Lindsay Waller-Wilkinson

(Sorry to those I didn’t manage to photograph. Take it that your poetry was so engaging I simply forgot! Take it as a compliment… And sorry in advance for any mis-spelling of names, general mis-spelling (Mike Brewer…) mis-quotes, misses both near and far. Take it that I am doing my best through difficult times… See below.)

Aarrggghhh… A drowsy numbness pains my sense, as though of Lidocaine and epinephrine I had drunk... I am stricken with dropsy. An injected cocktail. Sadly it has no hallucinogenic effects and I can see all too clearly the resultant jowls and lopsided grimace. I have aged ten years in as many minutes. My dentist assures me it will not last. She’d better be true to her word for I will sue. And this is a labour of love.

But on with the business. It was, as usual, a wonderful night of poetry in the convivial atmosphere we have come to expect from this bi-monthly event. (That’s every two months, not twice a month as some people have mistakenly presumed.)

Jane Commane welcomed us and read Reasonable from a new Nine Arches Press release Hide by Angela France. According to Gray’s Law Dictionary ‘The man on the Clapham Omnibus is synonymous with the pinnacle of reason in humanity.’ This poem is about that man shaking off his shackles and running amok in a rather English way. I liked it and I’m also enjoying her collection, which was one of my purchases from The States of Independence independent publisher’s festival held at De Montfort Uni on Saturday.

I love this one –

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Scapula

                      I like the shape

of the word in my mouth. The sharp angle

of it’s beginning, its fulsome end.

                      I like the planes of them,

the sigh of their support as I relax against a wall,

the flat surface they offer to the sun.

                      I like the way they lie,

mirrored either side of my spine,

how they slide under my skin as I move,

how they quietly hold the potential of wings.

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Fantastic open mics… Roy Marshall gave us Richard the Lionheart’s heart –– ‘a plump and fragrant fist wrapped in linen, placed in a lead lined box.’ Richard Birt gave us more blood, guts and gore with his ‘It Just So Happens.’ Caroline Cook gave us a witty and timely image of the EEC wrapped in a patchwork knitted blanket, ‘Death of a Euro,’ ending with the blanket unravelling to ‘Yarn drifting down onto the backs of munching sheep.’ Siobhan Logan treated us to one from her ‘Mad, Hopeless and Impossible’ pamphlet about Shackleton’s misadventure to the Antarctic. She read us ‘Snowstruck’ which contains the covetable phrase ‘dazzled by frazil ice / blinded by berg-light.’ Nathan Lunt is working on a series on Darwin and read to us one about the torment between head and heart, faith and science –– always a good subject. Katerina Kalinowski read ‘Click, Click’ the ‘Fucking rain’ quite mesmerising. Mike Brewer treated us to one of his poems about poems, ‘On Writing One’ which was/is a villanelle about writing a villanelle. Maxine Linnell gave us a tender poem in a series she’s working on around the death of her son in 2010, called ‘Chocolate.’ I admire the way Maxine’s poems resonate with quiet, reigned in emotion, the result of which is most affecting. Andrew Button treated us to ‘the approaching eclipse of middle age,’ a subject that seems to be rapidly receding into the past (sigh). Kate Ruse read her poem ‘Love on the Bridge’ another very delicate poem recently commended in our LWC Love Poetry Competition judged by Maria Taylor. Jayne Stanton read a new poem ‘You do not have to say,’ ‘your brambled fingertips…’ beautiful… I really like the new direction of Jayne’s poetry and look forward to hearing/reading more. Kathy Bell was instructed by Deborah Tyler Bennett to ‘write a poem about Lace’ for the recent Notts Festival and being a compliant soul she obeyed. I wish I could come up with the goods Tommy Cooper stylee ‘just like that!’ –– great ending –– ‘Hands which are still smooth, still white for idleness.’ I would love to read it off the page…

Featured poet Nichola Deane recently won the Flarestack Poets pamphlet comp alongside the already raved about on this blog David Clarke’ with Gaud. Nichola’s Pamphlet My Moriarty is equally ravable about. She read us the eponymous poem –– witty, cerebral, oblique, slightly surreal –– which gave us a good taster for the rest of her set.

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Up on the Reichenbach Falls, Moriarty,

just you, me and a flattering rainbow-hued

nimbus of mist. You with that spidery voice,

all machinating, echoey, hoaxey-coaxy,

or the ursine growl you use to show who’s boss. 

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Nichola uses launguage to great effect and is not afraid of playfulness. Ursine. Nimbus. What’s not to love? She’s also really into a poet of the Tang Dynasty, Wang Wei, (all news to me, but I have googled…)

And I loved this ––

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After Wang Wei

On the empty mountain,

no-one at all, apparently,

and yet there are echoes:

the trace of voices and sunlight

piercing the canopy,

touching with long fingers

the give of green moss.

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I admired Nichola’s piece about the wife of VILHELM HAMMERSHØI. He (the artist) often painted her (his wife) from behind, just her back, (another google…) and often playing the piano. It was delightfully intriguing to have her imagined voice heard, this woman who was seemingly ignored, who was released the minute her fingers made contact with the keys. I very much hope that Nichola will relax into herself during future readings as she gains confidence. Her work is good and she should read it proudly.

Jane Commane introduced Jonathan Taylor, saying that it’s good to have been a part of a poets development, to have seen/heard various poems in various stages and then to have seen the seeds of those poems flower and come together in a first collection. For me that is one of the best things about attending a regular poetry evening. And for so many different writers.

Jonathan’s first full collection, Musicolepsy, is published by Shoestring Press and another lovely book I bought at State of Independence. What I like about Jonathan’s work is that it is often very funny –– an emotion often missing from poetry, and indeed comtemporary literature. To quote Charles Boyle during the wonderful discussion about the short story (at this Saturday’s States of… you should have been there…) there is a lot of ‘exquisite doom’ in writing today. Mr Boyle was concerned about this, and I can understand why. I often write what sets out to be an upbeat piece, poem, story, yet it quickly descends into a bogland of gloom. Not sure why. But –– much of Jonathan’s poetry manages to avoid and transcend that particularl pit. Joyously. From ‘Leap of Faithlessness,’

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Would you believe all this,

take the leap of faith in reverse,

hold Kierkegaard up to mirrors,

jump back to absurd reality over an abyss

of flailing dinosaurs?

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Or would you just think I was taking the piss?

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More open mic’s… Matt Merrit opened with ‘Hen Capercaillie,’ a lush and naturalistic evocation. Dave Tunelly gave us a musing on Constable’s Haywain including many nostalgic mentions of those orange glowing lethal looking inefficient heating systems known as bar fires. I can picture many a room “warmed’ by them in my youth. Harriet Warner stunned us with linguistic gymnastics (all memorised… oh youth, where art thou…) and a diatribe on women’s dietary products. Laurie Cussack read us ‘Stuff.’ Bob Richardson wooed us with ‘Hamlet after Pasternak’ –– ‘life is not a country walk.’ Rebecca Bird, prior to being congratulated on being just published in ‘Envoi’ magazine (well done!) read us ‘A Vicar from the Stalls.’ Deborah Tyler Bennett, fresh from her poet in residency for Notts Festival themed ‘Lace’ read us her ‘Homage to Walker’s Workers.’ Next up, Simon Perril, who has recently published a collection with Leafe Press titled ‘Newton’s Splinter’ gave us the best line of the night… ‘the problem with poets… too many plugs, not enough sockets…’ Gary Carr followed with David Bowie’s ‘Archer.’ I enjoyed Charles Lauder’s poem inspired by a texan saying descibing that moment when it’s both sunny and rainy as ‘the devil kissing his wife.’ ‘The Devil and Love’ is a deliciously concrete evocation of a gloriously  ephemeral notion. Tom Wyre talked mental illness, taut and hard hitting, in ‘The Lucid Door.’ Will Breedon read us a lover’s Lament bringing us the third mention of dinosaurs with ‘We carbon dated…’

Third Featured poet –– Jess Green. I have seen/heard Jess many times at Word! but it was quite different seeing/hearing her tonight. She’s exciting, energetic, full of life, emotion and kinetic energy, quite electrifying really. She is part of the Roundhouse Poetry Collective and a seasoned performer, but  it was good to be able to buy her first pamphlet, #Romance, published by Holdfire to see what her poems look like on the page. Jess writes about being young, being a student, being no longer a student,  being an artist, being out of work, being stoned/drunk/pissed off, and what struck me is that, although there are (shit!?!) thirty years separating her twenty something’s and mine, apart from the names of the chemicals imbibed/snorted/inhaled, the styles of garb worn and the particular tunes one jigged along to while abusing one’s body, little has changed. I found that strangely reassuring. That is not to belittle Jess’s craft in any way. She’s a fine poet –– From Scratch Your Degree:

Take away the words that hurt until they healed,

bury Ariel with Sylvia,

drag the winter dawn down,

unclench my jaw

like he never touched me at all.

(…)

And when they ask you what you did for three years,

say,

‘nothing.’

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And from the poignant and delightful Potatoes:

I told her I was intimidated

when I took my beans on toast out the microwave,

she laughed and said

‘you learn variety in dinners

when your parents abandon you aged six

and only reappear when you win a lacrosse match.’

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Last up –– Mark Goodwin. Mark read to us, in his inimmitable style, one long poem from his chapbook Layers of Un, published by Shearsman, titled Sun-Fall & Tools, a Watermead Park, a Charnwood, a May 2011.

the sky held cathedral-grand clouds

spring sun lit floating seed-fluffs

& the up-down dance of gnats

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a duck & her so-far-five

-surviving ‘lings scottled across

the lake’s sparkling membrane

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Mark is such a master of place, a consummate naturalist, I can feel, taste, touch, see his environs, his ‘un’spaces, with such vivid clarity as his words gradually reveal his worlds. Always a pleasure.

Go buy some poetry…

lovely lovely