• Archive of all Poetry Space showcases
Spring Showcase report
It was a pleasure to read the many and varied poems submitted for the Spring Showcase. On first reading, there were a few for my Yes Pile, one or two for the No Pile, and a lot of Possibles, those which showed great potential but, in my mind, would have benefited from some editing or minor rewriting. It took repeated re-reading and some guidance from Sue to whittle them down to the selection you see here. And it helped to know that any not chosen this time round will go forward for consideration by a different selector for the next Showcase. I hope you enjoy these poems and I congratulate the writers, and everyone who is brave enough to submit their work for publication.
Jo Waterworth, Guest Editor
Jo Waterworth’s collection My Father Speaks in Poetry Too will be published this summer by Poetry Space.
Photographs and Artwork for this edition are by Kate Blair, Chris Sims, Sue Sims and Beverley Ferguson. Many thanks to everyone who contributed both poems and art. If you are in the Bath area between 4th March and 9th March then please do go along to My Voice in the City – an exhibition from Art Collective Tiny Monuments – Beverley Ferguson is one of the artists featured. All of the artists have been through the mental health care system. Beverley’s booklet Breaking Through, will be on sale – all proceeds to Bath Mind.
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Kate Blair
Winter Walk
BEWARE THIEVES:
DANGER OF DEATH,
two gates on, another notice
TRESPASSERS
WILL BE PROSECUTED
enough to bring a flurry
of childhood dread
although I know now
that prosecute and execute
don’t mean the same thing.
a quiet country lane,
a couple of cars, no fellow-
walkers, no Good-mornings
the essence of Sunday aloneness
just a tentative breeze
rattling the treetops,
a soapy sun doing its best
grey branches nubbled
with unborn leaves
and glowing from
its tranche of dead leaves
a solitary aconite
Moira Andrew
January 2013
Waiving Worship
(On St. Augustine’s Kentish coast)
Stretched-out sunlight, pastel-pale
and weakly wintering kisses
a gravel-chattering, wave-grey,
shingle-stirring strand.
Morning’s early, yellow webbing: spider-stalks
upturned boats, cast-off nets and carcass pots;
tiptoes across wet-pebble; caresses surf heaven;
cavorts across turned-over silver.
Forsaking: weekend sport, hangovers, chapel prayers
and sacred supplements; Here cometh the lost congregation:
foot-slogging, pedalling, car-cushioned, or cheap-day ticketed;
processing along aisled avenues, past “To the Beach” crucifixes.
Here: for a minute? for an hour? for the day or longer?
Like me, they’re on thalassic pilgrimage, worshipping
at the high altar of the surf-line in a celebration
of wave-watching, venerating our own nativity .
Mike Lee
Passage of Time
Her hands, so capable once,
And now so worn and thin –
Delicate like a moth
Blue veins, and bones,
Show through paper-thin skin –
Delicate like a moth
Fingers worn by years and years of use
Fluttering now, unsteady –
Delicate like a moth
Only the little nails stay unchanged,
Still painted, still pretty –
Delicate like a moth
Kathy Sharp
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Beverley Ferguson
On the Classification of Eels
You carve them up
like long division –
slivers of flesh
on the cutting board –
fifteen pieces
neat as a tail
their nomenclature split
into snakes and pikes
the sinewy sawfish eel.
if you could sew them
back together –
reassemble the gills
each would stitch
with a different tension
the drawn threads
of their lives.
Neil Leadbeater
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Chris Sims
Ex-Pats
Shall we go home?
Much of why we came –
Cheap drink and food,
Houses, all that’s good
About the good life – ‘s gone.
Health fades like the boards
Signing the leisure park.
We only know a few words,
There’s hardly any work –
Can’t afford to leave, or stay on.
Streets of empty houses stretch for miles,
Kilometres. No one speaks to us. No one smiles.
They say “we told you so” back home. It riles.
Only the burning summer air,
Lemons in fields, the crowd
Agreeing in the pub England’s gone,
Afraid, proud and loud,
Are what keeps us here;
Otherwise they’ve won.
Michael Docker
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Photograph
The little girl should have been wearing a silk shift
but she’s naked.
Her face should have been bathed in innocence
but it’s twisted in pain and terror.
Her limbs should have been warmed by the sun
but they’re scorched by napalm.
She runs toward a photographer, unaware
her life will be defined by this moment.
Her image will win the Pulitzer prize,
but warmongers are blind.
Di Coffey
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For the Mountains
Better to climb the mountains
Than to descend the valleys below
Though it comes with much sweat and pain
At the top you catch the first dew and rain
Beside the mountains the valleys lie
A place to walk on the finest of soils
With dancing lilies to grace your feet
The valleys are serene and adorable
But the mountain top are more glorious
A place where your flag must find its feet
But beyond the mountain’s cliff death lingers
On the top, the cold whispering winds
But within are hidden lessons to know
Better a dream born at the mountain top
Than a vision received in a valley deep
Valleys, plains where any man can plant a feet
Angry floods sweetly sweep through with joy
But the mountains peaks are for the eagles
There you can pluck your stars
And journey along with the passing clouds
Better head for the mountains
Where the moon never leaves shadow in its gaps
A perfecr place to behld the rising sun
Observe nature’s beauty in a single look
And see beyond the hazy horizon
Adjei Agyei-Baah
A poet talks to himself about metaphors
‘R.S. Thomas’s poetry is not without metaphoric brilliance’
(Review of the Collected Poems)
My poetry is without metaphoric brilliance.
It can only manage a dull sheen, like
A chip too long in its fat. Nothing
About it shines; there is no light
Shed by my poetry, no subject
Is illumined, no language polished.
My poetry is not without metaphoric brilliance.
Like sun-tanned skin it glows
Unnaturally: radiates a beatific vision,
Throws simile and assonance
Around like fluorescence.
You can see your face in the words.
My poetry is without metaphoric brilliance.
Its words only mean what they say.
Report, summary, conclusion, deduction;
These boulders I uncover with my blunt tools.
You know where things will end
When you begin my poetry.
It is not without a dull sentence.
My poetry is not without metaphoric brilliance,
Everything about it means something else;
Debate, flummery, confusion, seduction;
These jewels I chip to a sparkle with my skills.
When you end you cannot
See where you began. My poetry,
It is without a single past tense.
Michael Docker
Copyright for all poems and art work remains with the creators. Please do not copy and download. This edition will be available to buy very soon in the Poetry Space online shop for £3 per copy. Please pre-order by contacting susan@poetryspace.co.uk
