Heavens to Betsy May 25, 2008

I’m reading at the first night of Roddy Lumsden’s 50 States / 50 poets / 50 poems knees-up on Thursday 3rd July at the Scooterworks Cafe on Lower Marsh in London, 7.30pm. I picked Pennsylvania because I’ve got relatives in Philadelphia - my poem starts with Betsy Ross who sewed the first stars and stripes there.

Other readers are … Alaska - Marianne Burton; Arkansas - John Citizen; Arizona - Eloise Stonborough; California - Wayne Smith; Colorado - Roddy Lumsden; Georgia - David Floyd; Hawaii - Joe Dunthorne; Idaho - Judy Brown; Kansas - Annie Freud; Kentucky - Sinead Wilson; Louisiana - Retta Bowen; Maine - Derek Adams; Massachusetts - Tim Cumming; Minnesota - Donna Bamford; Missouri - Tim Wells; Nebraska - Imogen Robertson; Nevada - Inua Ellams; Oklahoma - Niall O’Sullivan; Pennsylvania - Julia Bird; Rhode Island - Octavia Lamb; South Carolina - Ahren Warner; Texas - Sophie Richmond; Utah - Matthew Caley; Vermont - Jacqueline Saphra; West Virginia - Katy Evans-Bush.

… and the second night is on Friday 4th at the Betsy Trotwood in Faringdon with Alabama - Emily Berry; Connecticut - Luke Heeley; Delaware - Helen Mort; Florida - Camellia Stafford; Illinois - Valerie Josephs; Indiana - Miranda Stonor; Iowa - Mark Waldron; Maryland - Jack Underwood; Michigan - Lara Frankena; Mississippi - Alan Buckley; Montana - James Dowd; New Hampshire - Michael McKimm; New Jersey - Tamar Yoseloff; New Mexico - Kate Kilalea; New York - Amy Key; North Carolina- Ben Morris; North Dakota - Roddy Lumsden; Ohio - Heather Phillipson; Oregon - Gale Burns; South Dakota - Diana Pooley; Tennessee - Hannah Murgatroyd; Virginia - Kate Potts; Washington - Isobel Dixon; Wisconsin - Claire Crowther; Wyoming - Simon Barraclough.

Infiltration May 25, 2008

I’m reading here http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=18725683973 on Wednesday 28th May. Northern poets: Tim Turnbull, Jacqueline Gabbitas, Jo Hakim, Ritchie Scurvey … and me. I’m from Gloucestershire and I don’t even live in North London, so I don’t know how I’ve ended up on this bill. Looking forward to checking out the excellent taxidermy in this pub though.

Covent Garden April 12, 2008

The meeting has run on.

It’s late, he’s lost, a little bit.

I offer that I’ll walk him to the tube

I lodge near here, it’s on my way.

 

I say It’s great, this route –

it takes you past a flower stall

that’s packing up this time of night.

They flog their stock so cheap it’s practically free.

He holds on while I dither picking daisies

marked at 50p a bunch.

 

A man sat by the stall is knocking back a can.

 

That’s Loz I say. His dog is Rosielove.

He told me that his wife fucked off

but he stays here, necks Woodpecker

which takes him to a sweeter place.

 

Rosielove is champing at a pigeon on the kerb.

 

Where d’you stand on city birds? I say.

Rats on wings with feet like spat-out gum?

Or do you like their blushing backs of necks

and wonder where it is they lay their eggs?

 

Pigeon pairs are roosting on the station roof.

 

At the entrance

underneath the moon and planes in tiny triangles of sky

he could kiss me as a scrumper steals a plum.

See these lips, would you not say they’re like the hips and hawes

that fruit in hedgerows when the winter’s coming on?

 

The street is all corners and shine.

Traffic stutters on the clutch

where people wait to cross the road

and each belisha flash is like a flower

picked apart to calculate

if love is true or not.

Five Years Trying to Win the Flower Show Vegetable Animal Class April 12, 2008

Five Years Trying to Win the Flower Show Vegetable Animal Class

 

Highly Commended: a large baking potato –

   its shape already reminiscent of the humpback whale –

   set on a plate, surrounded by cabbage

   shredded from the centre of the head

   where its waves are tightest.

   Eyes for a blowhole, and also for eyes.

 

Highly Commended: a crocodile

   in cucumber, a sliced out wedge

   for a gaping mouth, radish teeth and feet,

   and winding down its curving spine,

   a double crest of battlements, contrived

   from cocktail sticks and arrow-heads of swede.

 

Highly Commended: a glossy purple eggplant

   as the body of a bird of paradise,

   wings from tiers of rocket, mint and carrot tops,

   comb from sprouting mustard seed and dill.

   Beak a nutshell, tongue a nut,

   side-dish of summer fruits, its song.

 

Third Place: the coconut gorilla.

   A corn dolly armature whose stooky thighs

   and sloping head are covered

   in the cracked off shells of coconuts,

   the pile of the coconut fibres

   precisely a match for the nap of gorilla pelt.

 

Highly Commended: an aquarium of fish.  

   Goldfish, guppies and angelfish whittled

   from melons, peaches and artichokes.

   Highly skilled engraving suggests drift and flurry,

   fins and scales. A year’s work wasted on the system

   which blows bubbles fat as berries from their mouths.