Sunday Poem – Michael Crowley

Afternoon everybody!  This week I’ve been to Grasmere three times – once to talk about a new project which I’ll be working on which sounds really exciting – I’m going to be running some poetry workshops with 16-19 year olds at various locations around Cumbria – the meeting for that was on Monday.

On Thursday I went back to Grasmere to St Oswalds’ church – a group of poets rounded up by Andrew Forster were shown around the church – we were told lots of history in the hope that we are inspired to write some poems.  These poems will then be responded to by some crafts people apparently – we have till July to think of something!

On Friday I had an email from Magma with an acceptance for my ‘Some People, Some People’ poem which I am very excited about!  I’ve only ever been in Magma once – and that was when I won an Eric Gregory Award and the magazine publish one poem from each award winner so  I’ve always wanted to try and get a poem in the normal way.

On Saturday I drove back over to Grasmere for the Poetry Business launch of the pamphlet winners – the four winners are David Grubb, Kim Lasky, David Attwool and Emma Danes.  You can order their pamphlets at http://www.poetrybusiness.co.uk

I really enjoyed the reading – I haven’t read all the pamphlets yet, but I have read David Grubb’s and I think that is outstanding.  He takes the famous Wallace Steven’s ‘Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird’ and riffs off this idea – the pamphlet is made up of a number of different sequences – ‘ Ways of Looking at a Very Old Lady’, ‘Ways of Looking at a Church’ etc etc.  They are completely different to anything else I’ve read and very inventive.

In between all this I’ve been to work and am in the midst of organising an all day brass workshop with Ewan Easton from the Halle Orchestra, in collaboration with John Packer.  The workshop is for adults and children and will take place June 9th at St Pius Primary School in Barrow.  It’s completely free for children and just a fiver for adults.  There will be a beginner ensemble and an advanced ensemble so everyone will be catered for.  Please get in touch if you are a brass player reading this and you have somehow missed out on receiving a letter and registering for this workshop.

Tomorrow I’m off to London to read at the Troubadour!  Really excited about this reading – the line up looks amazing – and lots of poets I haven’t heard read which doesn’t happen very often.  And I get to stay with the lovely Jill who is putting up with me yet again over night!  Information about the reading can be found here http://www.coffeehousepoetry.org/

Today’s Sunday poem is by Michael Crowley.  I saw Michael read a couple of months ago at an April Poets reading.  I was interested in his poetry because he has worked in prisons for a long time which is something I’m really interested in.  Michael Crowley is a writer and youth justice worker who is based in West Yorkshire.  He works as a playwright and has written for BBC Radio as well as youth theatre.  He has been writer in residence at a young offenders institution for the last five years.

‘Habitat’ the poem I’ve chosen for today comes from his pamphlet ‘Close to Home’ published by Prolebooks and can be ordered here http://www.prolebooks.co.uk

I liked this poem because I think it is very evocative of the mixed emotions that working in a prison conjures up and I like the ambiguity of the poem – who is not innocent – the prisoners, the bird?  How can a bird not be innocent?  Is pity the most useless emotion we have?  Maybe if you are working in a prison it is…

 

Habitat – Michael Crowley

Cornered in the sky, a jackdaw
flinches over the arms of B wing;
the winter gulls are circling, laughing.
They release it, swagger along the roof awhile.

A boy’s arm extends beyond the bars,
hands out breakfast to a duck that doesn’t judge.
The shadow of a shut face says: I am giving
because it is forbidden here.

On the balcony, a sparrow beats its back
against a treacherous light.  Two prisoners wait beneath,
twisting their towels, eyes to the skylight,
It’s got to be killed boss.
It dies against the white tiles of the showers,

face against a waste pipe, the sodden shades of bark
resembling a turd.  Outside, a bollard orange beak
droops at the earth.  The oyster catcher
puddles the grass, plots a primordial border.
It isn’t innocent and feeling sorry for it won’t help.

Sunday Poem – Mimi Khalvati

Afternoon everyone.  The Sunday Poem is going up a little earlier than usual today for a number of reasons.   The hubby and I already walked the dogs this morning through some fields near Dalton before the rain really started – which has now happened so that is that job done.  I also have to prepare to do a small talk on an Ofsted video about best practice in music teaching at an Inset session on Tuesday so this is me distracting myself from doing what I don’t want to do.  After I’ve made this blog post as long as possible, I think I will have to actually do what I’m supposed to be doing.

This week has mainly been work and some poetry things.  I’ve been doing lots of reading this week – the ‘Letters of Ted Hughes’ which I find unbearably sad.  I also want to read everything that Ted Hughes references that he is reading in the letters – but I think I would need to have at least ten more hours in each of my days.  I’ve started reading the Forster-Cavafy Letters as well and I’m halfway through reading a book by Terry Eagleton ‘How to Read a Poem’ which was on the reading list when I started the MA at Manchester Met.  I dutifully bought every book on the reading list when I first started – I didn’t want to be caught out by not having the right book – I’m such a goody two shoes.  As it happened, the book was never mentioned and I started reading it stubbornly to get my money’s worth, but I’m actually quite enjoying it now and learning quite a lot from it. The chapters I’ve read so far are 1.  The Functions of Criticism 2. What is Poetry? 3.  Formalists and I’m about to start Chapter 4 ‘In Pursuit of Form’.  It is actually more entertaining than it sounds!

On Tuesday I went to another reading up at the Wordsworth Trust http://www.wordsworthtrust.org.uk .  This time it was Anne Stevenson and M.R. Peacocke.  On Friday I went to Brewery Poets which is a critiquing group which meets at the Brewery in Kendal on the second Friday of every month.  There were two new people there this month but still only six of us as various people couldn’t come for various reasons.  However, I really enjoyed it and enjoyed reading people’s poems – it reminded me of the positive aspects to writing groups.

Yesterday a copy of Acumen arrived with my review of Myra Schneiders’ pamphlet ‘What Women Want’ and a cheque for £25!  This is so nice when this happens – I had a little dance around my office.  A part of me still can’t believe that I can get paid for writing.  I really like doing reviews as well – it somehow feels easier than writing poems – you don’t have to wait for the poem to come to you – you can just get on and start writing.

Today’s Sunday Poem is by the lovely Mimi Khalvati, who I read with last week at the Lyric Festival in Sheffield.  Mimi has a new pamphlet out with Smith/Doorstop called ‘Earthshine’.  Actually to call it a pamphlet is slightly misleading because it is posher than a pamphlet – it has a spine and a glossy front cover – it is a beautiful object.  Mimi is well known for her skills as a tutor as well and I experienced this first hand at a residential last year with Mimi and Myra Schneider as the tutors, run by the Second Light Network.  Mimi seems to me to be a very gentle person (although I don’t know her well), very softly spoken, always smiling, but she does not pull any punches in workshops!  She is very astute with her comments and manages to be challenging without making anyone feel bad because she is so nice!  And most importantly, you can trust her opinion – if she says something is good, she means it, because she would tell you if it wasn’t – she is very honest.  If you can get along to one of her workshops, you should.

Back to the pamphlet though – Earthshine is a sequence of poems which started from observations of each days weather and then spin off on various trajectories.  A lot of small creatures inhabit these poems – mice, mouse lemur, bats and the pamphlet is tinged with an air of elegy, rather than being made of elegy if that makes sense.  Only a few of the poems make a direct reference to the death of a mother but the whole pamphlet carries this feeling – although I wouldn’t want to mislead you into thinking this pamphlet is sad, or maudlin.  It does have sadness but it is also funny.  In the first poem ‘House Mouse’ the ‘I’ of the poem finds a dead mouse and the poem finishes ‘I tuck her into the finger/of my banana skin – a ferryboat to carry her over the Styx.’  This is funny and sweet and sad – sometimes the poems leave you not knowing what to feel.  They are also a lesson in close observation.  In ‘Madame Berthe’s Mouse Lemur’ the lemur is referred to as ‘itsy-bitsy portmanteau,/ little living furry torch’ and ‘a geisha lowering her fan’.

I’m raving about these poems that focus on tiny animals because the poem I’ve chosen is one of the poems that deal directly with death and has no animals in it at all! But I love the use of repitition in this poem, the blue running right through it and then that twist at the end is heartbreaking.   So here is the Sunday Poem, with thanks to Mimi Khalvati for permission to use it here.    You can buy ‘Earthshine’ by clicking on this link http://www.poetrybusiness.co.uk/shop/834/earthshine-mimi-khalvati

- Mimi also has full collections available – most recently ‘Child – New and Selected Poems’ published by Carcanet, available here.  http://www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer?product=9781847770943

What it Was  – Mimi Khalvati

It was the pool and the blue umbrellas,
blue awning.  It was the blue and white

lifesize chess-set on the terrace, wall of jasmine.
It was the persimmon and palm side by side

like two wise prophets and the view that dipped
then rose, the swallows that turned the valley.

It was the machinery of the old olive press,
the silences and the voices in them calling.

It was the water talking.  It was the woman reading with her head propped, wearing glasses,

the logpile under the overhanging staircase,
mist and the mountains we took for granted.

It was the blue-humped hose and living wasps
swimming on the surface.  It was the chimneys.

It was sleep.  It was not having a mother,
neither father nor mother to comfort me.

Sunday Poem – James Caruth

Evening folks.   I’ve had quite a nice weekend – I’ve been in Sheffield at the Lyric Festival.  On Friday I was reading as part of a Poetry Business event with Ed Reiss, Mimi Khalvati and Michael Laskey.  It was a really lovely reading.  I tried some new poems out as well as reading some from the pamphlet.

Afterwards Liz Venn and I went along to the pub with Peter and Ann Sansom, Seni Seniviratne, Michael Laskey, Mimi Khalvati and River Wolton.  We were sat with Seni and Michael and although I’d heard of them both as poets, I hadn’t met them properly before, but they were really easy to talk to.  Seni has one of the most interesting life histories I think I’ve ever heard, and when she gets round to writing it as a novel, I’ll definitely be buying it – and Michael – well, Michael used to edit Smiths Knoll, which is now not being published.  Smiths Knoll was an amazing poetry magazine that published new and established writers.  When I was first starting out it was one of the first magazines I subscribed to, and one of the first I submitted too.  And boy did I submit.  Smiths Knoll was famous for replying within a week, sometimes within days.  I think I submitted maybe twenty, thirty times – and I used to get these lovely little notes on the rejection slips – Michael would always tell me which one or two poems had the most promise, and this would give me a boost of confidence and I would package those poems off to a different magazine and send poor Michael six more.  I don’t know if he got so many different submissions that he didn’t notice that I was obsessively submitting.  I think at the time I thought he wouldn’t notice it was the same person submitting with sometimes no gap at all.  Maybe he didn’t – but his rejection slips were always so positive that I never felt despondent being rejected.  In fact it had the opposite effect! So Smiths Knoll was important for me in my development as a writer, although I was never published in it, I always harboured a secret soft spot for it.  I think the literary scene is the poorer for it not existing.  However, it may also mean that Michael will have more time for his own poetry which is pretty wonderful as well, and this can only be a good thing.  Anyway – Michael listens when people talk.  I realised how rare this was when I spoke to him.  He really listens.  Not in a ‘I’m waiting till you finish your story so I can tell my story’ kind of way.  He listens because he’s interested – he’s interested in people and this makes him easy to talk to.  Especially when you’re like me and you don’t stop for breath!  I think he is a contender for the Nicest Man in Poetry Award.

So that was a nice night on Friday – I stayed at Liz’s on Friday night in Glossop, and then Saturday was a full day workshop at the Poetry Business.  It was a great day – and nice to catch up with lots of poets – Rachel Davies, John Foggin, David Borrott, Roy Marshall, Maria Taylor, Carole Bromley, James Caruth – also met Becca Audra who I’ve only spoken to on Twitter – so that was great.  Then we went to a Wetherspoons, had something to eat and went to more readings for the Lyric Festival on Saturday – Tishani Doshi and Priscilla Uppal again ( I know, I’m obsessed) and then a break and another reading – Jacob Polley, Lavinia Greenlaw and Paul Farley.  By this time I was shattered and ready for bed – so got back to Barrow at after midnight – so quite tired!

So today I just sat on the sofa all day and read poetry.  I read Mimi Khalvati’s new pamphlet, which is brilliant, called Earthshine, published by Poetry Business.  I read some of Ted Hughes’ letters.  I watched Dirty Dancing and cried at the bit where her father won’t speak to Baby and she starts crying.   I mooned at Patrick Swayze and thought about how that film (and Grease with John Travolta) sets young girls up for so many disappointments.  How come women I’ve not met one man that tries to be like John Travolta in Grease or Patrick Swayze in Dirty Dancing yet the media supposedly has a massive effect on the way we behave, look, think etc…

Anyway!  Today’s Sunday poem is by James Caruth, a man with such a lovely accent that he could read a Wetherspoons menu and make it sound like a poem.  I first met Jim at the Poetry Business workshops – he is a great guy, very humble and a real poetry lover – not just a poet.  What I mean by this is that he loves poetry – he gets excited about poetry, he likes talking about poems, not just writing them.

I’ve been meaning to have Jim as the Sunday poet for the longest time now – and the poem I’ve chosen is ‘Pinky’ from Jim’s recent pamphlet from the Poetry Business called ‘Marking the Lambs’.  A lot of Jim’s poems are elegies, or if not elegies, they are laced through with a wistful yearning.James Caruth was born in Belfast.  His first collection, ‘A Stones Throw’ was published by Staple Press in 2007 and the pamphlet ‘Dark Peak’ appeared from Longbarrow Press in 2008.  Jim’s poetry is very lyrical and musical and I would urge you all to get yourself to the Sheffield Poetry Festival in June (yes, Sheffield has TWO poetry festivals) where he will be reading with Bernard O’Donaghue.  The festival programme can be found at http://www.sheffieldpoetryfestival.com and they have lots of brilliant poets coming.

If you would like to order Jim’s pamphlet you will find it at http://www.poetrybusiness.co.uk/james-caruth

 

Here is the Sunday Poem -

Pinky – James Caruth

im. Patrick McKenna

He drank whiskey like John Wayne,
throwing it down his throat in one slug.
I once asked him if he’d like some water in it
and the answer came back like a shot -
Water’s for washing your face, son.

Now his face fails to live up to his name,
livid as raw fish, he lies stretched out
between the candles and the sandwiches<
dapper as always in his Sunday suit,
pressed white shirt, dark tie.

When I go, I want it to be like Pinky,
with whiskey and lies and people
whose faces I can’t recall, saying
my name in their prayers or talking
about me behind their hands -
another old gunslinger shot in the back.

And after, they’d sing legends
of things I’d never done,
so full of bravado and balls
that I’d be happy to swear
every single word was true.

 

Sunday Poem – Polly Atkin

Afternoon everybody! I’m writing this post as fast as possible, as I’m leaving to go to poet Antony Christie’s house for his 70th birthday get together.  I’m counting on Antony not reading this blog before we all get there, as it’s meant to be a surprise!

Yesterday I went to the Theatre by the Lake to meet the Alligator Theatre company who are putting a show together which they want to write as a collaboration with local writers.  I was the only poet there, but there was a ‘non-fiction writer’ and then a few playwrights.  It was a really interesting afternoon and I think the play will be really interesting.  All I have to do now is send them some poems and see if I get chosen – I don’t know how much chance I’ve got, not being a playwright, but I would love to be on the project – so tomorrow I will send them some poems for that.

And today I bought a new car!  Or at least, took out a loan to get a new car.  I’m picking it up on Tuesday.  After I’ve had my filling.  So no more moaning about cars, hopefully.  On this blog or in real life.

Today’s Sunday poem is by Polly Atkin.  I went to Polly’s launch of her new pamphlet last weekend and was blown away by her poetry.  She is the inaugural winner of the Mslexia Pamphlet competition http://www.mslexia.co.uk

Mslexia is a magazine for women writers and they are running the pamphlet competition this year as well – the pamphlet has been beautifully produced and published by Seren so it’s well worth a go!  You can order Polly’s pamphlet for a mere fiver from Seren at http://www.SerenBooks.com

Polly seems to have slipped under the radar in some ways – she has had a pamphlet out before with Austeigger Press called Bone Song and she has a lot of poetry competition wins to her name – the Troubadour in 2008 and the Kent and Sussex in 2011 so she’s been writing for a while but I don’t think her poetry is as well known as it deserves to be.

There was a question and answer session after Polly’s launch and I was also struck by how good she was at answering questions – very articulate and clear.

Polly’s new pamphlet is called Shadow Dispatches.  It was very difficult to pick a poem again – I loved lots of them but I went for this one about a local Grasmere character  – Henry the Swan because of the fantastic descriptions.  I also love the litany-like feel of the repeated words ‘No grace’

Mute – Polly Atkin

No grace in the nicotine yellow curve
of your throat, snakeish, its throb as you swallow,open your toothed beak, croak, gutteral.

No grace in its muscular sway, in the way
you haul your body like a curse up the muddied
lawn, lumbering, clumsy.  No beauty

in your antediluvian call.  No music.
No love, no song at all.  Ugly
as a god you crawl from the silted shore,

grotesque, hissing.  We’d heard one night
you learnt the steps by moonlight, climbed
to the door of the hut and stopped, shocked

by your transformation, too almost human.
But there was no prince in you, no, no royalty.
Close up, only the leprous knob

on your forehead, your mark of longevity, bulbous,
crackled old leather, a slow black slug.
Can you eat pearls, isolate milk from water?

Now you have dragged yourself up from the lake
to show us your pain.  Injured, you curl
on yourself and shudder.  Mute as a myth.

We bring seed, drink, grow brave, creep closer.
Your fierce neck droops.  So like a god.
Helpless, we leave you to suffer.  Wake

in the grey light thinking of you, in the rain,
your threat display, your dinosaur motion.
And then I see it, your grace.  The beauty

of continuation.  You do not sing.
You build that low down growl you trill
like an aria and we know you’ll live.

Dentists, Doctors and Poetry of course

Evening folks.  This week I have had one dentist appointment, one doctor’s appointment and have been to one poetry reading.

My dentist appointment was on Monday, which meant I spent the morning worrying about the appointment and then the afternoon recovering from it.  I have a cavity apparently so I have to go and get a filling next Tuesday.  Cue much moaning from me – I’m terrified of dentists and haven’t been since 2008, so I guess I only have myself to blame (I’ll say it before anyone else does)

Then Tuesday I went up to the Wordsworth Trust to hear Tishani Doshi and Priscila Uppal.  It was a really, really good reading.  I already had Tishani’s book after hearing her read at Ledbury Poetry Festival last year but I knew nothing about Priscila Uppal but she is now one of my Favorite Poets.  There is a poem in her book ‘Successful Tragedies’ called ‘In Your Sickness’ which I’ve copied out and am carrying with me – I don’t do that very often, but I keep coming back to it, reading it out loud, reading it to myself.  I don’t know if it’s online or not.  So that was a very successful poetry reading – to find a new poet that I love – new to me, not new to poetry – she is a very big Canadian Poet.  Anyway, here are the first couple of  lines of that poem and if they don’t make you want to go and spend a tenner on the book I don’t know what will…

‘It is your body, soft as an old bed,
the fleshy pillows of your fever
that make me want to deliver you like an old letter
back to a first love…’

And then on Wednesday I went with one of my GCSE pupils to an extra rehearsal to practise his ensemble piece – he has to play a solo with a band.  I got back after 9pm on that night – so no poetry that day.  Barrow Steelworks Band had kindly agreed to let my pupil come and have an extra practice with them before he records it with the junior band on Monday – I played my trumpet for the first time in a long time – by the way, Barrow Steelworks are recruiting for players, so if anyone used to play a brass instrument and feels the urge to do so again, or has always wanted to play an instrument…get in touch and I’ll put you in touch with the conductor.

And today I went to the doctors  and found out I have to have a minor operation to remove a lump from my skull.  It’s a perfectly harmless lump, apparently, apart from the fact it’s very sore at the minute – it’s such a minor operation that they can do it at the doctors surgery.  The doctor was completely puzzled when I appeared worried about this – but I’ve not even broken anything before and I don’t like pain.  It’s actually a benign cyst, but that sounds more horrible than the vague word ‘lump’.  So the dramatic part of my personality, which lets face it, makes up 90% of my psychological makeup is feeling like I’m physically falling apart, getting old, etc etc.  The doctor said ‘It’s no more serious than going to the dentist’ which was an unfortunate analogy in my case.   The best thing the doctor said though, and this is the real reason I’m writing about something fairly personal on a blog which anyone can read, was the line ‘At least you’ll get a day off work.  You don’t want to bleed on any of your pupils’.

Is it advisable to rant about lumps and fillings on a blog and sandwich a poetry reading between the two?  I don’t know.

And for those who are dying for updates about the car situation – still no new car yet.  I’m fluctuating between buying a £500 car from a random, or going wild and buying a brand new one on a finance plan…. the middle ground of a ‘good’ second hand car has not worked too well for me with the last couple of cars….

To finish with poetry – I have just submitted to a poetry magazine and a competition tonight.  Which of course, isn’t really poetry – it is the fluff and feathers around poetry, but it has cleared out my stock of poems which means my mind feels clear and there is space for some new poems to fly in….

Sunday Poem – Heidi Williamson

This week has been filled with work and lots of poetry.  On Wednesday I was the guest poet at Zeffirellis in Ambleside.  This was organised by Andrew Forster of the Wordsworth Trust.  There was a really good turn out, lots of open mics and the combination of being able to eat pizza whilst listening to poetry turned out to be very popular, and not nearly as antisocial as it sounds.  I didn’t notice any loud chomping noises whilst I was reading anyway!

Unfortunately the garage said my car would need a £1000 to get it going again, so it has gone to the great car graveyard in the sky – more commonly known as the scrappers.  I am still quite hacked off about it, as I still owe money on the car but trying not to think about it.

Meanwhile, me and hubby are ‘sharing’ his car which has led me to the discovery that I don’t like sharing, and I’m not good at it so we are looking round for a very cheap car.  There is no massive rush at the minute,as we are just about managing to share one.

Yesterday was Polly Atkin’s launch of her pamphlet -she was the winner of the inaugral Mslexia pamphlet competition, and her pamphlet ‘Shadow Dispatches’ is published by Seren.  It’s very blue and pretty and I really enjoyed the reading.  The reading was at Grasmere at the Wordsworth Trust.  Polly is a really good reader of her work, and her poems are packed full of imagery.  I think one of her strengths, from a first read through of it is the wonderful similes and metaphors she uses.  I would definitely recommend it.  I got a lift with Mark Carson and we whizzed off pretty sharpish afterwards so we would have time to eat and get sorted out before Poem and A Pint in the evening.

Poem and A Pint was great!  If you missed Billy Letford you should be kicking yourself- although not too hard, as he is reading at the Wordsworth Trust in June, so you could go and see him read there.  He recites all his poems from memory, no introductions and it feels as if the poem is holding the audience still – then he stops and the spell is broken and we all breathe again before the next one.  A masterclass in how to give a good reading – I would love to perform more like that – although if I just copied it would be ridiculous – but I have got lots of ideas of how to improve my own performance.

And today I am very proud of myself.  I lost the argument with the hubby as to who has the car – he was going hiking in the Lakes so his need was greater – so I actually used a bus to get to Ulverston.  I don’t know why but I have had an irrational dislike of buses – I think it’s from having to catch them every day in Birmingham when I was teaching there.  And once in Birmingham, I’m sure I saw a flea leap from the person’s leg who was sitting next to me on to my leg.  Now rationally, it was probably some other high-jumping insect, as I probably wouldn’t have been able to see a flea but I can’t help being convinced it was a flea.

So, this morning a nice bus driver stopped even though I was standing at the wrong bus stop and let me on the bus to Ulverston and it was absolutely fine.  No fleas – in fact hardly any passengers.

I was going to a Poem and A Pint committee memeber’s house who was looking after Billy Letford -we’d been invited for tea and cake.  That was very nice, and I got back again on the bus, no excitement, no traumas.

I think I also don’t quite believe that the buses adhere to timetables – and I hate waiting.  But I’ve decided these are irrational thoughts, not based on experience of Barrow buses, so I’m going to have to give them more of  a go I think.

Today’s Sunday poem is by Heidi Williamson. Her first collection ‘Electric Shadow’ is published by Bloodaxe and was a Poetry Book Society Recommendation. It was also shortlisted in 2012 for the Seamus Heaney Centre Prize for Poetry.

I read ‘Electric Shadow’ only recently, although it came out in 2011 and I really enjoyed the book.  It is easy to see why it has garnered so much interest- she uses unusual angles to write about big themes like in the poem ‘At the hands-on science centre’ when she recounts a couple standing between parrallel mirrors – really this poem, I think, is about relationships and power and absence, but she approaches this through the doorway of a science centre – which is unusual I think.

So when I spotted Heidi on Twitter I asked her if I could have a poem from the book.  As in most cases when I have permission to pick any poem from the book, it was hard to settle on one.  I decided to pick the strangest one in the collection because it was my favorite.

You can order ‘Electric Shadow’ from Bloodaxe here http://www.bloodaxebooks.com/personpage.asp?author=Heidi+Williamson and you can find out more about Heidi Williamson here: http://www.heidiwilliamsonpoet.com

So here is the poem:

If Then Else – Heidi Williamson

If
your lover asks you to bite his tongue,
do it
Else you are alone and bloodless

If
you cannot find yourself, Then
find another
Else you are alive and loveless

If
you breathe numbness, Then
rejoice quietly
Else you are woken

If
you age, Then
live
Else you age lifelessly

If
you die, Then
live
Else you age lifelessly

If
you die, Then
think,
Else you die thoughtlessly

If
you wish to eat apples and oranges, Then
choose
Else no distinctions can be made

If Then Else: A logic statement in high-level programming that defines the data to be compared and the actions to be taken as a result.  There can only be one of two outcomes.  There is no scope for ambiguity. 

Sunday Poem – Miceal Kearney

So it’s now the end of the Easter holidays.  Tomorrow school starts again – although I don’t because it’s my day off!  It is however, the first rehearsal for Barrow Shipyard Junior Band in the evening, so it’s not a full day off.

On Friday I went to Liz Venn’s in Glossop and had a lovely evening talking about poetry and drinking red wine.  The next morning we were both going to the Advanced Writer’s School workshop in Sheffield at the Poetry Business, and as I pulled into the car park my car stopped working.  Cue much ringing around, as of course I didn’t have the details of my breakdown cover – I knew it was through my car insurance, but I couldn’t even remember the company I was insured with.  I cursed myself lots for being so disorganised and swore to change in future.

Eventually hubby found details to discover I’d been stingy and paid for the lowest level of breakdown cover which would take my car and leave it at the nearest garage – which would be no good as it was Saturday.  I don’t know what my logic was when I bought this – especially as I am flying up and down the country so often in my car.

I was also giving Jennifer Copley a lift back to Barrow and I remembered my Dad telling me when I first started driving, after paying for me to be an AA member, that they would come and get me anywhere, as it was me that was insured, not my car.  I had of course, let my membership lapse when my dad decided I was old enough to pay for it on my own.  I asked Jenny if she was an AA member – and we were saved!  It was like being with the Queen, as she had Gold Membership, which meant the AA came out and towed us all the way back to Barrow.  The AA man was very nice as well – not only did he drop Jenny off at her house, he then dropped my car off at the garage, and then dropped me at the house.

So amidst all of this sorting out I was also trying to do some writing at the workshop, which I’ve been looking forward to for weeks.  I did manage to start one poem which I think could be something .  It’s called ‘An Ode to my Trumpet on the 1st Year of its Retirement’.  I’m going to try and type that up tomorrow.

Next week there is an open mic at Zefirellis in Ambleside and I’m the guest poet – but there are poetry and music slots so it would be lovely to see some of you there if you live within striking distance.

Today’s Sunday Poem is by Miceal Kearney.  I met Miceal in Fermoy last August at the Fermoy International Poetry Festival ( http://www.fermoypoetryfestival.com )

It’s running again this year so I hope he is going to be there again!  Miceal is a really interesting poet and a lovely guy .  He lives in the west of Ireland and works on the family farm.  He is a brilliant and memorable performer of his work and the fact he has won various poetry slams – the 2006 Cuirt Poetry Slam in Limerick, the 2007 Baffle Bard, the 2007 Cuirt Poetry Grand Slam and the 2007 North Beach Poetry Nights’ Grand Slam all attest to this.  His first collection was published by Doire Press in 2008 and is called ‘Inheritance’.  You can order it from http://www.doirepress.com

The book is full of the real life of living and working on a farm.  It is a mixture of loneliness and camaraderie, of an understanding of what it is to work on the land and a bluntness about the harsh realities of this.  I am a true hypocrite – an animal lover and a meat – eater and I found Miceal’s truths challenging yet brutally honest and thought-provoking.  I really would recommend the book – or go to Ireland and find out where he’s reading.  It will be worth the trip.

I chose this short poem from the book because I think it illustrates some of those themes that weave their way through the poems.  I think it’s a beautiful poem – simple, direct, convincing.

Make a Wish – Miceal Kearney

In this sunny meadow sheep bleat.
Today is my birthday.
The evening breeze
blows out my candles.
The sheep still bleat.

Before I go,
each guest will get some cake -
rude not to share.
Five pieces I will cut:
the sun, the wind, the sheep
and me.
The last piece I will keep
for the moon.