barnet or Cockfosters,
she knows you’re heading south.
.
Allen Ashley works as a writer, editor, poet, writing tutor, critical reader and event host. He runs five writing groups including Clockhouse London Writers. www.allenashley.com
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Robert Nisbet: Mermaid
Two decorators. Both of them drink,
play cricket locally. Today, re-painting
the large oak sign outside the Mermaid Inn.
She reaches them, a little before noon,
holiday-clad, a pretty girl, whose legs
send their senses staggering with joy.
Their thoughts click. She’s been on the box.
Their memories sift like buzz-saws
through their culture’s schedules.
An early-evening sitcom. Barmaid. Sophie.
Warm heart and cleavage.
The smiles they force lie hushed
upon their faces, as she moves,
in her aura, through to the bar.
She says ‘Hi’.
They return now to their task, in turn
flick brush strokes meaningfully
on their slippery girl’s historic smile,
her stylized breasts, her tail.
.
Robert Nisbet was for some years an associate lecturer in creative writing at Trinity College, Carmarthen. His short stories appear in his collection Downtrain (Parthian, 2004) and in Story II (Parthian, 2014), his poems in Merlin’s Lane (Prolebooks, 2011
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Michael Thomas: many mansions
the shepherdess
on the mantel
looks up to heaven
thinks about
the promise of a house
its many mansions
wonders if
there’s a mansion for her
at least a room
once her soul
sheds her brass body
with a quicksilver tear
and if in fact
she will like sitting
fingers threaded
in boxy air
imagining others
pent adjacently
decorously walled
folded on themselves
stainless vesture
given that the life
for which she was made
was all about hills
bushes black with rain
sopping tresses
ewes pinned in thorn
and sky
lots of sky
and never a room
save the farmer’s
of an evening
ale and repletion
candle-fire
miles away
over bony grass
from where she dealt
with blood
with real lambs dying
.
Michael Thomas’s latest novel is Pilgrims at the White Horizon. His recent poetry collections include Batman’s Hill, South Staffs and The Girl from Midfoxfields. A new collection, Come to Pass, is forthcoming in 2014. His poetry and prose have appeared in The Antioch Review, Critical Survey, The London Magazine and the TLS. He is currently working on Nowherian, the memoirs of Grenadian traveller, Henderson Bray .
www.michaelwthomas.co.uk
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Kerrin P Sharpe: answering the call
i) the working drawings
the drawings
move from
the tracing house
to work
the great
bellows of the
cathedral so
the geometry
of the air
stays holy
so the
plans of small
fish in
this upturned
boat become prayer
ii) why talk to the bellows boy when you can speak to the blacksmith
now my tongue is iron
all 27 bones in my hands
are quick-tempered birds
here in the forge of the forest
it takes 3 days to read the paper
I would rather speak Polish
than sign the sad hymns of fire
when I saddle my carthorse
my cold chisels and hammers
close their dark wings
only church bells nod to me
iii) last supper in Venice
on the dome of St Mark’s
the air is so thin
pigeons are breathless
my wings are rungs of medals
pinned to my singlet
I fall with the rhythm of rowing
into long narrow light
bridges sigh like single oars
no one expects me alive
except my gondola
and the jacket
from my army days
I call salvation
iv) between the feet of angels
between the feet of angels
air is always
the colour of holiness
1 part sand
2 parts fern
And beechwood
it’s not easy
to coax a river
into a spine of windows
and often after the dance
between lead and light
our hats are the stars
you point at
.
Kerrin P. Sharpe’s first book three days in a wishing well was published by VUP in 2012. Her work appeared in Oxford Poets 13 (Carcanet). Another book, there’s a medical name for this is forthcoming from VUP in August 2014.
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Aug 31 2014
London Grip New Poetry – Autumn 2014
*
This issue of London Grip features new poems by:
*Wendy French *Peter Kennedy *Teoti Jardine *Rob Yates *Jan Hutchison
*Mohammed Kamran *Antony Johae *Nancy Mattson *Ian C Smith
*Mary Franklin *Colin Bancroft *David Flynn
*Christopher Mulrooney *F M Brown *Sarah Doyle *Allen Ashley *Robert Nisbet
*Michael Thomas *Kerrin P Sharpe
Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors
Please send submissions for the future issues to poetry@londongrip.co.uk, enclosing no more than three poems and including a brief, 2-3 line, biography
Editor’s Introduction
London Grip would like to welcome readers back from their summer travels with a fresh offering of new poetry. John Keats’ autumn may be a season of mists and mellow fruitfulness. Ours is a season of mists and mystery since we have compiled a selection of largely elusive, enigmatic and even downright menacing poetry.
The cover picture represents the moment of collapse of the Campanile in St Mark’s Square on July 14, 1902 and seems a suitably unsettling image to match the tone of this issue. Its appropriateness is hardly diminished by the fact that the photograph is reckoned by Wikipedia to be a fake: its doubtful provenance merely contributes to the atmosphere of uncertainty.
The picture can, moreover, be somewhat tenuously related to Kerrin Sharpe’s remarkable sequence ‘answering the call’; and also to Nancy Mattson’s ’Honeymoon Flight, circa 1934’ and Peter Kennedy’s ‘La Galleria’ which touch respectively on the crumbling and eventual collapse of Mussolini’s regime in Italy.
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
http://mikeb-b.blogspot.com/
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Wendy French: The Red Cheeked Head
It’s my harvest festival, she explained to the nurse who helped carve the heart of the pumpkin before the sharp knife was whisked away, locked in the drawer of the old smoking room. Fag ends swept in a corner. If only bishops had two heads some truth might emerge and she plucked a half dead lily from her friend’s bouquet. A weeping head made in pottery was placed on the edge of the red flocked cloth, only crocodile tears have centre stage. She’d once remembered the rules of Chess. The bishop must look beyond the head to the window which is now open for the parakeets to fly in and drink from the sour wine. You don’t understand me, do you? She sang inventing words from a song she once thought she’d heard. The ears of this pottery head are so big and the cheeks so red but no one listens anymore, no one hears or see the cheeks rubbed in distress. Thank goodness for wheat grass that grows in abundance on the edge of sunlight catching sorrow in its stems. .Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
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Wendy French: Winter Weathers
Because Thor has been at work again and no one ever answers the telephone; and because the persistent tone of the ring takes me down the line to where you might be near the upturned umbrella abandoned on Pendine Sands or blown to sea; and because you lost umbrella after umbrella like that, blaming the new winds, the in-coming tide, always finding an excuse. Because of all these signs or omens of wet sands, ferocious clouds, salt water seeping through shoes, the tufts of grass on the cliffs daring to raise their heads before morning and because when you opened the door that final time and said, 'This is it' and it was it I have to believe you're riding the amber storm, sailing the over-turned seas in a time I don't know. And maybe you're still dancing and maybe somewhere is that scarlet dress. .Wendy French is currently poet in residence at the Macmillan Centre at UCLH. She has two poetry collections with Rockingham press and Tall Lighthouse. Her latest book is co-authored with Jane Kirwan, Born in the NHS, published by Hippocrates press. This book is poetry, fact, anecdote about living and working under the umbrella of the NHS.
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Peter Kennedy: Paradelle of a Thousand Ships
The paradelle was invented as a hoax by Billy Collins (then US Poet Laureate). A parody of the villanelle, it is ”one of the more demanding French fixed forms … a poem of four six-line stanzas in which the first and second lines, as well as the third and fourth lines of the first three stanzas, must be identical. The fifth and sixth lines, which traditionally resolve these stanzas, must use all the words from the preceding lines and only those words. Similarly, the final stanza must use every word from all the preceding stanzas and only these words.”
A family picture shows us gathered on the lawn. A family picture shows us gathered on the lawn. Informal. All together. Happy with ourselves. Informal. All together. Happy with ourselves. A gathered family shows ourselves together, Informal picture, happy the lawn with us all on. I wore pale trousers, white shoes. No grey hair. I wore pale trousers, white shoes. No grey hair. My beard was dark then, Helen, and your dark curls. My beard was dark then, Helen, and your dark curls. White my trousers and shoes, pale Helen; dark was I, Dark beard hair. Your curls wore no grey then. One palsied daughter in her wheelchair. The others kneel, or stand. One palsied daughter in her wheelchair. The others kneel, or stand. A fleet of years set sail that distant day. A fleet of years set sail that distant day. Stand, distant daughter, fleet the palsied wheelchair years -- That, or kneel; sail her one day in a set of others. Stand, others; picture trousers, curls, white lawn, dark family; Hair was wore informal. A set of ourselves Shows us the palsied day -- or a dark wheelchair; And then the years that fleet on, all distant. Sail, happy Helen, one with your daughter together gathered; I, in my shoes, grey beard, kneel, pale. No her.Back to poet list… Forward to next poem
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Peter Kennedy: La Galleria
We went on handing the rocks from one to the next forward in line. It was the only means we had to make progress in the dark. La galleria dei partigiani - their secret route in the war. Now our only way through, flooded a foot deep. One false step and you were down in the water with a busted knee. We went on handing the rocks from one to the next forward in line. We placed them at the tunnel side as best we could to make a causeway. Each rearward rock was lifted, passed forward to become the lead rock. We went on handing the rocks from one to the next forward in line. Always forward..
When Peter Kennedy retired from his position as a consultant physician he was able to rekindle his interest in writing and poetry. He is a founder member of poetrywivenhoe.
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Teoti Jardine: Te Anau Glow Worm Caves
Floating darkly, all bearings lost. Glow worms sprinkled overhead, guide me through. I reached past the why where silence whispers. There, they anchored me..
Teoti Jardine was born in Queenstown New Zealand, of Maori, Irish and Scottish descent. His tribal affiliations are Waitaha, Kati Mamoe, and Kai Tahu. He completed the Hagley Writers Course in 2011, and has poetry published in The Christchurch Press, The Burwood Hospital News Letter, London Grip, Te Panui Runaka, Te Karaka, Ora Nui and Just another arts magazine. His short stories have been published in Flash Frontier’s International Issues, 2013.
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Rob Yates: Well and Water
Outside the well is making great noises as if some titan fish were buried half in its stone wall, half in its water, letting loose godwide gulps of air that upflow and break for surface, burst and sound as the pale, thin rain falls on the poor roof.Rob Yates is currently moving and gardening his way through South-East Asia. He previously came runner-up in Oxford University’s, St Peter’s College McKay Poetry Prize and is in the process of editing his first attempt at a novel, entitled Trumbling Grandsire. He hails from Essex.
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Jan Hutchison: Walking madly in the mountains
my stick makes eccentric decisions without consulting me with a turn of its half-moon neck it kicks off with side-steps sometimes it seduces me with a three-legged flick-and-twist many times we crash on an icy slope - stare up in astonishment the stick measures the length of our footprints I find a crock of cloudberries with my dreaming handJan Hutchison is represented in Essential NZ Poems and many other anthologies. Her most recent poetry collection is The Happiness of Rain.
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Mohammed Kamran: Subterfuge
A sandal thrown into the gutter A knife kept on a kitchen counter Long lines outside the departmental store A shrill noise in the silence of a power cut To have an idea or to be completely clueless about life, about love, about yourself A life lived too fast as if in a daze The blue seas bank heavily on the steady beaches The last eagle over the lighthouse flies in a descending spiral A touch of velvet, and then of thorns Blue eyes in a pure white face A square made out of circles proving nothing’s what it seems Inside out is outside in A calender goes on and on, for pagesMohammed Kamran is currently with the University of Delhi, He has a published novel to his name, Listen to Me (Amazon). He has also been involved with Marxist politics among the students union and traveling in the interior of the country to work with the labourers. In Delhi. He has been writing columns for various social satirical magazines but his artistic ambitions lie with the poetry of images similar to Rimbaud and Verlaine and the psychological prose of Proust and Joyce
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Antony Johae: At First in Kuwait (after Liberation, 1991)
They put me in a hotel close to the airport. From the enclosed room where windows didn’t open and management supplied the air I saw silent cars cross bridges and underpasses or curved clover leaf to join a four-lane highway with large hard shoulder. Further off, blocks reached up to a petrol pall and an unfinished telephone tower into the black of an oil cloud aftermath of Saddam’s sabotage. With curtains buttoned back, an inside window looked down on a foyer where post-war, half-dismantled scaffolding part-revealed Tuscan marble, discreet lights, soft sofas and flowers in vast vases. In glass I dropped to the mezzanine glanced through fingered magazines thick with Dior, Givenchy, and Chanel, eyed the guests lounging, aproned serving girls – pretty and petite the doormen dark, the décor anodyne and thought I might have been elsewhere, or anywhere – at Madrid’s Marriot or Houston’s Hyatt or Holiday Inn, Hilton – but for my contract weighing on me as I waited. Then out of plush-muffled sounds I heard a woman’s cry reach to the roof an ululation so profound it moved me – to another place a distant desert in no city state encampment, water-hole men attired in white children sandal-less on sand black-covered women chatting – and when I returned there was a wedding party making for a hired room and all the while – at once rooted and remote – women shrilling for the sofa-seated couple..
Antony Johae has taught in Africa and the Middle East. Now writing freelance in the UK and Lebanon. This poem comes from an unpublished collection: Poems of the East.
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Nancy Mattson: Honeymoon Flight, circa 1934
This is our honeymoon, so far so true. We packed light: a single valise between us, my new vanity case. Only the essentials for a long weekend in Tripoli. We leave on a wing and a whispered vow never to return to Rome, our jobs in plush quarters, hush-hush. Never again to follow orders, or smile at puffed-up little bosses. Never again to see our village homes or feast at our mammas’ tables. To praise Il Duce for his gifts to Italy? Never again. Yes, we are grateful for his first-class tickets on Ala Littoria, his new airline, that magnificent baby, futuristical, snappy, better than any in Europe, even the world! We will never forget his greasy speech at our wedding feast, his liquid praises to the bride. I’d rather have drowned with a dozen virgins than listen to more. When we are safe in the air we will laugh, free as swifts or swallows, even eagles! Not yet. We are still on the tarmac, hat brims down, chins to chests, your hands jammed deep in the pockets of your trenchcoat, your belt knotted tight as the grip I must keep on my blood-red handbag. Such soft kid..
Nancy Mattson flew over seven time zones when she moved from western Canada to London in 1990. Her third full-length collection, Finns and Amazons (Arrowhead Press, 2012), begins with poems inspired by some early twentieth century Russian women artists but develops into a poetic search for her Finnish great-aunt who disappeared in 1939 in Stalinist Russia.
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Ian C Smith: The man who wasn’t there
He has a knack of avoiding weddings; a dog dying, an expensive flight booked. When reviewed together, a dossier of excuses. It is not just weddings as anathema. Christmases, birthdays, trigger the effect cruising police cars impose on the guilty. His is the face missing in group photographs yet when he does mix he passes scrutiny. If cornered by the insistent camera his look is serious, a dust-jacket portrait. In photographs of his own weddings which he barely attended, his mute grimaces, failed smiles in mouldering albums, filed evidence, could almost be presciently photoshopped. When asked by a son how he proposed he said he only became betrothed in leap years, absolving himself of the consequences and the rash optimism of wives in one succinct sentence. On anniversaries that pass in silence does he press his face against a window hearing strange songs of wrong-doing, arms hanging limp, scorched throat aching, or is his meticulous exile sweet?.
Ian C Smith’s work has appeared in The Best Australian Poetry, London Grip, New Contrast, Poetry Salzburg Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, The Weekend Australian & Westerly. His latest book is Here Where I Work,Ginninderra Press (Adelaide). He lives in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, Australia.
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Mary Franklin: Fear of Ghosts
I am Shuswap. When my husband died I knew what I had to do. I dug a hole in the ground covered it with brush and tree trunks, sweated there all night. At dawn, I bathed in a nearby creek rubbing my body with branches of spruce, needle tips broken, damp upon my skin, smelling of skunk. I stuck them in the ground around my wigwam, listened to their wind-blown swish, swish, swish. Hunters would not come near for fear of bad luck. Illness could strike anyone my shadow fell upon. That summer I slept on a bed of thorn bushes thrown on the floor to keep his ghost away. One winter day I crept into the potlatch, my heart pounding like a wolf's snared in a trap. I caught the elder's eye. He nodded and I took my place once again among my people..
Mary Franklin has had poems published in various poetry journals, anthologies and ezines in the UK, Canada, Australia and the USA.
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Colin Bancroft: Absence
It is as though the world is aware of yours And mirrors it with its own. No sun. No sky. Just the blank canvas Of fog, primed with rain – Stretched across the fallen easel of the moor That drops off beyond the hedgerow to nothing. Trees loom as ragged patterns cut From this fine cloth of mist. Sounds muffle in this hush; Hearing the crackle and whir of tyres on the road Is like listening to a recording of an empty room. An absence looped over and over and.
Colin Bancroft is currently studying for an MA in Poetry at Manchester Metropolitan University. He has previously had poems published in The Copperfield Review and Broken Wine Magazine. He has also been shortlisted for both the Manchester Bridgewater Prize and the New Holland Press competition.
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David Flynn: Hired Man
He wasn't working. Out. He wasn't tried and true. I didn't like him. One bit. You didn't like his face. You didn't like. His smell. Rotted apples. Sweetish. Rancid. Son of a bitch. He stole our money. He stole our car. Away. They found him deader than our love. Is dead. They said he suffered a stroke. I say. He just got too mean. Now what do we do. Stuck with no car. Stuck in our house. Now what do we do..
David Flynn was born in the textile mill company town of Bemis, TN. His jobs have included newspaper reporter, magazine editor and university teacher. He has five degrees and is both a Fulbright Senior Scholar and a Fulbright Senior Specialist currently on the roster. His literary publications total more than one hundred and forty. David Flynn’s writing blog, where he posts a new story and poem every month, is at http://writing-flynn.blogspot.com/
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Christopher Mulrooney: Fudd of Sheffield
at home with Boudica or as she says Bulldyke guardian of the ancient pens he wallops around the venerable city like a cod long-shanked gravel-eyed electrified as to his step he knows all the latest and the earliest too their adopted son The Green Man of sorts mainly out a cold-blooded vegetable sort of lout and all the stodgy gets who are their friends in pub at Sheffield where the long knives come from.
Christopher Mulrooney is the author of symphony (The Moon Publishing & Printing), flotilla (Ood Press), viceroy (Kind of a Hurricane Press), and jamboree (Turf Lane Press, forthcoming). His work has recently appeared in The Interpreter’s House, West Wind Review, Zettel, Indefinite Space, California Quarterly, Soliloquies, Inscape, The Southampton Review, and Meat for Tea: The Valley Review.
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F.M. Brown: On A Balcony In Nice
(after hearing a song by Francois Poulenc)
I'm on a broad balcony in Nice A gauzy breeze persuades the perfume of the young mimosa Up to where I stand And induces excitement and a final appearance of life In the desiccated scraps of older blossoms Scratching over the courtyard flagstones Beside me with no umbrella to eclipse it The furniture glows so dazzling white It seems to have a luminescence of its own On the table breakfast is set And a Swedish glass jug Filled with fresh orange juice I sip from a matching misted tumbler One hand resting on a chair back I stare out At a view which on other days I would find Breathtaking or a subject for meditation, even an inspiration Today it is just a backdrop And no more significant It might as well be Manchester Except then we would need a brolly And the whites wouldn't be quite so bright I am waiting for a young man At least they tell me he's young I know his face I have seen a photograph I know his name Thiery Lady, the song says Now you are too old to attract a lover But not yet grown out of wanting love There is only one answer for you Take a gigolo Thiery, I will say Come in Orange juice for you? I will appear impassive, controlled As I scrutinise his looks His manner His suitability for my purposes Will he examine me for possible pleasure Or purely for potential profit? Will I deceive myself he could grow to love me? No, no. Don't answer the bell, Marie. Tell him that Madame is not at home. Do your hear me, Marie? Shake yourself, woman. Pull yourself together. This is Manchester. That's the milkman at the door. Go and pay him And wipe that silly look off your face. Morning, Terry. What's the damage? Bit steep this week, Mrs. Stone. Yes, that'll be all that extra orange juice..
FM Brown was born in Sheffield but had to come south to soft Bedfordshire to begin writing poetry
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Sarah Doyle: The Philosophy of Stone
Sticks and stones may break my bones. No moss upon those Rolling Stones. Tombstone. Ragstone. Kerbstone. Flagstone. Heart of stone. Whetstone. Hearthstone. Headstone. Silverstone. Stonewear. Sword-in-stone. Stony stare. Millstone. Milestone. Paving stone. Bile stone. Let he who is without sin cast the first – Stone deaf. Stone cold. Stone Age (very old). Stepping stone. Moonstone. Standing stone. Rune stone. Birthstone. Gravestone. Stone Roses (rave stone?). Limestone. Yellowstone. Gemstone. Rosetta Stone – Talk like an E-gyp-tian… Dry stone. Copestone. Sharon Stone. Soapstone. Gallstone. Freestone. Kidney stone. Keystone. Stone-broke. Toadstone. Breaking stone. Lodestone. Stone-head. Stone basin. Hailstone. Stone mason. Those who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw – Stone the crows! Stone me! Stonewall penalty! Stonehenge. Rhinestone. Lose a stone? Grindstone. Blarney stone. Brimstone. Fred and Wilma Flintstone. Sandstone. Touchstone. And in this poem – much stone.
Sarah Doyle has been published in journals such as Poetry News, Orbis, The New Writer and The Dawntreader, and placed in various competitions. She is Poet-in-Residence to the Pre-Raphaelite Society, and co-hosts Rhyme and Rhythm Jazz-Poetry Club at Enfield’s Dugdale Theatre. www.sarahdoyle.co.uk
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Allen Ashley: End of the Line
Now you’re painted in a corner, your line’s finished with “love”; you’re digging in the dictionary with “glove”, “dove” and “above”. You’ve angered Keats and Wordsworth, so steal from Harry Beck a way to take the poem on you’ve salvaged from the wreck. Don’t put love at the end of the line – too late the realisation: nothing fits and nothing rhymes except for termination. Don’t put love at the end of the line – too frequently she tends to be beyond your Oystercard; suspended at weekends. Brixton, Barking, Epping, Morden, all the way to Rayners Lane. Your car’s in hock, the night is young, you must catch the final train. Don’t put love at the end of the line – you’re left with one route out. If it’s High Barnet or Cockfosters, she knows you’re heading south..
Allen Ashley works as a writer, editor, poet, writing tutor, critical reader and event host. He runs five writing groups including Clockhouse London Writers. www.allenashley.com
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Robert Nisbet: Mermaid
Two decorators. Both of them drink, play cricket locally. Today, re-painting the large oak sign outside the Mermaid Inn. She reaches them, a little before noon, holiday-clad, a pretty girl, whose legs send their senses staggering with joy. Their thoughts click. She’s been on the box. Their memories sift like buzz-saws through their culture’s schedules. An early-evening sitcom. Barmaid. Sophie. Warm heart and cleavage. The smiles they force lie hushed upon their faces, as she moves, in her aura, through to the bar. She says ‘Hi’. They return now to their task, in turn flick brush strokes meaningfully on their slippery girl’s historic smile, her stylized breasts, her tail..
Robert Nisbet was for some years an associate lecturer in creative writing at Trinity College, Carmarthen. His short stories appear in his collection Downtrain (Parthian, 2004) and in Story II (Parthian, 2014), his poems in Merlin’s Lane (Prolebooks, 2011
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Michael Thomas: many mansions
the shepherdess on the mantel looks up to heaventhinks about the promise of a house its many mansionswonders if there’s a mansion for her at least a roomonce her soul sheds her brass body with a quicksilver tearand if in fact she will like sitting fingers threadedin boxy air imagining others pent adjacentlydecorously walled folded on themselves stainless vesturegiven that the life for which she was made was all about hillsbushes black with rain sopping tresses ewes pinned in thornand sky lots of sky and never a roomsave the farmer’s of an evening ale and repletioncandle-fire miles away over bony grassfrom where she dealt with blood with real lambs dying.
Michael Thomas’s latest novel is Pilgrims at the White Horizon. His recent poetry collections include Batman’s Hill, South Staffs and The Girl from Midfoxfields. A new collection, Come to Pass, is forthcoming in 2014. His poetry and prose have appeared in The Antioch Review, Critical Survey, The London Magazine and the TLS. He is currently working on Nowherian, the memoirs of Grenadian traveller, Henderson Bray .
www.michaelwthomas.co.uk
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Kerrin P Sharpe: answering the call
i) the working drawings the drawings move from the tracing house to work the great bellows of the cathedral so the geometry of the air stays holy so the plans of small fish in this upturned boat become prayer ii) why talk to the bellows boy when you can speak to the blacksmith now my tongue is iron all 27 bones in my hands are quick-tempered birds here in the forge of the forest it takes 3 days to read the paper I would rather speak Polish than sign the sad hymns of fire when I saddle my carthorse my cold chisels and hammers close their dark wings only church bells nod to me iii) last supper in Venice on the dome of St Mark’s the air is so thin pigeons are breathless my wings are rungs of medals pinned to my singlet I fall with the rhythm of rowing into long narrow light bridges sigh like single oars no one expects me alive except my gondola and the jacket from my army days I call salvation iv) between the feet of angels between the feet of angels air is always the colour of holiness 1 part sand 2 parts fern And beechwood it’s not easy to coax a river into a spine of windows and often after the dance between lead and light our hats are the stars you point at.
Kerrin P. Sharpe’s first book three days in a wishing well was published by VUP in 2012. Her work appeared in Oxford Poets 13 (Carcanet). Another book, there’s a medical name for this is forthcoming from VUP in August 2014.
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