It's always hard to answer the question "What sort of stuff do you write?". I'm happy with the prescribed formulae of sonnets, villanelles, paradelles, haiku & their ilk, but also use free verse, blank verse & concrete poetry. Best thing to do is to show you some! Don't forget copyright: do ask if you want to use any & credit accordingly. Ta!
Performing in Hereford May 2011 at a fund-raiser for Tanzania
The first one is about the difficulty people have when their strongly-held beliefs are challenged; the title popped into my head on waking up one morning & was crying out for a poem to go with it.
Giuseppe the one-armed Punch & Judy man
A comforting mark of each young summer,
the locals love old Beppe’s show,
though as he slides each puppet on
the dialogue is rather broken;
the fights are so one-sided
it’s like beating rugs in Spring;
the characters sound all the same
since he swallowed his swazzle; still
the locals love old Beppe’s show.
Sometimes strangers find the sleepy seatown
who claim to have seen two-handed Punch & Judy men
and dare to suggest those versions may be better:
they are quietly killed
and buried beneath the cliffs at low tide,
for the locals love old Beppe’s show.
That's the way to do it.
OK, not the most cheerful start: let's head for the nursery, & a poem which ended up on the buses in Guernsey in 2011.
Hey Diddle Diddle II
The dish and the spoon had a wonderful time,
though the dog was rather hysterical,
for anthropomorphic utensils, it thought,
went one step beyond æsoterical.
The cat dropped the fiddle and pointed straight up,
its body as stiff as a sentry:
it wasn’t the moon that had captured its gaze,
but the cow burning up on re-entry.
A friend once asked why there weren't any poems about Mars bars. This is why.
The Mars Bar
(a sonnet for Rosemary)
Face flushed, eyes gleaming, breathless with delight,
with trembling hands she gently pulls apart
the waxy coal-black petals, and her heart
starts pounding - this will be the night...
Laid bare by friction from her fingertips,
the rigid, rough-veined pole stands like a tower:
she bends her head towards it to devour
what penetrates her parted, moistened lips.
Her mouth, enveloping it, stretches wide -
she feels the heat of pleasure deep within;
a sticky trickle crawls towards her chin,
tamed by her tongue, which coaxes it inside.
As theobromine courses through her veins
her joy's not over - half the bar remains...
Finally, one inspired by my teenage stepdaughter & her friends:
“And I was like, ‘Oh my God’.”
How like God were you?
Omnipotent? - can’t get a drink when you’re right next to the fridge.
Omniscient? - don’t know where your uniform is, though it’s got its own drawer.
Omnipresent? - give you that, stray socks, shoes & underwear under here, under there, under everybloodywhere.
Ineffable? - you use the F-word second only to “like”, the new verb that means “to speak”.
Yet recently, when homework happened as if from nowhere,
when you tidied, bringing order out of chaos,
when you gave of yourself in time & money,
I looked at the person you were becoming,
and I was like,
“Oh my God.”
Giuseppe the one-armed Punch & Judy man
A comforting mark of each young summer,
the locals love old Beppe’s show,
though as he slides each puppet on
the dialogue is rather broken;
the fights are so one-sided
it’s like beating rugs in Spring;
the characters sound all the same
since he swallowed his swazzle; still
the locals love old Beppe’s show.
Sometimes strangers find the sleepy seatown
who claim to have seen two-handed Punch & Judy men
and dare to suggest those versions may be better:
they are quietly killed
and buried beneath the cliffs at low tide,
for the locals love old Beppe’s show.
That's the way to do it.
OK, not the most cheerful start: let's head for the nursery, & a poem which ended up on the buses in Guernsey in 2011.
Hey Diddle Diddle II
The dish and the spoon had a wonderful time,
though the dog was rather hysterical,
for anthropomorphic utensils, it thought,
went one step beyond æsoterical.
The cat dropped the fiddle and pointed straight up,
its body as stiff as a sentry:
it wasn’t the moon that had captured its gaze,
but the cow burning up on re-entry.
A friend once asked why there weren't any poems about Mars bars. This is why.
The Mars Bar
(a sonnet for Rosemary)
Face flushed, eyes gleaming, breathless with delight,
with trembling hands she gently pulls apart
the waxy coal-black petals, and her heart
starts pounding - this will be the night...
Laid bare by friction from her fingertips,
the rigid, rough-veined pole stands like a tower:
she bends her head towards it to devour
what penetrates her parted, moistened lips.
Her mouth, enveloping it, stretches wide -
she feels the heat of pleasure deep within;
a sticky trickle crawls towards her chin,
tamed by her tongue, which coaxes it inside.
As theobromine courses through her veins
her joy's not over - half the bar remains...
Finally, one inspired by my teenage stepdaughter & her friends:
“And I was like, ‘Oh my God’.”
How like God were you?
Omnipotent? - can’t get a drink when you’re right next to the fridge.
Omniscient? - don’t know where your uniform is, though it’s got its own drawer.
Omnipresent? - give you that, stray socks, shoes & underwear under here, under there, under everybloodywhere.
Ineffable? - you use the F-word second only to “like”, the new verb that means “to speak”.
Yet recently, when homework happened as if from nowhere,
when you tidied, bringing order out of chaos,
when you gave of yourself in time & money,
I looked at the person you were becoming,
and I was like,
“Oh my God.”