This is itI’m not coming after youI’m going to lie down for half an hourThis is itI’m not going downOn your memoryI’m not rubbing my face in it anymoreI’m going to yawnI’m going to stretchI’m going to put a knitting needleUp my noseAnd poke out my brainI don’t want to love youFor the rest of […]Read More
HAVING A COKE WITH YOU is even more fun than going to San Sebastian, Irún, Hendaye, Biarritz, Bayonneor being sick to my stomach on the Travesera de Gracia in Barcelonapartly because in your orange shirt you look like a better happier St. Sebastianpartly because of my love for you, partly because of your love for […]Read More
i carry your heart with me (i carry it inmy heart) i am never without it (anywherei go you go, my dear; and whatever is doneby only me is your doing, my darling) i fearno fate (for you are my fate, my sweet) i wantno world (Read More
The weak breeze whispers nothingThe water screams sublimeHis feet shift, teeter-totterDeep breath, stand back, it’s time Toes untouch the overpassSoon he’s water-boundEyes locked shut but peek to seeThe view from halfway down A little wind, a summer sunA river rich and regalA flood of fond endorphinsBrings a calm that knows no equal You’re flying nowYou […]Read More
Are you ready to order?No there is nothing to orderNo I’m unable to orderNo I’m a long way from orderAnd while there is everything,And nothing, to order,Order remains a tall orderAnd disorder feeds on the belly of orderAnd order requires the blood of disorderAnd ‘freedom’ and ordure and other disorduresNeed the odour of order to […]Read More
If you can see the sepia in the sunShades of grey in fading streetsThe radiating bloodshot in a child’s eyeThe dark stains on her linen sheets If you can see oil separate on waterThe turquoise of leaves on treesThe reddened flush of your lover’s cheeksThe violet peace of calmed seas If you can see the […]Read More
This week’s poem is Ariel by Sylvia Plath. It is poem of transcendence, strength, life and death. I began to read Plath during my A-Level studies and feel completely in love with her poetry – particularly Ariel.Read More
Kate Tempest has a thing for the senses. Her pleasant delivery of spoken poetry are like small pieces of informational strums tugging at our hearts. She draws experience from touches, of tangible things to see, melted words and realisations readers are not often confronted with. Such is the magic of Tempest’s poetry; when I first […]Read More
Out of the night that covers me, Black as the pit from pole to pole,I thank whatever gods may be For my unconquerable soul. In the fell clutch of circumstance I have not winced nor cried aloud.Under the bludgeonings of chance My head is bloody, but unbowed Beyond this place of wrath and tears Looms but the Horror of the […]Read More
Published in his debut collection, Our Numbered Days, ‘OCD’ details romance from the perspective of someone suffering with a mental health disorder.Read More
Lying apart now, each in a separate bed, He with a book, keeping the light on late, She like a girl dreaming of childhood, All men elsewhere - it is as if they wait Some new event: the book he holds unread, Her eyes fixed on the shadows overhead. Tossed up like flotsam from a former passion, How cool they lie. They hardly ever touch, Or if they do, it is like a confession Of having little feeling - or too much. Chastity faces them, a destination For which their whole lives were a preparation. Strangely apart, yet strangely close Read More
The Munich Mannequins was published as part of Plath’s acclaimed Ariel collection in 1965. Featuring characteristically strong imagery, the speaker suggests that models are little more than mannequins because they forsake their fertility in order to preserve their figures. Plath critiques the fashion industry and society as a whole for glorifying a destructive physical ideal […]Read More
This week, we have chosen to look at ‘Paper People’ by Harry Baker, a spoken-word poet and UK Poetry Slam Champion in 2015. WhatsOnStage described his collection as an “adventure of poems, puns and pole-dancing, German raps and gangsta maths”. The content of his work is certainly varied and eclectic. ‘Paper People’ is one of Baker’s […]Read More
Robert Burns, while a hero to many Scots writers and poets, rarely crops up when you ask for poets South of the border or overseas. Probably because of his commitment to Scottish nationalism just after the Jacobite rebellions, or his noble insistence in writing in what was then common Scots dialect, he has never really […]Read More
‘You never see a nipple in the daily express’, taken from John Cooper Clarke’s Ten Years in an Open Necked Shirt, is an analysis of the right-wing tabloid press. The punk poet critiques the type of immorality displayed in these papers, arguing that while the Daily Express fails to exploit women, in the way other […]Read More
