Aged five, I once missed the chance to say goodbye.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. PLEASE CLICK ON THE BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM.
After the single knock
she grabbed her son’s hand,
held it high,
as if unwillingly he had been dragged there
Read the full post »
A dynamic hue that attracts attention to itself with strong symbolic overtones.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
PLEASE CLICK ON THE BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM.
Unused coils from a 1945 electrical control panel
I hold two coils of burnished cooper
pristine, unused as electrical conductors
treasured for their vibrant colour
which carries its own power.
Read the full post »
Watching somebody start out on the complexity of life’s journey is awe inspiring.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
PLEASE CLICK ON THE BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM
The Blackberry Pudding experience
How much you have to learn, but if you are fortunate
the journey of discovery will continue to entice.
In the Spring of 2010 the wind in East Anglia blew directly from the Artic and the low temperature locked us in Winter. This position held until March, when the wind suddenly swung to blow from the South and swiftly brought us the long awaited season change.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. PLEASE CLICK ON THE BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM
The unseasonal cold had delayed the blackthorn’s bloom
now warmth opens dense white clumps across the heath
static clouds locked in place beneath the taller trees.
Like impatient passengers flowers pushed and jostled
to ensure their place in a conformity of coincidence.
This poem comes straight from the heart, one the young members of our family is currently having to deal with cancer.
It carries a dedication: For Lucy, with love and admiration.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. PLEASE CLICK ON THE BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM.
Camellia Japonica Alba Simplex
The unnatural spawned the unexpected
amongst its glossy dark green leaves
Camellia Japonica Alba Simplex
mistakenly sports its pointed buds
Read the full post »
Have you ever had the experience of tapping into vivid memories whilst dreaming, that you could not draw on whilst awake. An experience that teases about the brain’s capacity and potential.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. PLEASE CLICK ON THE BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM
I lived a vivid dream -
knew that I was dreaming
yet felt fully in control,
walking again in Raingate Street
but nearly sixty years ago.
Read the full post »
How important to our concept of ‘self’ is the idea that we all see the same world - yet we now know that we do not?
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. PLEASE CLICK ON THE BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM
In bleak unknown seas simple celled life
rose to the surface, drawn to the sky’s light
or sunk to darkness to avoid sunburn.
Slowly yellow and blue imprinted in genes
for millenia these were the only codes
the rest was shades of grey.
Read the full post »
By what chance are we remembered by strangers, who speak our name beyond our life?
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. PLEASE CLICK ON THE BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THE POEM
Click on the image to enlarge it.
I have carried your cast memory
for nearly thirty years from house to house.
The distance it has travelled since your death
perhaps further than your range in life.
My father woke me late one night, when I was seven years old, and took me poaching. This was not ‘sport’ but meat for the table in 1953.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. PLEASE CLICK ON THE BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM
Image by courtesy of Meemalee
He always breathed with a slight whine
wet lips around a Woodbine
as he eviscerated game on the table
Read the full post »
A first experience of death, suitably dressed.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
PLEASE CLICK ON BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM
This poem was selected by Helen Ivory to appear on the poetry and prose webzine Ink Sweat and Tears
The boy was coaxed into the room
clad for the first time
in his new school uniform
The history of the Enclosures was often bloody and raucous and always unfair, but today’s enclosures are enacted with minimal comment.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. PLEASE PRESS BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THIS POEM
The Blyth Estuary at full tide. Photograph by Nick Catlin. CLICK ON THE IMAGE TO ENLARGE IT.
The Blyth winds down to the brine
and we are soothed as it curls
through what remains of heath
and the solitude of reeds -
but the truth lies still beneath,
for this is Bloody Marsh.
Existentialism or virtual reality, a narrowing choice?
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. PLEASE CLICK ON BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THE POEM
Do you sometimes feel like a visitor
to your own life
as if your host is on a voyage
that holds you passenger.
Read the full post »
East Anglia is the driest part of the Country, and whilst its river valley scenery and wildlife is beautiful, the appetite for water use steadily increases.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. PLEASE CLICK ON BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THE POEM
Marsh Harrier hunting, image courtesy of the RSPB
A change at early evening
A breeze returns with the tide
rustling through the reed bed
like gossips spreading scandal.
Read the full post »
James Gleick’s book ‘Chaos’ (1987), about the ripple effect of interconnections from small beginnings, should be considered in relevance to the problems of financial institutions in the Western World.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. PLEASE PRESS BUTTON ABOVE TO HEAR THE POEM
image from a painting by Rene Magritte
Where is the barbed idealism of youth
spoken in the eloquent anger of inexperience?
Why doesn’t the measured voice of age
proclaim the problem of our insular existence?
Read the full post »
The Suffolk Poetry Society organised an excellent event called ‘Soundings’ on June 25th 2011, under the leadership of Cameron Hawke Smith. It considered the variety of ways that words can sound in different languages and in dialect. Catalysed by this approaching event my Suffolk origins encouraged me to write this poem about weed control in farming, but setting it before the discovery of pesticides when weeds were pulled by hand and when the Suffolk dialect was commonplace.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.
PLEASE PRESS ABOVE KEY TO HEAR THE POEM READ
Rye grass in a wheat crop – HGCA image
Hoad yew hard bor!
Yew hint no one hoss race.
The end of this row
hint gowan no place,
A recent conversation triggered memories of a health scare, but composure was regained with a realisation of scale.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. PLEASE CLICK ON THE TAB ABOVE TO HEAR THE POEM.
Image by Beom-Seok Yeom from South Korea.
The heavy moon rose blood-red
full faced and lifting slowly
like a glutton from a feast
Read the full post »
Michael Kirby, known to all who came into contact with him for his enthusiastic and learned love of the natural world, died in February 2011, and is much missed.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. PLEASE CLICK ON THE TAB ABOVE TO HEAR THE POEM
An Ant-lion lava
Who will find the Ant-lion now?
Who will count the Silver Studded Blue
and visit the burrow of the Solitary Bee?
This poem was ‘inspired’ by a recent AGM of a Poetry Society, when the Committee suggested a name change.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. PLEASE CLICK ON THE TAB ABOVE TO HEAR THE POEM
It had a simple trigger,
someone suggested change -
another name, some different words.
Only in my 50′s did I learn how the goat had got its own back, and mine.
Thanks to a recent Kate Foley workshop on Taste and see for provoking this poem.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. TO HEAR THIS POEM CLICK ON THE TAB ABOVE
The all seeing eye
A plaintive bleat from a neighbour
“The billy goat’s got out!”
told him he would stink again
from tackling the rank lewdness
of the devious vile escaper.
This poem recently appeared on the webzine ink-sweat-and-tears , and is about an event that happened nearly 44 years ago, a moment when unexpected enchantment and beauty produced a merger of the emotional, aesthetic and spiritual.
Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser. TO HEAR THE POEM CLICK ON THE TAB ABOVE
Khyyam's grave, one of the poor photo's taken on the day.
On our one free day we went to Naishapur
in Ahmed’s black Mercedes, with his pride
an inbuilt record player, which only took one disc.
Read the full post »
