Reading Cavafy’s ‘Addition’

Re-engaging with Lawrence Durrell’s ‘Alexandria Quartet’ recently has sent me back to exploring the poems of C.P. Cavafy. This is one of several image/poems I’ve written before and since our recent Cavafy workshop.

NEW MYSTICS

NEW MYSTICS.

HITCHIN FESTIVAL GIG

Poetry ID are proud to announce that as part of the Hitchin Festival, they will be holding an Open Mic gig at The Highlander pub in Hitchin. This will be on the 15th of July; more details to follow!

LETCHWORTH FESTIVAL GIG

As part of the Letchworth Festival, Poetry ID will be launching their new anthology “Junction” at a poetry event to be held at David’s Bookshop. This is the result of much hard work by Poetry ID member, John Gohorry and contains poems from a broad cross-section of the membership, which is bound to entice, educate and entertain!

The event which also incorporates an “Open Mic” will be on the 13th of June at 7:30pm. Tickets £3 available from David’s and also Wild Roses Lingerie.

Further details nearer the time!

Gohorry, Fawcett, and Brazil

I’m very pleased to announce that my poem The Apotheosis of Colonel P.H.Fawcett has won a prize in the 2013 flamingofeather poetry competition.

Colonel Fawcett was an English explorer who disappeared in the Matto Grosso area of Brazil in 1925 while in search of an ancient city he referred to as ‘Z’. I first came across him when I was a boy reading Brazilian Adventure by Peter Fleming (brother of Ian Fleming). Peter Fleming set out to discover what happened to Fawcett but, along with other expeditions before and after, failed to do so.  Years later, I read Expedition Fawcett, by one of Fawcett’s sons, which rounded out my understanding of the man.  I wrote the poem earlier this year.

flamingofeather have put the poem on their website and this is the link to it:

http://www.flamingofeather.org.uk/poemswin.html

Enjoy!

Visual haiku

John Gohorry’s recent post reminded me of what I had created for  Poetry ID 100 Boxes ten years ago. It’s in haiku form in Japanese printed inside the blue shape but I cannot translate it into English with the same syllables.

In English, it means ‘Rain falls on a jumper. Smell of sheep in a field.’

Yuko Minamikawa Adams　南川優子

John Gohorry – Schwitters ‘Quality Street’ reworked, 8 April 2013

An experimental collage, made after a visit to the Tate Britain ‘Schwitters in Britain’ exhibition earlier this week.

The Present

Magpies wag their tails
on the rust-brown tiles,
excrement-streaked
with yellow-brown lichen.

Spring has come to swing
his hammer, to drive
crocuses forth
from the leaf-scattered soil.

Look at the workmen
raising their scaffolding,
opening roofs
where the old tiles lay.

This is the building
of a new time:
while daisies peer shyly
towards a pale sun

I up and depart
on the camouflaged back
of a frog who leaps
over gardens.

He follows the scent
of the damp embankment,
the tangled road
to the gold-paved city.

Between the Gothic
spikes of Parliament,
over the Thames we fly,
beating cold air.

Beside the gleaming
science-fiction towers
cranes are pointing
vainly at heaven.

But our business
lies on the living streets -
and a flash of sun
bursts the long whale-cloud,

lighting the yellow
crowns of dandelion.
Now all animal
hearts are burning.

After ‘The Future’ follows ‘The Present’. This one turned into a spring poem as I was writing it.

 

Unspoken

This poem sprang out of our ‘voices’ Poetry ID workshop at the end of February. Thanks to Luisetta for sifting that topic from the ether that evening.

 

Unspoken

 

The first time I heard your voice

it touched me so closely

I almost hung up.

Who was this stranger who spoke to me?

My voice hid in the business of practical detail,

peering out from behind the leaves

newly aware of its nakedness.

Now we converse, sometimes

cloaked in familiarity,

sometimes skin on skin.

 

Ríonach Aiken

Just a week away..!