Written for the anniversary of the delicious Fen Speak last night:

Party

“Get set,” they said,
“And remember that fortune favours
The loud, and grasping,
Success the promulgation of the
Selfish gene.”

We said: “No”,
Rolled up sleeves, and
Rolled bones, smiling
To see the tiles tip
For true hearts,
Wise words,
And generous company.

This is a dance of wits
And wisdom,
Gifts from the infinite
Distilled and shared
In hand-fast rounds
Of like minds,
And matched hearts.

We’ve watched the circle march,
Sometimes from farther
Than we’d like,
And kick quiet,
Swinging feet,
Greeting each gift
With a gentle: yes.

Get set.

One Last Verse

Today made a break from summer,
Thumbed its nose with roses
And mellow airs,
Dared autumn to take itself
Less seriously.

We scurried from work
Into balmy breezes,
Decelerated into strolls,
Growing softer at the edges,
Leisurely in this pledge
To hold against the days to come.

Flipside

for Jude Cowan Montague

What must they think of us?
Hands up, wailing,
Caught between arguments
That mean nothing to our day-to-day

Bodies spin in dust and blood,
Throats raw, mouths stretched
To silent screams,
Exhausted by tragedy.

Pick up the pieces
Stretch out hands to those
Too far gone to see them,
Heads sunk to heaving chests
Get on with another day in hell.

What must they think of us?
Hands up, wailing,
Baffled by arguments
That mean nothing to our day-to-day

Heads spin at images of dust and blood
Clenched jaws stretch
To silent yawns,
Exhausted by tragedy.

Click on the pieces
Stretch to electronic pats for those
Too far away to be real,
Heads sunk to comfortable navels
Get on with another day in heaven.


Jude works as a Media Archivist and is currently sifting through images from the latest conflict in Gaza. The first line comes from a social media status update she made...

Open-Hearted

A couple of weeks ago, I performed at the rather magnificent "JibbaJabba" up in Newcastle, as their headline poet, which was a tad daunting, considering the sheer quality of the open mic, let alone the featured performers...!

As it was their fourth birthday, and I kept being struck by lines people were blessing the ether with, I wrote them a poem knitted together of all my impressions of the evening up until I stepped onto the stage (if we added in the mayhem of the aftermath as a coda, it would be an even longer poem! :D), and read it to them.  This is it (possible differences from the original performance and this version are due to the fact that I had to extemporise gaps at the time, and this is my best guess for fillers):


Oration praises anything but silence
Generous heart parting hands
To embrace the waiting minds

The ouroboros snake hisses
kisses clasped fists,
Gasps up stolen
Golden handshakes

A soul's been psychedelised
Prizing nature's bounty,
Mounting the sweet, green foothills.

Dreams recall a tale
Slippery images glitter
Strangely.

Seagulls snigger,
Urban hipster birds
Skirl and shift,
Plot mayhem.

Ken's immortalised
In pithy verse,
Herding letters into figures.

Ugly night gripes every vessel,
Disgorges mortality.
Howls.

Verity beckons
Piscine kisses
Marine caresses better.

Sensitive skin tingles
Bristling into smoothnesss
Skating into napalm clarity

Ornithological torture,
Item by item,
Externalises challenge.

We are sheltered
Warm in the fire
Of a love burned to ashes,
Braced against the future.

We cup the ordinary,
Resisting the insistence
Of moneyed phalluses,
Grasp that it's all about true friendship.

Feathered fortress stands
Grand as the everyday,
Blows hard against venal incomprehension
Of corruption's nettlebed.

Understatements
Beckon us to rise
As speed is of the essence.

Street lines take us
To a flurry of shallows,
Dreaming of the deeps.

Pop goes the parrot
In glorious chorus
And we are all licensed,
Bright as buttons.

Check Twitter,
Refresh obsession.
Check Twitter.
Refresh.
Check.
Repeat. Fade.

Jewelled beauty glitters in
Underwater crevices
In place of seaweed,
Visited by fucked fishes.

Hearts hammer in the dark,
Bruised lips chain themselves
To nature.

Old wives tell of
The dark poison in the
Shadows, drawn in darkness.

Timpani talks
Takes a bow.

Protracted words
Pace on the stage,
Intricately link herbal mathematics.

We jibber and jabber
Clatter together
Words and hearts joined.
Beautiful.

Pausing by 100 House

Children chatter in
Standford's stamping ground, now home
To blue birds' new songs.

They throng and warble
Daubing walls with bright colours,
Unmuffled joy and pain.

Memories sigh through
High walls while life goes on, and
History circles.



The house where Charles Villiers Stanford lived before he died, a childless, musically prolific former child prodigy with more famous pupils than famous tunes, is now a nursery. I love his music, and was tickled to see the blue plaque on the wall as I walked back to work this lunchtime.

I'm gearing up to NaPoWriMo again this year (only a couple of weeks away!), and the notion that you should just write poems based on anything and everything you see around you in a day.

Juno - for International Women's Day

Last weekend I was interviewed about female role models for a film about IWD. I was doing well until I couldn't remember the word "intersectionality" - a mouthful at the best of times - and I kind of stumbled.  But it worked out okay, I think, because I  was able to explain the concept in more depth. And passion.

That experience had me remembering a talk I attended where someone suggested that, because educated middle-class women are doing okay these days, feminism is no longer necessary. I boiled silently (because I was working at the talk and couldn't storm the stage), but I promised myself I'd respond, and here's the (draft - it definitely needs work) poetic riposte, started last night - there are probably sufficient clues to work out who it was:

Juno

Here are lines on a screen,
Here are numbered truths,
Here is a quiet celebration,
A congratulatory stage.

And here is rage,
And disbelief.
I look up to you
And gauge the narrowness
Of your gaze
The ways your numbers
Let others tumble
Into what you have not said...

And you could be me
In twenty years' time,
White as milk,
Educated to the hilt,

Comfortably well-spoken,
The only discernible difference -
You do not love women
As I do.

And you smile kindly,
Talk of victory.
You consider the race run,
That we won,
Job done -
Down tools, everyone.

I wonder.
Do you see beyond
Your comfort
To even the streets
Outside your door,
Poor in sympathy
As you are rich
In every other measure
Deafened by your learning,
Unable to step into the head
Of the next woman,
Leaden legged,
Knocking on the pane
Above her head
Put back there, tidily,
By you.

How do you dare,
When the invisible millions
Howl for their aborted daughters,
The halters they wear,
The burdens they bear,
The gruelling lives of those
who cannot share
Your blessings,
Voiceless while you,
Who never bled for any other,
Claim to speak the lives
Of every woman born to silence.

You pluck the tongues
from their skulls
In big sisterly insistence
That you know best,
Wrest their stories
From their grasp,
Palm off their gasps
As needless attention-seeking.

What will we tell our daughters
About you -
Schooled to ruthlessness,
Deaf to the call of blood to blood,
Dumbfounding quintessence of smug,
Unwilling to touch the outstretched palms
Of those outside your graphs?

I will falter,
I will stumble,
I will seek to be proved wrong
As many times as I can bear
And bear up the steps of those
Who fall by the wayside of your carriage,

And those who move

On different paths from yours,
Celebrate the victories,
And rage for the pain,
Safe in the knowledge
That those I hold this close
Are true family.

And I will call you by

your real names
As loudly as I can,
And bare your shame.

Glimmer

It's hard to tell cause from effect
When you're miserably
Staving yourself into
Clichés of shrinking circles.

When all you know carries jagged edges
All the beckoning blanks
Shine like the shield
Of sunrise,
A blend of friendly colours
Far from the nag
Of carried damage.

I saw my father
Fall into gin
Like his mother before him
Felt the flicker of alarm
That whisky's blissful blankness
Brought me,
Foresaw the discipline of decades
Disappearing,
A rhythm of days
Blurred into
Just one more...

Blinked.
Dismissed this as a holiday from
Hurt - more expensive than its worth,
A three-times yearly treat, maybe.

I will pour my body
Into other moulds,
Grow boldly into
Resistance
Become the grist to my own mill
And thrill to the opium of fear,
Imbibed nightly, if I can stomach it.

Nothing sings through my veins
Like stand-up sounds,
Intent crowds,
A crown of sonnets
Polished verse,
Perverse lyrics
And the bliss of hitting silence
Just.
Right.

And in daylight I'll pound streets
And creaking joints,
Point out weakness and coax it
Into strength,
Count my blessings
And make more,
Not to avoid pain,
But to own the gain
Its absence accompanies

And take each slip
As a gift of growing,
And its own punishment,
Knowing only those alive
Feel its bite.

A windy walk under moonlight

My hair dances like
Treetops, mustering fingers
To grasp at the night.