Christmas Poems - Day Three - Boxing Day

From Anna Maria Mickiewicz

Bells Ringing                                                                             

Listen,

Creaking gently

Low breathing

Climbing spiral stairs

Pulling ropes

Cries peeling

Clangs and dings.

Pay attention,

Catching breath,

In the distance

Heavy thudding

Low voices

Hooves bashing

Whoosh and glee,

By the fireplace

Crunching, slurping

Laughter and rustling

Merry Christmas everyone.

(By Johanna Boal 6/12/13)

Susan Jane Sims

 Homecoming         

December dressed

at the Blue Angel Café

under scarves and jumpers

the long slow heartbeat

of winter

ghost-lips linger

on cappuccino cups

as gloved-fingers

come back to life

inside

warmth, fairy lights, laughter

outside

glitter-frost, a blue moon

and the promise of you.

Eileen Carney Hulme

Christmas Poems - Christmas Day - Day Two

Happy Christmas to everyone.

Copyright for all material on this page remains with the creators.

MARY

I’m not the only poor travelling woman

to birth her baby among animals

in a strange town.

I’m not the only mother to watch her son

confound his elders,

overstep the boundaries,

store up trouble for himself.

I’m not the only poor widow to watch her son

walk away with his friends

not knowing where his path would lead him,

trusting that he would return, one day.

I’m not the only mother to watch the son she loved above all things

dying before her, untimely.

In those precious moments holding my baby

everything was possible,

nothing was written,

the whole earth was filled with joy.

I hold that peace in my heart.

Jo Waterworth

Jo's moving collection My Father Speaks in Poetry too can be purchased from The PS online shop at www.poetryspace.co.uk

You’re

Graceful, standing like a ballerina

Torso captivating

Arms wide, reach out skilfully

Legs well-made

Foot arched and toes hard-pressed

Purposefully on the ground

The crown, a star, astounding drama

Trinkets and tinsel

A Christmas tree.

Johanna Boal 12/12/12

As it is my late Mum's birthday this feels appropriate as I will never stop being Irene's Daughter:

Being Irene’s daughter

My memory holds

the days

of being Irene’s daughter

the cosy winter coming home from school days

when I lit the fire while

mum cooked crispy breast of lamb

to eat with my fingers

the after the orthodontist treat days

when we came home

with half-coated

chocolate biscuits from Lewises

the brave radiotherapy sickness days

when I did the ironing

and mum, strong spirited as always

supervised my creases

the wedding preparation days

choosing my dress

and hers on a glorious

rain- drenched Saturday

and best of all

the exciting new mother days

when mum passed on

her wisdom and delighted

in cuddling each new born child

Susan Jane Sims

Christmas Poems - Day One - Christmas Eve

Yes it's time for the Christmas Blog again from Poetry Space - Happy Christmas!

 (Copyright - the poets)

A Christmas Fantasy

  

Mall-skating through flurries of cut-out penguins, Santas, reindeers,

we glide on past Merry–Xmas windows, air-conditioned polar bears,

glitter-frosted lights, frozen cash-machines, undressed models

flogging fashion and ski-rail our way out of Singapura’s

tinsel town to that sacred place where Fantasy Isle’s

lioness and stranded fish first met and then embraced.

Parasolled, I scan the bay’s busy contour lines – a trail

of morning sand-ants, surf beaching white, the bobbing wall

of shark-barrier buoys, fuzzy two-way shipping lanes  

and an ever-so slightly bowed equator, horizontally sunning

itself in zero degrees of latitude – and imagine I’m space-hubbling,

watching Watatsumi the mighty sea-dragon confine, restrain,

detain our unfathomable mass of curved ocean;

I imagine Gaia-free gravity washing the heavens

in deep-sea blue; I imagine crossing the saline skyline again

and again; I imagine passing uncharted archipelagos,

becoming the discoverer of Christmas-Island barbecues  

and, ready to celebrate with jingle bells, I surf-ride

in upon an unimaginably joyful, Aussie Yuletide.

Mike Lee

And here is Mike looking very relaxed in Singapore's Raffles hotel:

Mike is the very latest poet to have a short collection (Time-webs) published by Poetry Space. Mike  will be reading from his collection in a series of local house readings for friends and colleagues. He is also lined up as guest poet at Bristol's Can Opener even at Foyles Bookshop in Bristol on Friday April 4th 2014.

The Emerald Mistress

Excitement swiftly builds with the presence of the large green lady

The strongest member of the party heaves her from the car

You

Groping her curves through the entrance

Now more miniscule than ever

Violence unfolds

~~

You

The provider of festive joy and ‘cosiness’

She

Who must be crowned

Bodily fluids secrete

Her jagged pines sear through your clothing

Sweat leaks from your temples

Slight panic seeps in

Where the fuck will she live?

The lounge? The hall?

Somewhere she’ll make the least bloody mess.

~~

The children’s eyes widen. Euphoria

Saliva trickles from their lips

Soaking through their woollen jumpers

Dreaming of the mysterious delights that very soon

May be placed beneath her skirt

~~

Xmas carols plonking along in the background

Dusty tinsel tickles your ankles

Sticking to your feet

Mince pies toasting in the oven

Alongside trays upon trays of sliced orange, sizzling on the grill

A sweet, familiar scent

~~

You

Deal with the dinner

Leave the wife to decorate her green limbs

The kids dress her in gold and silver

Tarting her up

Just the way you like them

~~

Her pines reek of smoke

A sour musk from the van driver

Stinking of other men

What a cheek

Coming here in your house smelling like that

Cheap slut

~~

You

With your dirty seconds

You

Didn’t care where she came from

As long as you had her

~~

The wife sprays her with a ‘pine tree’ air freshener

Denial

Now gleaming with sparkles and lights from head to toe

Crowned with a large white angel

She smirks

At your family

Winking at you

Only you

Her innocence is long gone

~~

The kids take your hand and drag you closer

To admire her body

~~

You can’t help liking her now, can you?

All dressed up and fancy

Eyes fixed on her deep green skin

Reminisce now

Dig through those buried childhood memories once again

Years go by and still you cling on to this one sick recollection

~~

Tiny and innocent you sat by her trunk

About five or six years young

Peering up her skirt

Blinded by the flashing fairy lights but loving it all the same

Fallen pines pricked your toes as you sat cross-legged on the cold wooden floor

You squeezed. Two hands

Gripping tightly around the incisions

Pushing

Pressure mounting

Toes swelling with heat

Burst

A cold red release soothed your mind

As you licked it up with your fragile tongue

~~

The delicious pain

Only to be relived each year

Every December

Privately

Once the wife and kids are tucked up in their perfect little beds

And have fallen fast asleep…

~

You

And your emerald mistress

Shay Crinkle December 2013

Advent

Carols chime

streets sprout festive trees

lights string over shops

crowds gather

shops bustle

it’s coming up to Christmas.

Where’s the child

not at home

he’s in the camp

waiting peace

no kings will come

or angels sing

they wait for you.

Carolyn O’Connell

December 2013

Keep them coming - more tomorrow

For more from Poetry Space visit www.poetryspace.co.uk

Unwrapping Ideas: Johanna Boal on the excitement of writing

There is so much I can say about writing. One aspect is that moment of unwrapping something, that has been given to me and the excitement I feel. I write to show my mood, and my inspirations comes from all parts of life, I could be in the bank paying a bill, walking to my local tennis club or simply rubbing my fingers in-between the lavender flowers growing in our garden.   

 I also get ideas from other writers/poets, in workshops and books. In fact one book on how to write poetry by Matthew Sweeney set exercises and one exercise I did, called- ‘Fish Bones Dreaming’ I fell in love with. It is funny, charming and clever. Using his idea on the structure throughout the poem, with a chorus, I called mine- ‘Dinosaur Bones Dreaming’, actually I did two and I frequently go back to read them.

I find art galleries and museums useful for prompting ideas, I don’t necessarily feel I have to know the artist, the object could be enough. But when you get somebody like- Leonardo da Vinci and his pencil drawings coming to the Ferens Art Gallery in Hull. I wrote down everything what was going on in his drawings and afterwards went away with my writing pad full. I then put all that information on the computer and I thought what can I do with this?  There was lots I could do, I could have taken the Oak Leaf he drew and wrote about oak trees around the country but I didn’t, I decided to write about the limits of his drawing materials, considering his time was the late 1400’s and early 1500c.

The language of the poem gives it structure and it is just as important whether you have written two lines or forty lines as it gives shape and style. That is where grammar and punctuation play a big role in writing. Reading out loud is just as important as reading it on paper.

 Up to now I make this all sound simple, ideas can come easily but not technique or vice a versa. Writing poetry is just as important as Leonardo tried getting his chalk correct and using enough light and shade. And the good thing about writing is I can of course at any time write about oak trees around the country.     

I have been writing for some years now, I’ve had some poetry published in anthologies, read over radio, I have read at the Beverley Folk Festival, at HMP’s and online. I have just recently just been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize Competition. 

"I will be waiting quietly for your poems to speak to me": Alison Brackenbury's thoughts on judging Poetry Space Competition 2014

I will come to your poems with an open mind. I would like to put the last three words in capitals! But capitals shout, and I will in fact be waiting quietly for your poems to speak to me.

Do not think that you must seek out poems on particular subjects! I grew up in the English countryside, and I often write about it. Yet some of my favourite poems are set in great cities, or in countries I have never visited.  I enjoy poems about animals. But I also relish poems about the stories and speech of humans, the strangest of animals. 

Many of us write poems about the great, sometimes terrible moments of our lives, the loves which have possessed us, the deaths we have endured.  It is humbling to read such poems.  They can remain deeply moving even when they emerge from a competition’s piled papers. But poems can come from the smallest happenings (a walk down a street, a bee bumbling into a window). Such poems can revive, amuse, enrich. Send them, too!

Please do not think, either, that your entries should be in a particular poetic form. I am very interested in traditional forms. My poems often rhyme. But some of the poems I return to again and again are in free verse.  What matters to me, simply, is that a poem should work on its own terms. It must have its own imaginative energy. I have seen competition poems which are technically flawless, yet as devoid of life as a polished, empty shell.

Do not reject possible entries simply because they are short. It is often said that short poems are not favoured by competition judges. I fear this may sometimes be true. But a very short poem was amongst the major prizewinners when I was on the judging panel for the National Poetry Competition!  So short poems, too, are welcome.

I would give two pieces of advice to all poets entering poetry competitions. These are not simply my opinion, but are based on the considered views of other judges, and competition winners.

First: if you want to write well, read widely.  All the competition judges I have spoken to say that they have read too many poems which fail because their writer has clearly read very little poetry.  Read the great poetry of the past. Read poems from other countries and cultures. (This is much easier now we have the Internet. Have you discovered the excellent US poems which can be found each day on Poetry Daily, www.poems.com? I try never to miss it. )  Read work by living British poets, too. You may not like all of it. You may wish to write quite differently.  But if you try to shut yourself off entirely from the present, you risk simply becoming a pale imitation of the past.

It is also – I would like to use capitals again! – the duty of British poets today to buy as much work by living poets as they can afford. Even buying one book or pamphlet a year helps.  Poetry publishers, large and small, have begun to suffer badly from the recession.  Every publisher I have met recently has told me the same story, and it is a chilling one.  Poetry sales overall are down by 20%: ‘worse than the darkest days of the 1980s’, said one. If publishers disappear, who will publish your poems? Buy books, please!

Secondly: enter one more poem than you intended. Put in the wild card, the odd one which you think no one will like. I have spoken to many poets who have won major competitions. They all admit that they cannot predict judges’ taste.  The winning poem is the one which they thought had no chance, the one which they thrust into the envelope at the last minute.  Send that extra poem! It will help the deserving small press which runs this competition. It will help your chances too.

I look forward to reading your poems – with an open mind.

Alison Brackenbury, October 2013

Alison's website is at www.alisonbrackenbury.co.uk

Poetry Space Competition 2014 will open for entries on November 1st - further details at http://www.poetryspace.co.uk/poetry-space-competition/

Poetry Space Summer Highlights

Poetry Space has had a great Summer!

June marked the publication of Jo Waterworth's book My Father Speaks in Poetry Too and this has moved everyone who has read it.

"I was in tears by the end – so simple and unpretentious and beautiful."

Victoria Field, Writer and Poetry Therapist

"I was very taken with not only Jo's moving poems but also with the feel of the book's textured pages - as I ran my fingers across each page.  And the illustrations are stunning." 

Di Coffey

The lovely illustrations by Willow Roe have also made this very special:

In July we launched Through a Child's Eyes at The Penzance Festival:

Our thanks go to Edge of the World Bookshop for hosting this event for us. We had readings from Anna Maria Mickiewicz, Caroline Carver, Les Merton, Moira Andrew, Angela Croft, Sheila Bracewell And Di Coffey.

"It is a beautiful and moving Anthology with wonderful, wonderful poems. I am so pleased to have two of my poems included in it."

Maureen Weldon,

"lovely production and smashing poems" 

Jenny Harrow,

"Highly reconmmended"

Penelope Shuttle

Responding to a Poetry Challenge - Sue Sims

April was Poetry Month and a fellow poet suggested having a go at writing a poem a day for the whole of the month. I'd like to share one of these poems and its genesis with you.

When I am in need of inspiration I often find it helps to start with a random list of words. I find these in all sorts of ways, from newspaper articles, flicking through books etc. This time I flicked through a copy of a poetry title I have just acquired Dark Film by Paul Farley, itself a brilliant read. From this I gathered the following words:

downpour
ears
allotments
chimneys
boil
bitter
soak
floorboards

I started by doing some notes:

Caught in a downpour, my ears filling with water, the allotments flooded, the chimneys shooting flames, I'm soaked, I'm boiling, I'm bitter. The floorboards creak as I cry.

Then another burst of rambling:

always a downpour
never an up pour
not possible, not unless time is moving backwards
and actions are being reversed
ears are aching, ears of corn in fields
swallowing smoke. soaked in a downpour

Pretty much nonsense and then something clicked and I moved on to thinking about taking refuge from the downpour and who I might be with with and what we might find.

This final poem uses most of the original list of words bar one. When you do this yourself it is important not to be totally rigid. If one or two words refuse to fit in respect that and go with what comes as I did here:

The Downpour

During the downpour,we take refuge
in your grandpa's allotment shed
and rummage for what we can find:
a jar of boiled sweets, a few
squares of bitter chocolate, 
a miniature bottle of rum.
We are thirteen. We consume it all
sitting on the warm floorboards. You say:
"We'll never have this day again"
and lean in for an awkward kiss."
I hear myself saying 
"You've got beautiful ears". Outside
the factory chimney belches smoke.

Copyright Susan Jane Sims 

When I sat down to write I had no idea what I would write, however the list of words, Paul Farley's lovely urban poems and my own memories led to the above poem which I am pleased with. The discipline of having to use particular words I think give it a quirky feel, particularly the beautiful ears.

If you have been inspired then do consider sending poems in to Poetry Space Competition 2013.

Sue

Creating Found Poems - Carol Ross

Creating found poetry means taking words, phrases and lines from other sources and using them to create poems. I’d like to tell you about two types of ‘found poem’ I have been introduced and enjoyed.

1. Finding poems in published prose

I first heard about this type of found poetry from Kirsty Stanley, who is an occupational therapist and a writer. On her blog, Kirsty includes found poems she crafted by photocopying a page of a book or magazine and creating a poem by artistically highlighting selected words and phrases on the page. This is a fun technique that can create something quite unexpected – for example a poem on a topic that is different both from your usual poetry and from the source text.

For the poem I have included below (Stalled), I didn’t use quite the method Kirsty describes on her blog – she creates a poem directly on the photocopied page, whereas in my example I typed the words up and inserted line breaks where I wanted them. However, like Kirsty, I didn’t add or change any words or change their order.

The method I used was: (i) photocopy a page (two pages in this case) from a book; (ii) select and highlight words, phrases and sentences to include; (iii) type them up; (iv) insert line breaks; (v) fine tune, e.g., by adding or removing words (ensuring that any words added are taken from the text and in the original order).

I have scanned and highlighted the double-page spread from a (very good) novella, A Penny Spitfire by Brindley Hallam Dennis, published by Pewter Rose Press, that I used to create the poem ‘Stalled’ (see below). I used pages 82-83 (reproduced with permission). 

If this type of found poem is new to you, my tip would be choose a page with plenty of words and little or no dialogue. This is a technique to play with – just have a go and see what you find.

Stalled (‘found’ in A Penny Spitfire by Brindley Hallam Dennis)

His workshop

stood untouched,

encrusted with dirt

and cobwebs.

Spiders hunted in

threads of silk.

He’d changed.

Raw edges where his

life had torn,

had hardened.

Pain turned

to numbness.

She too changed,

The simplest things

divided them.

They began to live

as strangers.

He tried to remember

what they had before

but it seemed far away.

They had lost something,

did not mesh anymore.

They could not talk

about the past.

Yet he sensed

through words they could

come back together.

But how did you do that?

How tell the things

he wanted to tell?

Even thinking about them

made him shake inside.

2. Poems ‘found’ in conversations with others

On a Writing in Healthcare course at Ty Newydd I learned about another kind of found poem from poet, tutor and co-founder of Lapidus, Graham Hartill. Graham told our group about found poems he has created from notes he made of conversations with inmates when working as a poet in a prison. This technique can be used or adapted to give someone who doesn’t consider themselves to be very creative, or who does not or cannot write much, the experience of writing a poem. 

Here I describe using the technique to create a found poem about a child’s experience of World War II.

My mother was 10 when WWII began. To create a found poem based on her memories I first interviewed her about the war. During the interview I made rapid notes and also recorded the conversation. Later I typed up the main ideas from her responses, sometimes but not always using her words. I played with the order of the ideas until I felt I had them grouped and in a logical order. Then I played with the lines themselves, editing and refining to turn whole sentences into the lines of a poem that I hope has rhythm and flow. Finally I checked back with Mum to see whether she was happy with my poem ‘Make do and mend’ (see below).

Make do and mend

I was 10 when war started.

We kids didn’t hear much about the fighting. Just

what was on Pathé news at the pictures.

The man had a funny voice.

None of my family joined up.

Young men had a choice: go down the pit or go to war.

My Dad was a miner, and my brothers,

those that were old enough.

I remember seeing young men on the buses though,

off to start their training.

There was an army camp near us.

The soldiers unwound electric cable

right through the village. To untangle it.

Then they wound it up again.

Our Mary tripped over it, broke her leg.

She got fifty pounds.

Clothes were on ration.

Mostly it was make do and mend.

A lot of folk knitted. Pulled out old things

to knit new. Cut down women’s dresses

to make clothes for kids.

You had to queue to get stuff.

Me and Lil walked four miles to queue for a pork pie.

Dad grew vegetables. And mushrooms.

Mushrooms were dear then.

He dug a pond in the garden and kept ducks.

God they made a mess.

He raised cockerels for Christmas.

And in our stocking: an apple, an orange

and a few pennies.

We made cakes with powered egg.

Grated carrot in the Christmas pud

made the fruit go further.

Mam could make a meal out of anything,

a ham bone and a few peas.

You couldn’t get Christmas trees.

Me and our Jamie cut the top off a holly tree.

From up the top I could see a Lancaster

belly up in a field. Jamie wanted me to get down

so he could climb up and see. But I wouldn’t.

We crept along the hedges to get a better look,

snuck past the men in uniform,

the army and air force police.

One night the Germans dropped incendiaries.

Mam made us hide on a mattress under the stairs,

me, Jamie and Lil, while she stood at the door

watching planes trying to bomb the mines.

They missed. And me and Jamie crept

under the kitchen table while Mam wasn’t looking

and pinched some raisins.

Get writing – play, have fun, enjoy!

 ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Writing for Wellbeing edited by Carol Ross is available through the Poetry Space Online Bookshop

If the above has inspired you then why not send your entry in to Poetry Space Competition 2013 

Poems on any theme are eligible to enter. They must be previously unpublished and up to 40 lines maximum.