it was about sweetcorn. it was about hidden layers. it was about changing my name starting the process of becoming myself my own person. it was a statement before i knew what a statement was. i may have used husk and silky threads. grade one or grade two. stay there poem about sweetcorn with the …
Tag: poetry
I am not Frank O’Hara
but sometimes I write poems in my lunch hour. Or, to be more accurate, I muse, jot, fiddle with a poem coming-into-being. Most of my poems have a long gestation. They're a gradual accretion of words, phrases, images, and a honing and chipping away to get the shape, the movement, that I is buried somewhere …
wine, women, words
That's a recipe for a convivial and enriching evening, and that's exactly what we got last Thursday at the launch of the fourth Loose Muse anthology, downstairs at Cottons on Exmouth Market. Once again, Agnes Meadows and her co-editors have put together a varied and top-class collection of writing by women who have attended one …
poetry panic attack
I spent Saturday morning sitting at my desk, thinking about a new poem, jotting down words and phrases, delving into dictionaries and reference books, nurturing that little knot of something in the back of my brain that I hope will evolve, take shape, emerge slowly onto the page. So I was already in a rather …
Open Plan
Open Plan is the neat title for a volume of poems by Graham Fulton, which distills with wit and precision the strange reality of being an office-worker. Published by Smokestack Books in 2011, Open Plan is a thoroughly rewarding read, belying what at first may sound like unpromising material - the daily grind in an …
big up for a little mag
Issue Fifteen of South Bank Poetry magazine is a bit of a cracker. The strapline is 'London and Urban Poetry', and the current issue features many Scottish themed poems alongside the London contingent. A fitting blue and white cover, and just under 40 pages of fine poems, given room to breathe and interact with each …
three nights out on the trot
Another busy week on the cultural front, beginning on Monday evening at the Southbank Centre's Purcell Room for Morton Feldman's For John Cage. The piece, for piano and violin, lasts about an hour and twenty minutes, requiring the intense concentration of both musicians and audience. Slow, often deathly quiet, the music creeps up on you, …
tripledecker
Tuesday 25th September: To Clapham Books, to hear Will Self read from and talk about his latest novel Umbrella. The bookshop was full to overflowing, and so too was my brain by the end of the evening. Will Self began by disparaging authors who give long, filling-in-the-background intros before reading from their work, and then, …
bottle that energy
Get 27 women writers, plus friends and supporters, in a downstairs bar on a balmy September evening, and you get lots of positive energy, strong readings, an appreciative and attentive audience, and a plethora of verbal surprises. The occasion was the launch of the second Loose Muse anthology, featuring poetry, stories and short plays by …
London latte
Friday morning. I'm in the city for a course, and I'm early. Summer's ending. It's a bright, fresh morning and I'm in fine spirits, for no particular reason other than the weather, and that's a good feeling. I have a quarter of an hour before I'm due in the world of work, and I'm going …
Hilaire 