I always think of January as being a bit dreary, so it tends to be the time of year I make plans for things to look forward to.
Number one is a short writing retreat – I did a DIY retreat a couple of years ago and got a lot out of it – not least of all enough material to produce two decent poems. But I was a bit lonely – so this time I’ve booked 3 nights away rather than four, at a National Trust flat in Standen, an Arts & Crafts house which I’ve always loved visiting. I’ll have free range access to all the gardens and grounds while I’m there and a cosy flat in the servants quarters where I can read and write. Are you jealous yet?! That will be in March, when the days will be slightly longer and who knows, maybe warmer too.
I’ve also booked onto an afternoon workshop with Anne-Marie Fyfe on the theme of ‘a bridge too far’ in February, and this workshop offered by Poetry Swindon also looks tempting – Smart reading for smarter writing with Martin Malone – but it’s the day before and I might be tad exhausted from all the workshopping (and travelling) in one weekend.
It’s a good thing I’m going to be doing some workshopping and retreating because I’ve got a few readings coming up, and need new material! This Thursday 22nd January I’m on home turf here in Lewes for Needlewriters, then nothing else booked for a while, although Telltale Poets are planning another reading in March or April – we’ll be finalising that soon. On April 22nd I’ll be reading at Lauderdale House in London, as part of Shanta Acharya’s Poetry in the House series, which will be fab, and in May 3rd I’ll be in Mayfield for a reading during the Mayfield Fringe Festival, at the kind invitation of Sian Thomas. Later in the year, big thanks to Dawn Gorman for booking me to read at Words and Ears in Bradford on Avon on October 29th – which is actually my birthday, so we’re making a nice trip of it.
As regards submissions, there’s no news to report I’m afraid. I’ve lost a bit of momentum. I’m in the doldrums with no sign of the wind getting up. So I’m focusing more on finding the time to write, and am resisting the urge to enter competitions or submit to any more mags just for the sake of getting things out there. To be honest the cupboard is bare at the moment – all my half-decent stuff is tied up and out of circulation. If you’re interested, here’s how the magazine submissions are going:
4 poems have been out for 5 days – yes! I submitted a few the other day – but other than that:
9 poems have been out for 76 days
4 poems for 131 days
4 poems for 156 days
I’ll soon be able to move a couple back into circulation which were out to competitions. It’s a slooooow process, isn’t it? But I’m heartened by reminding myself that for many fine poets three or four good poems a year was (or is) enough. Quality, not quantity 🙂 And think of the treats coming up!
What is it about poets called Don? There’s Don Paterson for starters. Don. Paterson. And now Don Share. Maybe it’s the the power/mafia connotations (Don Corleone). Or the suggestion of raffishness (Don Juan). Or the hidden warning: not DO but DON’t.
So here’s the thing: picture sixteen or so poets perched in a circle, hothoused in a room of the Richard Jefferies Museum on the edge of Swindon. All eyes and ears are on the Editor of Poetry, Don Share, who’s been flown in from Chicago for the Swindon Festival of Poetry. No-one quite knows what to expect, but I for one am hoping not to have to do any work at all, other than listen and take the odd note. And that’s exactly what happened.
After the initial introductions, Don had a pretty good idea of just how much ambition and urgency was present in the room, and he set to answering our (mostly unspoken) questions. In the afternoon, there was some expectation that we’d all subject Don to one of our poems, for him to offer some pointers. We’d lost two participants (including one of the only 2 men) by then, but there still wasn’t time for everyone to have a go. But no-one really minded, especially as Don offered to email his comments to anyone who’d been left out.
I admired the way Don kept the energy going throughout the day when others might have wilted. Some of the funniest moments were clearly unscripted, such as the ten minute discussion about how he’d agonised over publishing a poem, the problem being the poet’s use of the word ‘slab’. And when he said with no hint of irony that he’d always wanted to visit Swindon (“it’s in the Domesday Book!”) Or pronouncing on the poetry greats: “I’ve no idea what they were setting out to do, what was going through their minds – maybe they were just geniuses and we’re all screwed!” And later on “The Waste Land is just crazy-ass!”
Of course there was also a huge amount of fascinating stuff…although you ‘had to be there’, here are my notes which I hope give a flavour of it. Huge thanks to Don for his generous sharing (no pun intended).
On the editor’s role
There are good editors who are not poets. There are good poets who are not great editors. Don sees them as 2 distinct roles. He reads a LOT of poetry – the magazine gets 120,000 submissions a year, for starters, and all are read by Don and Consulting Editor Christina Pugh.
Editors must be ‘pitiless and undeceived’
Editors can’t be publishing only poets with an established reputation – if that were case then (for example) Poetry wouldn’t have published T S Eliot. (As it was, the publication of ‘Prufrock’ in 1915 resulted in years of hatemail.) He still gets hatemail from people about stuff that’s published. “If we go down the route of only publishing what everyone thinks poetry is/should be, then we’re lost.”
Don doesn’t necessarily like most of the poems he publishes. It’s not about liking – “the most powerful poems are infuriating”. Christina Pugh’s judgement on the majority of ‘perfectly competent’ poems is “there’s nothing at stake here.”
On comparing oneself to the great poets
It’s absolutely correct to say ‘I’m not Ted Hughes’ or ‘I’m no Emily Dickinson’ – because they were themselves, and so must any poet be. “you can’t imagine Emily Dickinson in a workshop.”
Don read ALL the back issues of Poetry and he says that 94% of the poetry published in it over the hundred years or so is not good (ie it hasn’t stood the test of time).
The key for ‘competent poets’ – ie those of us getting published, writing perfectly OK poems, making a bit of a poetry name for ourselves – is to not just aim for mere competence. Don remembered when Derek Walcott became his mentor, looked over one of his poems and said ‘This is very good, well done … you could write these kinds of poems all your life… but is it your life’s work?”
Don’s advice – list ten poems that for you are absolute favourites, poems you aspire to, and ask yourself “are these competent poems? What makes them more than that?”
What can the poor aspiring poet do??
Eliminate the ‘obvious stupidities’:
Be honest – ie true to what you know, where you’re from, what you’ve lived. (This wasn’t discussed exactly but it made me think that perhaps the ‘poetic’ elements that can creep into a poem are to do with adopting a register that’s foreign to us in everyday speech. There was some discussion afterwards about how playing up to one’s ‘roots’ was a big trend in poetry at the moment – leaving those of us with very little in the way of distinguishing features – ethnic, regional, class etc – feeling a bit disadvantaged!)
Be specific. Make the reader live it/see it/ feel it like you do. “As soon as I see the word ‘bird’ in a poem, I’m done.” What kind of bird? “If it’s not coming from something you know, it’s scenic … it’s got to come from a place of honesty. When an American reads Ted Hughes, they see what he sees, it’s as if they were where he was – it’s not about a kind of realism, it’s about being able to inject a reader with an image.”
Another problem is that students of poetry are shown (or study) the great poems, and if that’s all they read (rather than reading broadly from a poet’s body of work) – that is a problem. If you only read the exemplars then you don’t have a feel for how the poet got where they did. Even the great poets wrote some crappy poems, went through stages when they couldn’t or didn’t write great poetry. “The work that your worst poems do has to be the work that your best poems do” … “make something of what you’re bad at” – (I’m still pondering what this means exactly).
“The things you worry about least in your poem are the things that can set the poem apart, if you pay attention to them.”
“If you start off knowing what you’re trying to say then the poem becomes predictable.”
“Readers are like editors – they catch you out.”
Tips/ comments from the workshopping session
Form – how a poem’s laid out on the page – is the first thing the reader/editor notices. Have a reason for the choosing the form you’ve chosen. Things like stepped lines, right aligned, spaces, one word on a line – what’s the reasoning? If you were to read it out loud, is the form obvious to the reader, and if not, why not put it into a form that matches how you read it? The rhythm might shape the poem. Play around with form. Try different things.
The title is the next biggest thing – if it says too much then the poem isn’t a surprise.
Pay attention to consistency of tone/language / register
Some of the lines of your poem may be scaffolding – it serves a purpose while the poem is evolving, but can be taken out at the end (I liked this a lot!)
Similarly, you can often edit out the first few lines – they’re often just like the vamping that musicians do before they start the actual piece of music
Using the pronouns ‘she’ or ‘he’ – why not ‘I’? It’s a distancing thing so maybe there’s a psychological purpose for it? Don’s advice is that readers prefer not to be put at a distance, want to feel the speaker is talking directly – more powerful.
Why not give people names? Character come to life when they’re given a name – readers care more if it feels like direct speech not just a story told by someone else. Don gives the example of Ted Hughes’ Letters – it’s the fact that it’s Ted & Sylvia that we’re reading that makes it so fascinating, not “just another guy in a crappy relationship.” If a poem is about a couple, their relationship, why not tell us their names?
Details, specifics. They can make a poem more memorable, different, unique even. eg ‘Adlestrop’. Think of Betjeman with all the proper names he uses. Larkin.
If you allude to something, the observation has to be good enough to stand alone, in case the reader doesn’t get the allusion
Be careful with words like ‘gush’ and ‘spume’ as they can overpower others. (Perhaps this should be the basis of a list – ‘words that overpower’?)
Somebody or something must be changed in the course of a poem – either in the poem itself or in the reader or both. There’s a shift – what is it?
I have some back issues of Poetry from when I took advantage of a freebie offer I think, and it’s a great magazine – I’m now motivated to subscribe properly, as one of my ‘rolling subscription’ system whereby I try to get around to subscribing to different magazines for at least a year at a time. The Poetry Foundation website is a fantastic free resource in itself, and every month there’s a Poetry Magazine Podcast that’s definitely worth a listen.
Someone posted recently on Twitter that poetry seemed to be “mostly about reading, writing and waiting”. I know I’ve certainly had that kind of year up until a few weeks ago. I’d have to wait to do one of my ‘stock takes’ to see if I’ve been sending out less work this year than last, it’s felt a bit like the doldrums but in reality it may just be that I’ve had more rejections this year than before. I love autumn, and right now I’m feeling busy and fulfilled with various projects on the go, so maybe there’s a little momentum building.
The first half of the year was mostly about writing (non fiction) books, the first of which is scheduled for release in November. This Monday (29th) I’m giving a talk / leading a discussion for Hastings & St Leonards Writers’ Hub about social media and blogging, as a prelim to my one-day courses for New Writing South – the first of which is coming up in October. I also have a piece to write for Poetry News, on the subject of poets blogging.
I’m also mentoring a couple of writers at the moment on their blogging, social web presence and the rest. It’s great fun to help others get to grips with it all in a way that works for them.
Next Wednesday sees the public launch of Telltale Press, the new poets’ collective I’ve started with Peter Kenny and under the expert editorial guidance of Catherine Smith. We’ve already had the two private launches in Lewes and Hove, both of which were lovely, warm events. We all sold loads of copies of our pamphlets/books and received positive comments about Telltale. The list of jobs to do once the launch is over is long – looking forward to it though. It feels like such an empowering, carpe diem sort of thing to be doing. Our guest readers next Wednesday are Anja Konig (new pamphlet out with Flipped Eye) and Rishi Dastidar (recently appointed assistant editor at The Rialto.) Do come along if you can, details are here.
On the poetry writing front, I’ve just started an online course at the Poetry School which is proving to be excellent for developing my critiquing skills, having written detailed notes on something like 12 students’ poems so far, and we’re only on the first of 5 sessions. My own first poem has only had comments from three people, so I’m hoping that improves and I start to get some useful feedback in return. There are some interesting poets on the course so I’ll enjoy seeing how all of our writing develops.
Meanwhile I’ve got some lovely things to look forward to: forthcoming poems in The Rialto and South, a weekend with poet friends, listening to, reading and workshopping poetry at Swindon Festival of Poetry, readings of my own at the Needlewriters here in Lewes next January, plus a high-profile reading in the autumn (to be confirmed). And with a bit of luck, the launch of Blogging for Writers, for which I’m hoping to organise a blog tour. Hurrah!
I’ve been enjoying my bagload of books from the Poetry Book Fair, by the way, and will be sharing some of that here in coming weeks.
Oh and I almost forgot – thank you so much for all the encouragement after my post about having to sing a solo and getting a bit stressed. The concert went wonderfully, I did my little ‘mouse’ spot and sang out – what the hell! – I thought of the words I was singing, from Christopher Smart’s fantastical Jubilate Agno, and felt privileged to have the opportunity. I think I was also inspired by a recent visit to Benjamin Britten’s Aldeburgh and learning more about him. He was a great champion of amateur music makers and I hope I did him proud. And as Jean Tubridy said, “This is what living is about!”
Room awaiting transformation into launch venue for Telltale Press. Note the bars on windows so poets can’t escape.
Yikes, the poetry world can be dangerous place, can’t it? Who’d be one of those poor ‘Next Generation Poets‘? Blimey. I wonder if people forget sometimes that letting rip on Facebook is less like having a bitch down the pub, and more like broadcasting all your inner demons on one of those sheets that get strung out across the motorway with “Happy 40th Birthday BillyBob” writ large.
Anyway – I have just too much else to worry about, thankfully, to get steamed up about Other People’s Success or the heated debates thereon. Even a rejection from Antiphon was filed promptly and with hardly a harrumph. Yes folks, at the risk of going on about it yet again, the Telltale Press launch ‘roadshow’ starts this week! We’re in Lewes on Wednesday, then Brighton & Hove the following Wednesday, then the Poetry Cafe in London on October 1st, which is the public launch. (The first two events are the equivalent of the ‘private view’ – aka two chances to get it right before we take on the world – ha ha!) No need to book in to the last one in London, please just come along, would be lovely to see/meet some Poetgal mates.
We’ve got the de rigueur roller banner, the Waitrose prosecco (on offer – yay!), the hired glasses and the press-ganged helpers.. .we’ve got the lovely poets coming to read (Catherine Smith, John McCullough, Abegail Morley, Anja Konig, man-of-the-moment Rishi Dastidar – no, not a Next Gen Poet yet, but just been appointed as one of the new Assistant Editors at The Rialto – plus Telltale poet Peter Kenny (launching his pamphlet) and myself.) Do I know yet what I’m going to read? No. Am I terrified? I’d have to break that down into 1) terror of what I’m going to say in front of my peers, many of whom are scarily illustrious poets, 2) terror of nobody turning up, 3) terror of so many people turning up they can’t get into the room and we run out of prosecco, 4) terror of the fridge breaking down and the prosecco being warm… and so on.
But here’s a nice thought to take my mind off it. On Saturday night I’m co-organising and singing in a concert with the super Lewes Singers, and have just learnt I have to sing a teeny (one minute) solo. And THAT my friends is more terrifying that any of it. Last time I had to sing an ‘almost’ solo (there were 3 of us) I had to have an emergency session at the hypnotherapist to get me through it. Gawds.
But … lots more excitement in the coming weeks. Firstly the Swindon Festival of Poetry on October 2nd – 5th. I’m really looking forward to catching up with poet friends from over that way, plus workshops with Jackie Wills and Cliff Yates, walks & readings with Maurice Riordan, Kathryn Maris, David Morley and others, and a class with the mighty Don Share. I wish I could get there on Thursday for the BlueGate Poets reading and Martin Malone and David Caddy on ‘The Editor’s Role’.
Then it’s back to Brighton for an all-day Saturday workshop with writers, on how to improve your social web presence ‘in a day’, at New Writing South. Should be intense but a lot of fun.
As for actual writing, tonight our Brighton Stanza meetings begin again after the summer, and tomorrow I’m starting with an online course at the Poetry School, looking at ‘left for dead’ poems and whether they can be revived. So that will be something to zero in on, and I’ll have deadlines to keep me going. I’ve not tried one of these courses before so it will be interesting to see how it goes, and whether it’s an improvement on the online poetry writing forum experiences I’ve had in the past.
I’ve also got plans for some interesting new features on this blog, including interviews, more about zines and blogs, and more poems from poets I’ve been reading lately, starting with Josh Ekroy – watch this space.
As part of my autumn poetry reactivation plan (sounds good, eh?) I’ve signed up for an online course from the Poetry’s School with Karen McCarthy Woolf. It’s a feedback course for the ‘general improvement of left-for-dead poems in need of resuscitation’. This premise really appealed to me – having quite a few poems languishing at the moment, some of which I feel at the end of my editorial tether (with). (Apologies for the clumsy construction, but since I’m off duty while writing this I feel able to mush over any dodgy grammar or whatever. It’s the equivalent of pulling on a onesie and eating a takeaway while watching TV. I’m at home. Off duty.)
Soooo … time to dust off some old pomes. While we’re on the subject, I should mention that I was pleased to find out that South have taken two poems of mine for their autumn issue, just when I’d thought they wouldn’t find a home. I did think I wasn’t going to submit to South again, but when it came to it I just felt those poems belonged there, so I’m glad the selectors felt the same. It’s an unusual setup there – no one editor, but a committee, of which (as far as I can tell) two or three people act as selectors for each issue. Although submissions are anonymous, there’s a distinctive consistency about the poems chosen. For example, my Lewes cohort Jeremy Page manages to have something in every single issue – what gives, JP?? – and other names too are ‘regulars’. The magazine doesn’t include poet biogs (which is a shame) but it does have a launch event for each issue (which is good).
Anyway, I digress – my question to you is, when do you leave a poem for dead? Is it ever actually ‘dead’, or just sleeping gently in a drawer until you bring it out for another airing? Do you have any good success stories about poems you resurrected after a long period of time? I’d love to hear them.
I don’t suppose you’ve noticed, but I’ve been a bit quiet on here the last week or so – not for any reason other than work though. I’ve fully recovered from the mini workshop trauma of a couple of weeks ago (I typed that as one word, workshoptrauma, which made me wonder momentarily if that’s a German word). Thank you for all the interesting comments on that one – it seemed to strike a nerve! But since then I’ve got back on the horse and the same workshop on Saturday was quite a different experience, it felt like we’d all taken a chill pill. Or maybe it’s just all the lovely blossom on the trees and the Spring-like weather. Last night we had a Brighton Stanza meeting in the open air – goodness! Summer must be acumen in. And I sold 3 copies of my pamphlet! Yeehaa.
Speaking of which, thank you to the kind purchasers of The Great Vowel Shift, it’s going well and has had two lovely reviews, one by Peter Kenny and another in London Grip. Very exciting!
Today I’ve been hard at it, on the home straight with the blogging book (all the copy is due next Tuesday). In fact I was just writing about time management and beating ‘bloggers’ block’, and by way of a break in the writing I’m (erm) writing this blog post. (Which comes under the heading of ‘do something different’ – although it’s not all that different, but anyway…)
Blogging for Writers – work in progress
The good news is I’ve hit my 45k word count, bad news is I still have 4 double page spreads to write, so I’m going to be a bit over. Then there’s what feels like a zillion photos to source and caption, expert bloggers to chase up for their contributions, and then going through it all and filling in the many holes, amending cross-chapter references, spell-checking, repetition-checking and all that stuff, then getting in a nice orderly zip for submitting. At least I have another month to get all the images sorted. Then it’s headfirst into the next book.
In the meantime tomorrow I have the last of my 3 session ‘Build your social web presence’ at New Writing South, and I’m speaking at their Publishing Industry Day on April 26th which should be fun. But I’m looking forward to getting back to my one-to-one mentoring work and having a bit more time for poetry sometime soon.
Last week I was contacted by Julia McCutchen of an organisation called IACCW to ask if I would be a ‘featured speaker’ for one of their monthly webcasts later in the year, plus there are one or two poetry readings in the pipeline for the second half of the year, so lots happening.
I hope the weather lasts and you have a lovely Easter break. Enjoy the blossom.
Yesterday was the first session of a ‘Build your social web presence’ course I’m teaching at New Writing South, and the common question of how does one find the time to blog came up. Fellow bloggers, how would you answer this? Do you set time aside to blog, or just fit it in when you can? Do you have a schedule, or simply blog when you’ve got something to say?
As we talked about it, I said that actually not only do you find the time, you enjoy finding it – and that blogging and tweeting has helped improve my writing and my writing process. (I suppose it’s not always the case – it depends whether you’re blogging on a topic you feel strongly about. I’ve blogged on behalf of clients in the past and it’s not always easy to find enthusiasm for pallets or lanyards.)
Although it’s not a great idea to stop blogging for months on end – it might look like you left the country, or the world – I don’t think it’s worth stressing about things like how often, or how long a post should be, etc. But we all like rules, even if they’re rules of thumb.
I’m really enjoying writing this current book, a handbook on the theme of ‘blogging for writers’. Already I’ve made contact with many brilliant writer-bloggers and it’s great fun pulling together all the wisdom and ideas out there. I’m two-thirds of the way through and on target to deliver the bulk of it by Easter. After that … another book! So it’s all about blogging at the moment.
BUT I’m making time for poetry too. I’ve been thinking about how I need to step back a bit from submissions-fever and spend time working on (DUH) writing better poetry. Just chill out a bit. Take my time. Read the greats. Resist reaching for the notebook or getting on the laptop. Enjoy the writing I am doing, even if it’s not poetry. This is a very new feeling for me, and I can only put it down to the joy of having created a pamphlet and a permanent home for my ‘first wave’ poems. All my ideas now are not ‘poem shaped’ but ‘collection shaped’, which feels more substantial and worth taking time over.
Josephine Corocoran’s Skip to the good bits was just the sort of ‘yearly review’ I’d love to have written, an entertaining walk-through of what she’s enjoyed reading in 2013, the many events she’s been to and her own writing – very motivational.
Katy Evans-Bush did something slightly different with a ‘Ten ways to celebrate Christmas with poetry‘ blog post, which included an interesting list of poets born in Christmas week, as well as suggestions such as ‘have a read aloud session after Christmas dinner’ – I can picture that going down well in some households more than others! Having said that, I remember a power cut on Christmas day a few years back in which someone started singing a Christmas carol, someone else joined in, and we ended up entertaining the neighbours with our impression of the Von Trapp Family. So anything’s possible.
Collections shortlisted for the 2013 TS Eliot Prize
I think there were only three men on the course at Ty Newydd, so I don’t know how that felt for them. David Borrott consistently came up with fresh, original work, and had a deadpan delivery I particularly enjoyed. Faced with the challenge of writing a poem in which ‘lethargy’ is personified by a sea anemone he managed to mix poignancy and humour brilliantly (‘… I have so many arms to do nothing with’)
I did ask David for a biog but he’s been a bit coy, nevertheless I do know he is widely published and is a graduate of the Creative Writing MA at Manchester Metropolitan University. There is footage of him reading at Poets & Players here on YouTube.
I love this piece for its tragi-comic and slightly surreal treatment of everyday culture, all wrapped up in a lovely ironic swipe at both art criticism and that creative writing staple, the ekphrastic poem.
‘felicitous blending of figure and landscape’
by David Borrott
Two youths are fighting on the high street.
One wears a daub of blood on his white shirt,
the other’s fists are tight as apples;
a clench of excitement runs through the watching people,
their faces like a row of broken plates.
Dummies in the glass expand the crowd –
‘Next’ says the shop sign.
On the stone plinth of the town centre monument,
a woman with XXXL breasts is smoking.
She rests earthmotherly on the steps.
Smoke rises from her hand and her nostrils,
stroking the air with its grey curls.
Its filaments reach to the lowest green of a sycamore.
Her overblown curves temper the harsh lines of the war memorial.
A man is pissing down an alley.
It is night and a soft untroublesome rain persists.
Street lights reflect in the rancid puddles,
touches of orange amongst the grey and brown.
His fawn jacket is darker at the shoulders,
his half-cocked trousers are shadowy, vague.
It is almost as if he hovered there on the jet of his stream.
Published on Magma’s website as a longlisted poem in their competition.
At Ty Newydd recently I was fortunate enough to be working alongside some wonderful poets, and with their permission I’ll be featuring some of them here.
The first is Jenny Lewis. I think Jenny was the most experienced of all of us, with many, many strings to her bow, and yet she wore her expertise with generosity and humility. Her comments were insightful and supportive and she produced some lovely work. It was very fitting that she won the competition set for us at the end of the week, with a very clever sestina. Jenny explained that it had been rejected by a certain poetry magazine, and so she’d rather lost faith in it (the poem that is), but Carol Ann Duffy wasn’t having any of that. “Who was the editor?” she barked.
Anyway, I’m delighted that Jenny agreed to have a poem featured here. This is from her latest collection, Taking Mesopotamia (Oxford Poets/ Carcanet 2014). Of it, Bernard O’Donoghue writes: “Jenny Lewis’s quietly angry book is an account of the Iraq wars – mostly imposed from outside – of the past hundred years. Taking Mesopotamia – a brilliantly ironic title for our times – controls its anger through an accomplished and flexible technique in verse and prose. It is compulsory reading, even for those who don’t normally read poetry: an eloquent rejoinder to those who say poetry can’t, or shouldn’t, concern itself with public matters.”
Do visit Jenny’s website to get a feel for everything she’s up to, and for more details of her publications.
MOTHER
Childbirth was like being excavated:
my belly rose on whalebone wings,
pain soared about me like a bloodied angel:
then you were born
I saw you with my own eyes
I held you day and night:
you lay in my arms, a glowing pupa.
At Kut-al-Amara you were back-lit,
the moon pointed you out against the ridge –
when Turkish gunners stopped your spade
you fell slowly, shedding iridescence
each night in dreams I fail to catch you –
your bones the fragile quills of rescued fledglings
you placed by the stove for warmth
From Taking Mesopotamia (Oxford Poets/ Carcanet 2014) First published by The Oxonian Review, 2012.
Jenny Lewis
Jenny Lewis’s published works include When I Became an Amazon (Iron Press, 1996/ Bilingua, Russia 2002), Fathom (Oxford Poets/ Carcanet 2007) and After Gilgamesh (Mulfran Press, 2011) a verse drama for Pegasus Theatre, Oxford. Her forthcoming collection Taking Mesopotamia (March 2014, Oxford Poets/ Carcanet) expresses the revulsion and despair that ordinary people, especially women, feel towards war. She teaches poetry at Oxford University.
Oh and I almost forgot – thank you so much for all the encouragement after my post about having to sing a solo and getting a bit stressed. The concert went wonderfully, I did my little ‘mouse’ spot and sang out – what the hell! – I thought of the words I was singing, from Christopher Smart’s fantastical Jubilate Agno, and felt privileged to have the opportunity. I think I was also inspired by a recent visit to Benjamin Britten’s Aldeburgh and learning more about him. He was a great champion of amateur music makers and I hope I did him proud. And as 
Jenny Lewis