Biography

Joshua studies philosophy at University College London. He writes all sorts of poetry, but likes to be firmly grounded in the everyday.

He has been published in numerous journals both in print and online, and regularly performs in London.

He likes to have fun fun fun on the autobahn.

Some of his work can be viewed at:

http://www.the-beat.co.uk
http://www.sentinelpoetry.org.uk/no.61/p...
http://web.mac.com/thecadaverine/Site/Po...
http://www.conversationpoetry.co.uk
http://www.poetsletter.com
http://thepygmygiant.blogspot.com/
http://www.literaryspot.com/uploads/LSPC...
http://www.toadinmud.co.uk/

Samples

Alice

Alice is a girl I sometimes show my poems to.
To hear her views in the velvet voice is to come
in from a hard day hacking words and to sit at the mouth
of a glowing fire. Her flames consume my doubt.

I’m not scared of getting burned – hers is a fire
you can jump right into and not receive so much as a singe.
She likes even the bad ones, the ones with jarring scansion
or a clumsy cliché, the ones with whiffs of pseudo-profundity
and the ones with awkward long words like ‘pseudo-profundity’.

Sometimes I get the feeling that I could swallow
a big bucket of letters, stick a finger down my throat
and hurl up words, and she’d be there to like them.
I could sweat commas and she’d be there to wipe my brow.
I could shit out colons; I could release vowels from my bowels
and she’d be there to like them.

Her approval is the immutable substratum underpinning and simultaneously legitimising every crudely gerrymandered proposition I deign to release kicking and screaming into her domain.

She likes my long sentences.

She doesn’t complain when
I drive myself frantic
with my pedantic antics,
with her there is no shame
in the obtuse or corybantic,
to her it’s all the same.

I think I need to find myself a more discerning critic.

Books

Heidegger says that Being is Being-Towards-Death.
Larkin says that Life is Slow Dying.
I think I need to read less books.

Out of the Stranger’s Path

Overcoat flapping against bow-legged knees, I got up
on Sunday afternoon and made my way to the supermarket –
a five minute jog down the rain-flecked street.

I went to buy the Sunday papers, in my haste
eschewing all thought of getting properly dressed:
I wrapped the coat round my shoulders and put
on my battered shoes without socks.
I left my legs clean as an invitation soon
to clamber back to bed.

Once in I went for some cut-priced bread,
and noticed a dad with two blonde-haired kids
with red cheeks and smiling eyes. A boy and a girl,
can’t have been more than four or five, and he was
playing with them – wrapping them up in his padded arms,
whispering jokes into their ears,
provoking little uproarious laughs,

Soothing their fears. Then I noticed him
notice me coming near,
just angling through to get to the till,
eyeing the scene with a proto-paternal glow,
and I noticed him give an intake of breath
and hurry his children out of my path.
Out of the stranger’s path.

On the way back I felt like one of those men
that parents tell their children not to take sweets from,
not to accept rides from,
to stay away from.

I ended up not reading the paper.
I ended up wishing I had someone to protect from me.

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.