This issue of London Grip New Poetry features poems by:
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*Stephen Bone *Anthony Costello *Edward Mycue
*Ben Banyard *Derek Adams *Danielle Hope
*Imogen Forster *Pam Job *Ajise Vincent *Peter Phillips
*James W Wood *Antony Johae  *Norbert Hirschhorn
*Genevieve Scanlan *Tanya Nightingale *Kat Soini
*Katherine Venn *Jan Hutchison *Peter Branson
*Teoti Jardine *Ian C Smith *Jeni Curtis *Maggie Butt
*Ian Humphreys *Myra Schneider
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Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors
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A printer-friendly version of London Grip New Poetry can be obtained at LG New Poetry Summer 2015
Please send submissions to poetry@londongrip.co.uk, enclosing no more than three poems and a brief, 2-3 line, biography
Editor’s introduction
This summer edition of London Grip New Poetry is the first one to celebrate itself with a launch reading. Enfield Poets have been generous enough to invite us to perform on June 6th at their welcoming venue in the Dugdale Centre. London Grip will be (future tense is still appropriate at the time of publication) represented by Derek Adams, Stephen Bone, Maggie Butt and Katherine Venn, all of whom appear in this current LGNP posting (and also in previous issues). A unique selling point in this event is that each of our featured readers has been asked to choose and perform a couple of poems by one of the excellent overseas poets published in LGNP during the last four years. I am very pleased that we have been able to present to English audiences some fine poets from Africa, Asia, Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the United States. And of course the on-line international nature of London Grip means that we have also been introducing Australian poets to Canadian readers, Asian poets to North American ones and English poets to audiences everywhere!
We hope this summer launch reading will not  be a one-off event and would welcome invitations from other poetry venues for future issues.
it is probable that many of our readers will identify our cover image as the tomato plant painting referred to in the poem ‘Picasso’s Studio’ by Derek Adams.
Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
http://mikeb-b.blogspot.com/
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Stephen Bone: Boyhood Of Senesino
Tremulous as a pot-bound hare â
never before so close to wealth and title â
I poured into pomade-scented air
the gift God had graced me.
Pierced the spangled matrons' granite hearts,
drew from grown men a drip
of tears with songs of ache and loss;
then with a seamless switch slipped
into laughing coloratura, skylark notes
that threatened the Murano bowls,
panels of quicksilvered glass. Even my father,
face a map of hardship, swagged a smile,
weight of a heavy purse already in his hand,
eyes glinting like polished knives.
Senesino (1686-1758 ) was a celebrated Italian castrato
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Stephen Bone: Not out of the woods yet
Left with this, I watch the scribble of your heart its flashed beat and I will you to hack through branches dense undergrowth to reach open ground, green and shadowless.
Stephen Bone’s work has appeared in various journals in the U.K. and U.S. including And Other Poems, Hinterland, London Grip, Seam, Shotglass, Smiths knoll, Snakeskin,The Interpreter’s House, The lake and The Rialto. Most recently in Ink,Sweat&Tears and Clear Poetry. First collection In The Cinema,published by Playdead Press 2014.
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Anthony Costello: Rapture
How the word can snatch away like a bird of prey; say it quickly and eagles & hawks appear, the owl in flight, a hollow call, the dread of something feathered in the woods with your face on it â bliss, a rare bird calling from afar.
Anthony Costello’s first collection of poems, The Mask, was published in October, 2014 by Lapwing Publications, Belfast.
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Edward Mycue: Necessary Conditions
Many of us could never go home even when we had not left it. Home is a windsong in our hearts. These hearts have exploded, repositioned themselves, ending as much the mends themselves as the remaindered hearts. The heart needs permission to come home where contritionâs not expected, and explanation is enough.
Edward Mycue has lived in San Francisco, CA since 1970. He was born 1937 in Niagara Falls, raised in Dallas from age 11 with school there and Boston. His first book was Damage Within The Community. In 1979 came The Singing Man My Father Gave Me from Anthony Rudolf’s Menard Press in London. Mindwalking, selected poems, came out in 2008 and Song Of San Francisco in 2012.
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Ben Banyard: Darkroom
After she died, he tried it for size; not much more than a coal hole, a cramped cell, yet here heâd documented the family. He took a fresh brew to the lounge with his books of negatives and contact sheets and peered at the images with a magnifying glass. Here his sonâs eleventh birthday, his daughter, small and serious in a tutu and there his wife, a tiny smiling profile. There were dozens of pictures he hadnât printed and later, bathed in red light, he held his breath as he rocked her face back into life.
Ben Banyard lives in Portishead, where he writes poetry and short fiction. His work has appeared in print and online in Popshot Magazine, Lunar Poetry, Sarasvati, Ink Sweat & Tears, Snakeskin, The Stare’s Nest and others. Ben edits Clear Poetry, a blog publishing accessible contemporary poetry every Monday and Thursday
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Derek Adams: December Morn, 1915
after a photograph by Theodore Miller
The snow is not deep but my sneakers are thin, toes already numb. Papaâs camera is prepared, stood on three wooden legs that do not shake like mine. White arms close to my side, hands balled into fists, teeth gritted to stop them chattering. âKeep still Li-Li and do not smile.â I do not smile. I think about going indoors: putting all my clothes back on, the hot chocolate Papa has promised. He inserts a glass plate in the camera. Uncovers, counts two, then covers the lens, says âI will call this one December Morn.â
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Derek Adams: Picassoâs Studio
âPicasso and I fell into each othersâ arms and between laughter and tears and having my bottom pinched and my hair mussed we exchanged newsâŚâ Lee Miller. Vogue October 1944
He takes my hand, pulls me into the studio. Shows me the this and the that of it. A portrait of Nusch Eluard on a scrap torn from a paper tablecloth, coloured with fruit and vegetable juice. Eight canvases, some still wet, of the tomato plant on the windowsill his new favourite model. I pick one of its small soft ripe fruits pop it in my mouth. Picasso scowls. I explain, âI love the idea of eating art.â
Derek Adams is a professional photographer who writes poetry because he has to! He has published 3 collections of poetry; the most recent unconcerned, but not indifferent is a poetry portrait of the surrealist artist Man Ray. He has an M.A. in creative and life writing from Goldsmiths.
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Danielle Hope: Sower
1888 Van Gogh
Extinct now, this man that under the dinner-plate sun scatters grain from his right hand. Rising from a purple sea of furrows he is the blackness of a lone tree branches barely dawning in yellow buds. If the crows will eat elsewhere as daylight lengthens he can watch his gems grow. Others now ride the new sowers â bright red machines toil the hours â gold grains carted in trucks and ships. Gone is his muscled finger and hunched back, his head bent to blue earth, cap pulled down, left hand clasping tightly.
Danielle Hope is a poet and doctor, originally from Lancashire, now living in London. She founded and edited Zenos, a British and international poetry magazine, worked for Survivorsâ poetry, and is currently advisory editor for Acumen Literary Magazine. Her work has been published widely in magazines, anthologies and on the London Underground. She has published 4 collections with Rockingham press. Website www.daniellehope.org
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Imogen Forster: Storks on a roof, Figueres
Four storks â three white, one black â on an ordinary high, flat roof. White, with his black wings, is not purely white, while Black is all black but for his white belly and his scarlet bill and legs. These are two birds from a manuscriptâs margins, an illuminatorâs idle sketch. They stand as if carved in oak, heraldic birds set like watchmen at the ends of a pew or the tall, finger-weathered pieces of a giantâs board game. Back to back, face to face, formal and comical, and as utterly still as the knot of people who stand gazing up at them.
Imogen Forster is a translator, mainly of art history, and publishes poems on-line and in print. She posts haiku on Twitter as @ForsterImogen.
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Pam Job: Highwire Act
Now the funambulists are back in town bringing their golden birds and rainbow kites to fly like thunderclouds over the heads of the crowd. Air is their world and they will show us how to navigate uncertainties, how to juggle our lives between sparkle and sequins, between the light of the moon and the spotlights. They will demonstrate balance as an attitude while spanning the griefs that divide us. Remember, we are looking for ourselves, for our reflections in mirrors held up by the clowns.
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Pam Job: Me and Kim Jong Un
Bring your notes, my writing buddies said. Itâs always good to see your work in process. I read at random: Bacon shows the self for what it is. Then: Subway in New York is more diaristic because of the pressure of time. I look gnomic, carry on: A quiet creeps into your work of still looking but her time and the rhythm is more lulling. It did seem important that Camille Pissarro was born in the Caribbean and that Elizabeth Bishop was preoccupied with figuring maps of places we inhabit. Bits of my mind fluttering away, chattering to themselves and me, trying now to net them. How about: the symbolic act â there was no Gulf War. I could try to re-write history as poetry, deny it all, right back to Eden. Somehow that seems a dishonesty. Then I think of Kim Jong Un, surrounded by his men taking notes of every word he says. They'll end up with stuff like mine, nonsense strewn on every page, but they are paid to turn it into song.
Pam Job has won awards in several poetry competitions and has co-edited four anthologies, most recently KJV: Old Text – New Poetry (2011) for the 400th anniversary of the publication of the KIng James Version of the Bible and so too have the doves gon‘ (2014), reflections on the theme of conflict to commemorate the centenary of WW1. Her poems have been published in Acumen, The French Literary Review, Artemis and  an anthology of Essex poems. She helps organise Poetry Wivenhoe, a live monthly poetry event in Essex.
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Ajise Vincent: The Elders
The elders of my land aren't groomers of dreams neither are they waterers of visions they are termites who feast on seeds meant to feed posterity. The elders of my land are not wise men with grey hair whose grandeur seeks peace at the birth of dawn and solitude at the demise of dusk they are mediocrities who propagate diatribes to boost their fame. The elders of my land are not seers who make forecasts neither are they prophets of truth they are pharisees of doom who deserve to go blind on their way to Damascus.
Ajise Vincent is an undergraduate of Economics at a prestigious University in Nigeria. He is a contributor to various online and print magazines.
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Peter Phillips: Ukraine Sunflower
Dogs were howling. I donât know what breed but something like wolves; so maybe Alsatians. They wouldnât stop, their noise was contagious. Soon, we were all weeping. When they came, we quietened, but not the dogs. Soldiers picked through our debris-scorched field. Most wore balaclavas. Only yesterday, children had skipped through us, laughing at how tall we were. We donât feel tall now. Soon trucks arrived, more soldiers. The dead were found, their pockets emptied. Dogs kept howling. Pieces of the plane were scattered, some crushed us. I said, Can we still be called Sunflowers? And the dogs? They were shot.
Peter Phillips‘ fifth collection was Oscar and I, confessions of a minor poet (Ward Wood Publishing, 2013). He is currently writing a series of poems called Saying it with Flowers.
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James W Wood: Gush
A dry season
and the dust
settles hard on the riverbed:
no water for miles. Atmospheres
thicken with the tang of rain,
clouds boil, skies blur into slate, a breeze
keens through the hills, the klaxon
of a deluge coming. And though longed for, it frightens:
livestock disappear, men
take cover in shacks, huddling
for protection. Drop, drop,
the fat
and fatter, the hiss and stream
from trickle to torment, the gloop and splatter
of water on glass. Mud
rages through the gulch, branches drown
and the river thickens as its tributaries
thunder into chorus. This year
will be good for us, be good to us, be good
O Gods, they say.
. Some days later
the rain has buried its madness in the river,
the sun teases seeds into life, cattle
lap at the riverbank, and men
give thanks that itâs all over
for another year. The Gods are just
but they need a little coaxing:
this ancient cycle of prayer and deliverance,
those heads bowed low. That need for forgiveness.
James Woodâs recent work has appeared or is forthcoming in The North, Stand, Under the Radar and other publications in North America and the UK. His first collection, The Anvil’s Prayer, was published in 2013; ‘Gush’ is taken from his second collection.
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Antony Johae: Spinning a Tale
Passing through west-Essex villages, Iâm on the bus to the airport for flight to Lebanon. Thereâs a money-spider on my cap. Itâs dangling from the peak in front of my eyes. As I check in, it seems heâs chosen to fly with me. Does this mean heâll bring me luck? After Passport Control, we are stopped. A big black dog sniffs my bag for cash. Heâs not onto my money-spider. We are let through to the Gate. Now weâre aboard and my money-spiderâs dangling again. If heâs bound for Beirut, I wonder where heâll be staying. At Five-Star Phoenicia?
Antony Johae divides his time between Lebanon and the United Kingdom. His Poems of the East will be published by Gipping Press in summer 2015.
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Norbert Hirschhorn: Jebel Kneissa, Lebanon
An eastern glow haloes dun-coloured Cathedral Mountain, spreading light to hill tops, grape vines, umbrella pines â all dialects of green â then touches down to the valley below. A cockerel cries the dawn. Our neighbour hawks his morning cough, childrenâs sleepy voices stir. Syrian labourers walk the road and the village tannoy proclaims this dayâs necessities. Someoneâs chopping parsley. All is well. Safely rise. God is nigh.
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Norbert Hirschhorn: The Disappeared
What makes us human is soil. Even landfill of bones, shredded jeans; mass graves paved over for parking. What makes us human are portraits â graduation, weddings â mounted in house shrines and on fliers, Have You Seen? Names inscribed around memorial pools or incised on granite. Names waiting, waiting for that slide of DNA, or any piece of flesh -- for the haunted to be put to rest. What makes us human is soil. To stare into a hole in the ground, fill with the deceased, throw earth down, place a stone. Bread. Salt.
For Fouad Mohammed Fouad
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Norbert Hirschhorn is an international public health physician, living in Lebanon and the UK; commended by President Bill Clinton as an âAmerican Health Hero.â He is as well a published poet, his poems appearing in four full collections. ‘The Disappeared’ was Highly Commended in the 2015 Torriano poetry competition.See www.bertzpoet.com.
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Genevieve Scanlan: Salt
I don't have a prayer for this. I don't know a song that fits. If I thought prayers worked I wouldn't need one â I'd know things were all well in hand. But there should be a prayer for standing cold in the steam of your parents' drab bathroom. For finding that home is also a house, built according to outdated codes. There should be a prayer for finding things saved to the Desktop of your Dad's computer: cartoon women in burqas beside cartoon women in less â plus articles on 'liberal feminist lies'. I reject the Father God but still I wish there was a prayer - to transubstantiate fear into some holy communion. We've been needing one as long as we've had burqas. We've been needing one as long as we've had skin. Ever since Lot's wife turned her gaze to what the Father deemed salacious and became a pillar: firm, but streaked with salt.
Genevieve Scanlan lives in Dunedin, New Zealand, where she recently completed an MA in English. She has had poems published in Poetry New Zealand and The Otago Daily Times
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Tanya Nightingale: Gold
We grind our way to hell upon a rope With just one death a week, if weâre in luck. Each time the boss appears, we watch his skin. (He's here one sweatless hour, once each month.) "Nine tonnes, this year!" he yells. âMore weight, more pay!" The chains they lust for have us by the throat. The same set words are coiled inside his throat. How slick they are, how easy, on their rope: "A close community, and such good pay!" One man has lost a kidney; that's his luck, One man goes deaf. His last cheque comes this month. The sweat that drenched us freezes on our skin. Her future is as close as her own skin. The home she cannot own tied round her throat. A happy bride, she celebrates this month, Then braids her hair in secret, hides her rope. Her parents praise her wisdom and her luck. Her gift is more secure than all his pay. To prove celebrity, stars wear their pay. The ornaments they flaunt have moved from skin To fronting rappers' teeth when strutting Luck Breaks out her smile. It weights their ears, their throats. If gilded, you could sell a hangmanâs rope. Great Pluto, make me Midas for a month! When Croesus measured out pure discs each month His subjects took the king's face home as pay. The Incas saw the glory not the rope So did not fear the strangers' fevered skin. The pirates took their ransom and slit throats, Then strung them from their shining trees of luck. The oldest sign of romance and good luck Needs eighty tonnes of cyanide each month. "My God! Iâd kill to wear that!" What slight throat Would not look great with this on? Where's my pay?â We all romance the chain under the skin, Chase Lucifer's commodity, his rope. Reserves and luck run out. Weâll give our pay For just one month in someone elseâs skin. Our throats sold to this solid sun, tight rope.
Tanya Nightingale won the Yorkshire Open Poetry Competition in 2008. She is Reviews Editor for Dream Catcher Magazine and has had poetry published in Orbis , Acumen, Other Poetry and Poetry Nottingham, amongst others. She appeared as guest writer on Helen Burkeâs radio show âWord Saladâ for East Leeds FM (twice) and has performed in International Womenâs Week with Real People Theatre. Tanya performed with Rose Drew in âSheâs the Cultured Oneâ at the Edinburgh Fringe in 2011, at the Galtres Festival in July 2013 and a specially-commissioned show at the Keats Shelley House in Rome in May 2014.
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Kat Soini: Shaped Like Care
The best lies happen just like this: Youâre in the street corner, smoking your last cigarette, and I have a gun, shaped like a proposal, shaped like a twenty pound note. Itâs raining, just like this: Youâre wet all over, teeth bared. Iâm going to pretend itâs a permission, shaped like a smile, stretched thin like oil over water. You bleed, just like this: Itâs not an accident. Iâm too careful, I care too much, look at me, look, I have stitches for your scratches, for your careless snatches of free will. The night ends, just like this: You say thank you and your face is wet, all over. You have a smile, shaped like a gun and I have a proposal to pull the trigger, again.
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Kat Soini: Resolute
I went walking, trying to forget your October skin. In the still distant dawn the grass cried all over my bare feet, mourning us. I have made this decision a hundred times, and unmade it hundred and one. The sky was no colour I could name. It followed me to the river greeting it like a lover, back from the war. I have thought things through, and then felt them, then thought them again. The land knew me still and it knew me running. Measureless roads echoed with time. I have questioned my choices and regretted nothing.
Kat Soini is a Finn living in the UK, trying to keep a foot in each country but often falling somewhere in between. An over-educated academic by day, sheâs been writing fiction and poetry for a long time and is finally getting organised enough to actually put it out there for strangers to read. Recent publications can be found in poetandgeek.com, The Missing Slate and Glitterwolf. A geek at heart, she is fond of all things otherworldly as well as woolly socks, cats, tulips and cinnamon-hazelnut coffee. Kat blogs at https://katsoini.wordpress.com
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Katherine Venn: Ascent
Tonight we take the slow approach, ambling hand in hand toward the rock weâre here to clamber. We search its surface for the clues that will take us to the top: the climbing that we do is still on sight, each time new, a puzzle that we labour over. You take the lead and I follow after, roped together by our desire: the slow burn of friendship pushes us up, turns downward force on the boulderâs lip into this slow and measured movement forward, a mutual pulling upward, your fingers searching for a cleft to haul us up on, using the bodyâs friction; making cunning hooks of heels and toes, wedged into cracks and fissures of the rock, hands fumbling to find a route, the hidden hold that will take our weight, and lead us to the summit â until we come to it, and each otherâs eyes, where we bivouac for the night under the friendly bedspread sky.
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Katherine Venn: The garden
Last night I dreamt I walked the garden that my parents planted. It was just as I remembered and more than it had ever been â its pond bright with the flash of fish roses climbing on a sunny wall the tumbledown greenhouse restored with all its pipes and tricks. The words surfaced slowly like someone whispering in my ear: they tended their acre. Now itâs up to you to find your own work here.
Katherine Venn was born in London and studied English Literature and Language at Oxford. She now works in London in publishing but took a year out do creative writing MA at UEA, taking the poetry strand.. She has been published in the Duino International Poetry Competitionâs anthology, Roads; in the UEA anthology Eight Poets: 2009; on the Caught by the River website, as well as in London Grip ,Magma and Third Way. For several years she coordinated the literature programme for Greenbelt arts festival
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Jan Hutchison: The Keeper
after a stone carving at Bollingen
During the first part of my life the dwarf stood outside its den in the garden its spine was rigid its mouth swelled in a dolphin pout during the second part of my life its kettledrum thighs pounded out judgements I crouched among the willows and the silence of a question blew through me in the third part of my life the dwarf was wounded by a flint and I was its keeper I learned language from the inside the words I'd surrendered the word I would not
This poem’s source is a stone in Jung’s garden at Bollingen. Jung hewed at a small stone he possessed and noticed a circle on the surface like an eye and carved out a tiny man, a homunculus. He thought it represented both youth and age and lived in the innermost soul of man. It roamed through the unconscious soul and pointed to the gates of the sun and to the land of dreams. The poem responds to this in a personal way.
Jan Hutchison is a New Zealand poet who is published widely. Recent collections of her poetry are The Happiness of Rain and Days among Trees
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Peter Branson: Anno Dominoes
As churchyard walks are paved with hand-me-downs from graves, immutable as lichen on old tombs, they lay their runes to suit the rule. These days itâs dominoes, town centre pub. One knocks. Four warders on death watch, dots float before those rheumy eyes, dust motes on shrouds. Once wrecking balls, gaze molten ice, dead-end, drop-out, their cause defiance, these roaring boys on motorbikes, they slow to gentle stall, like bowling jacks, one, every now and then, kicked into touch, black-balled, so wait their turn to frown and feign surprise, as, close of day, the landlord rings his passing bell, three strikes; invokes headmaster, foreman, magistrate.
Peter Branson’s poetry has been published in Acumen, Agenda, Ambit, Anon, Envoi, The London Magazine, The North, Prole, The Warwick Review, Iota, The Frogmore Papers, SOUTH, Crannog, THE SHOp, Rattle, The Raintown Review, The Columbia Review, The Huston Poetry Review, Barnwood and Other Poetry; his latest book is Red Hill, Selected Poems, 2000-2012, published by Lapwing, May 2013.
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Teoti Jardine: Having The Time And Space
clouds describe themselves against the blue
changing shape before I read their meaning
the warm and solid earth eases against my
back as I lie and look past them beyond the
blue where thoughts can find no holding place
Iâm on the bank above the old Purau Stock Track
the snorting shuffle of cattle and sheep still echoes
from years long gone my dog Amie pricks her ears
and lifts her nose she can see them passing by
off to a fresh pasture or perhaps the Works
our view is framed by the green of pine trees giving
the blue sky its proud display where a Monarch
Butterflyâs orange and black startles through and
higher still a hawk sees we are not carrion weâre alive
grateful for the time and space to lie here looking
Teoti Jardine is of Maori, Irish and Scottish decent. His tribal affiliations are: Waitaha, Kati Mamoe, Kai Tahu. He attended the Hagley Writers School in 2011 and his poetry has been published in the Christchurch Press, London Grip, Te Karaka, Ora Nui, Catalyst, and JAAM. He had short stories published in the International Issues of Flash Frontier 2013. He is member of the Canterbury Poets Collective Committee. At the moment he and his dog Amie are of no fixed abode.
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Ian C Smith: A Filigree of Fog Rising
Running a bath qualifies as noisy here where distant neighbours tend secrets, a carâs arrival, door closing, trumpeted fanfares. I rehearse phrases to disdainful cats, the donkeys a better audience, all ears. Bold currawongs plunder the catsâ leftovers. On still mornings I listen to the river rushing and chattering much like those who have visited places, or are about to. Excessive recent snow in the mountains will make that river babble like Marco Polo, I joke to the gentle jenny. On my daily dreamy walk I take care skirting a sinkhole I named Dragonâs Lair when my boys were small and I was impressionable. I fear reaching the edge of consciousness, familiar canopy of sky darkening, rephrasing embarrassed unheard cries.
Ian C Smithâs work has appeared in, Australian Poetry Journal, New Contrast, Poetry Salzburg Review, Quarterly Literary Review Singapore, Rabbit Journal, The Weekend Australian & Westerly. His seventh book is wonder sadness madness joy, Ginninderra (Port Adelaide). He lives in the Gippsland Lakes area of Victoria, Australia.
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Jeni Curtis: Ghost horse
I arrive at the field too late
blood gilding my hooves. The ale wives,
the cutpurses, the layers out of bodies
here no longer.
All is silent. Low cloud
weaves, wreathes the trees, scarfs
across the ground, silvered
silk in the moonlight.
An owl cries.
They took his body, punctured
with wounds, pierced with indignities,
broken; crowns whether
gold or thorns come at a cost.
Next year the harvest will
be gathered in as usual and I
will eat fresh hay.
Kings ascend, descend;
world and wheel move on â
poor Richard
for he is gone.
Jeni Curtis is a teacher and writer from Christchurch, New Zealand. She has a keen interest in Victorian literature and history. She is a member of the Christchurch branch of the International Dickens Fellowship, and editor of their magazine, Dickens Down Under. She has published poems, short prose pieces and short stories in various publications including the ChristchurchPress, Takehe, JAAM, the Quick Brown Dog, NZPS anthology 2014, and 4th Floor. She is secretary of the Christchurch Poetsâ Collective.
The image of Richard III by Andrew Jamieson was commissioned by the  Richard III Society.
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Maggie Butt: Do Not Pass Go
A red dot on Free Parking was the clue that worlds-away in Leeds a girl at Waddingtonâs had boxed a huge Get Out of Gaol Free card, the chance to step back into Baker Street. The Red Cross parcelâs tins of margarine and processed cheese were grabbed to feed their grinding hunger, but Monopoly was opened gingerly â to feed their fragile hope. A sentry posted on the hut, the game afoot. Mayfair-level banknotes for every country theyâd creep through, folded in the pile of top-hat money. A compass. Silk maps stuffed in the hotels, imprinted with: the railway routes which chug across a continent towards the sooty scent and rush hour roar of Fenchurch Street; the hills and rivers which split the Stalag from the Strand; dark forests and wide plains which open to the Old Kent Road. Do Not Pass Go.
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Maggie Butt: In Praise of Beaches
For they fill and empty with human tide For wives of fishermen have watched upon them For hollyhocks and valerian may flower upon them For they have the power to make me lie down and rest For the incoming tide will not let me oversleep For they give leave for us to read in public For the air is thick with the salted words For they smell of coconut and ice cream For they add crunch to sandwiches For the generations may mix freely For girls shall anoint each otherâs backs with oil For children may shriek without reprimand For students check into them in lieu of hotel rooms For sun umbrellas shall blossom in primary-school colours For the shade of an umbrella is enough For they have necessitated the invention of the wind-break For bodies of all shapes are unabashed For one may compare oneâs thighs, both favourably and unfavourably For they come in flavours of pebble, shingle and sand For they may be black, white, yellow or red For they glitter with the powder of seashells For small clouds shall pretend to be smoke-signals For sunsets stain them implausible shades of fushcia and gold For light-houses may wink protectively over them For they lend themselves to walking and thinking For plovers will pity the curlewsâ lament For the unwanted and forgotten is washed up on them For the terminally lonely may leave their clothes in a neat pile
Maggie Buttâs fifth poetry collection, Degrees of Twilight, is due from The London Magazine Editions and follows the illustratedSancti Clandestini â Undercover Saints and Ally Pally Prison Camp. Maggie is an ex journalist and BBC TV producer living in London. http://www.maggiebutt.co.uk
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Ian Humphreys: The housewifeâs saviour
The slowcooker seemed like the housewifeâs saviour. Pop in some chops, some stock, some bits and bobs of veg, a wedge of bone for gravy flavour. The slowcooker steamed â oh housewifeâs saviour! She bought the device as she thought it might save her lots and lots of time and fuss and washing up. The slowcooker seemed like the housewifeâs saviour. He moaned about the loans she burnt on Internet buys, shopping channel lies â but she would not waver. The slowcooker steamed at his rotten behaviour. Chuck in a chilli for punch, a pinch of spite, some pills to still the questions, crush the angst he gave her. The slowcooker gleamed like the housewifeâs saviour. Slop in some stock, a severed hand with wedding band, some bits and bobs of bone, his mobile phone, and simmer, simmer, simmer.
Ian Humphreys lives in West Yorkshire and is studying for a Creative Writing MA at the Manchester Writing School. His work has appeared in anthologies and recently in journals including Ambit, Ink Sweat & Tears and Butcherâs Dog. He won the 2013 PENfro Poetry Competition and has been shortlisted for the Bridport and Fish Prizes.
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Myra Schneider: âItâs Sensitiveâ
he says, âno need to press the buttons hard â stroke them.â Sensitive to whom? I wonder and Shelleyâs plant rises before my eyes. He peers at me through severe lenses as if suspecting I mistreat it so I donât say its sensitivity seems to be an excuse for shirking work, donât remark its forbears willingly washed three towels at a time but it believes more than two is overload, donkey-plods and leaves a dripping heap in its hub. And I donât complain it roughs up jumpers, tears silk in its whirring darkness. Sensitive my foot, I mutter when I climb into bed that night. In a dream I confront the gleaming white, implacable body and, scorning the row of beckoning buttons, raise an axe in a surge of hate, smash its smugness. Behind it I see the long-gone machines, hefty, unsophisticated, trusty as sheepdogs. But next morning I find it quite unblemished and white as innocence belittling the kitchen sink. Sensitive! The word clangs as I feed it socks and shirts. Cursing, I stroke its buttons, catch it smirking.
Myra Schneiderâs most recent collection is The Door to Colour (Enitharmon 2014). She co-edited Her Wings of Glass, an anthology of ambitious poetry by contemporary women poets (Second Light Publications 2014). Other publications include books about personal writing.
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âDarkroomâ in London Grip New Poetry | Ben Banyard
May 26, 2015 @ 12:21 pm
[…] I won’t say any more – hopefully it will speak for itself. You can read it here. […]
New Publication @ Londongrip | Kat Soini
May 31, 2015 @ 10:38 am
[…] A Filigree of Fog Rising by Ian C Smith – Starts kind of silly but ends up somewhere achy and vast. […]
Norbert Hirschhorn published in "London Grip" - Highgate Poets
June 2, 2015 @ 12:18 pm
[…] Member Norbert Hirschhorn has two poems, Jebel Kneissa, Lebanon and The Disappeared in the latest issue of online magazine “London Grip New Poetry”. You can read the poems here. […]
Links to Ekphrastic poems â Suffolk Poetry Society
May 21, 2020 @ 6:19 pm
[…] December Morn, 1915 – Derek Adams […]