Douglas, this poem intrigues me but along with Colin I shall have to read it again. Some of the expressions are strange tangents which need explanation, yet also on which to ponder. An interesting piece of work. Keith
Comment is about Echo (blog)
Original item by Douglas MacGowan
My own late mother was enough of a strong person to
bear her husband 7 children and survive his grievous
early death (at 50) - to survive and see those offspring
into adult life in a so-called (quote) "aggressively
masculinist world".
Online is a quote from Germaine Greer which adds
to the pot and is repudiated by the female Guardian
writer who brings it to attention; perhaps no surprise
when considering the present focus on such things.
"Back in the day, a leering man was considered by all
sensible women to be less of a threat than a fool. We
weren't afraid of him and we weren't afraid to slap him down." And that's why men took their chances when
taking the initiative in any scenario involving the sexes.
It is the awkward truth that there has always been and
will probably continue to be difficulty in the meeting of
the sexes in expectation and co-habitation, in hopes
and aspirations. Respect and reason have always been
around as can be seen in most day to day lives - and
in my 8th decade it's pleasing to gain a polite response
from any woman of any age when adopting the courtesies
I was taught by the women in my own family in a country that has women occupying the highest positions in
society and business.
After you....
Comment is about #MeToo movement leads to women's poetry anthology (article)
Original item by Greg Freeman
Great childhood recollections, I think most people would be able to recognise the characters in this piece.
Loved reading it, thanks for sharing.
Paul ?
Comment is about The Close (blog)
Original item by Jon Darby
A type of typo treatise that hits the mark!
Comment is about EMBRASING DIVERSITY (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
Hollie McNish's editor at Picador, the renowned poet Don Paterson, who was also a target of Rebecca Watts in her essay, has now had his say, too https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2018/jan/26/verses-spoken-word-row-poetry-young-female-poets?CMP=share_btn_fb. And both Paterson and Rebecca Watts had their say on BBC Radio 4's Front Row http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b09nrsg1?utm_source=Carcanet+Mailing+List+Subscribers&utm_campaign=e8e81f2630-Eletter_for_12th+January_12_01_2018&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_593f1d80d7-e8e81f2630-145185701&mc_cid=e8e81f2630&mc_eid=2375beeac4
Comment is about Magazine pours bucket of 'literary criticism' over award-winning Hollie McNish (article)
Original item by Greg Freeman
Cheers Tim, 100 reasons why we don’t all need ‘Contemporary artistic abstract poetry’ to get some recognician. Urban poetry like this is my bag, this poem is a treasure bag which will last forever.
Comment is about 100 Reasons to Plant a Tree (blog)
Original item by Tim Ellis
Thank you for the comments Douglas, appreciated.
Fred
Comment is about Restoration (blog)
Original item by Rick Varden
Fri 26th Jan 2018 10:29
Love it Tay but I think there could be room for a little more perhaps? Thank you. Jemima.
Comment is about roots (blog)
Original item by TAY
Douglas, Hannah and Jon, thank you for commenting on this poem. As always your comments are much appreciated. Keith
Comment is about A Living Creation (blog)
Original item by keith jeffries
Hi Tay
I like this. It has a lot to say about the Human condition and does so very well.
Jon
Comment is about roots (blog)
Original item by TAY
Very claustrophobic. You present the confines of the room, which you don't describe, but the reader forms their own visual image of it.
Comment is about Best Friends Forever. (blog)
Original item by Nick
An honest snapshot of the crazy world we live in and how it hopefully can be fixed.
Comment is about Restoration (blog)
Original item by Rick Varden
I like this. A circular poem about severing and hope.
Comment is about You should Know (blog)
Original item by Wardah
A good message about hope presented in a way that everyone can relate to.
Comment is about roots (blog)
Original item by TAY
You and me both Nicola. Thanks for liking ?
Comment is about Ocean Affair (blog)
Original item by Wardah
Many thanks Douglas, Hannah, Colin and 220August. It is interesting that the pic I attached (and all the others I considered) showed a mix of men and women, blacks and whites. None showed any old gits like myself. No ageism.
Comment is about EMBRASING DIVERSITY (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
<Deleted User> (18118)
Thu 25th Jan 2018 22:04
Such a beautiful tribute.
Hannah
Comment is about No word is enough for you (blog)
Original item by Dipta Gomes
Claire Leavey
Thu 25th Jan 2018 21:54
I'm confused by Mr Newberry's comment. Not surprising, really, given that I only have a single puny female brain, and it's under enough strain as it is, what with rising to the tremendously butch exercise of reading real human words and interpreting their meanings and all. It would have been so much more helpful if his first sentence had contained a subject rather than a rather nebulous definite article, and even better if the 'view' in his first sentence had come with some actual feminists holding it, rather than just an adverb. The only thing I can see that is being held by an actual person in this comment is of course the door, doubtless growing limp after several decades standing ajar in the clammy grip of some poor rejected man who is plainly almost as confused as I am, only not so much by imprecise use of language, but more by being asked to hold the door for such a large number of women to whom he has never even so much as been introduced! Adding to his confusion and sense of rejection is no doubt the inexplicable fury of this harpie phalanx, who are apparently so mightily aggrieved by persistent male interference in their everyday lives that they are suddenly saying what they think for a change, and not keeping politely quiet as their mothers (knowing the potential penalties for speaking plainly in an aggressively masculinist world) so wisely cautioned. As for the question 'what do women want?', I'd suggest anyone who persists in enduring a confusion that is not specifically related to the use of language may care to acquire a copy of this excellent book and digest its contents. It is really rather informative. Especially to anyone who still thinks that all women move as one, all want the same thing, and operate some kind of rota system in sharing a single bland persona. Prepare to be startled! Amazed! And educated.
Comment is about #MeToo movement leads to women's poetry anthology (article)
Original item by Greg Freeman
David, Thanks for your time and the comment
Comment is about Aurora Slept for Hours (blog)
Original item by 220August
BAM! (smacks the gavel) Thanks for the smile ?
Comment is about EMBRASING DIVERSITY (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
Thanks for the comments.
It was inspired by Edgar Allen Poe's "The Pit and the Pendulum" and the start of Eloisa to Abelard” by Alexander Pope - "In these deep solitudes and awful cells,
Where heav'nly-pensive contemplation dwells,
And ever-musing melancholy reigns;..."
The line "ever-musing melancholy" being the more influential of all.
August
Comment is about But For The Dripping (blog)
Original item by 220August
leah
Thu 25th Jan 2018 21:05
JUSTIN COE'S ADULT GIG AT JANUARY WRITE ANGLE
Write Angle in January was Justin Coe's only adult audience in a long time but, as Dr Seuss said “Adults are just outdated children." Although much of his material is geared to children, it had the audience participating, laughing and reacting throughout.
Justin is a poet, a comedian, an actor, a consommate performer, He is mobile, never still. His face is mobile, as if made of rubber, taking on the varied emotions of his work.
In Sergeant Major Dad, he was the stern, shouting disciplinarian, ordering the audience to repeat each line after him: “This is a house, not a hotel”. In contrast, in Mum Dad, he dealt with a single parent: “I could not have asked for a better dad than mum!” Far Away Dad was poignant: “He thinks of you with every breath; it isn't you that he has left”. Justin wrote it when he was away for work but it could equally strike a chord with anyone separated from their family.
It was not all children and dads. There's also a political dimension to Justin. His nursery rhyme, Old Numpty Trump: “All the world's women and all the world''s men knocked down the wall and built bridges instead.” Then, Theresa May's “Had a magic money tree, nothing would it bear, but a banker's bonus. Nothing left to share.” Finishing it with a commentary on her deal with the DUP: “...She danced across the water with the fruit of the magic money tree”. Just About Managing, in the rhythm of Dr Seuss, “I would not vote for her or him; they put me in the jam.”
We were treated to a preview of his fantastic new show, aimed at four to five year olds, Young Herbert's Horrors, telling how a naughty child is tamed, which had an adult audience lost in continuous laughter.
Coincidentally, Dick Senior led off the at the open mic with Walking to School, on how he and his schoolmates ran the gauntlet of boys from the Catholic school, with “knuckles like chipped bricks” as “we get an education walking to school”. He followed with three poems that gave a poetic voice to anything other than human. Richard Hawtree read Independence in post-colonial Ireland and Thirty-five Measures For Blind Bishop Fox 1448-1528, who created “seven flights of seven steps with seven paces between each flight so that you could ascend and descend like angels on Jacob's ladder...” Then, A Poem, listing all the marvellous things he wanted a poem to achieve.
Damian O'Vitch's humourous Nutrition said “Don't tell me you're going to put that in your mouth!” and “More than half of all sausage rolls voted for Brexit in protest against the liberal conspiracy”. In Outside the Takeaway, he told of the people - “vegetable life-forms” (!) - he met there. The Unexpected Item in the Bagging Area describes “being stared at by a baby in a supermarket”. Damian, from Hammer & Tongue, performed professionally reciting a number of poems which held the audience's attention beginning to end.
SpeechPainter, one of our all-time favourite professional performers, provided, at breakneck speed, Everything in the 60s – a truly comprehensive list of every event, personality and product in that decade - a three minute tour de force. He said It took six hours for him to learn this complicated poem – He's simply amazing!
Colin Eveleigh's clothes talk to him in My Clothes. Then My Face - “This is my face. Like it or not, this is the one I've got”. An interesting poem...Leah Cohen's Instinct described her cats, well fed yet driven to kill, asking: “Why is the urge still there …. It's in the looking glass”.It's Time We Met was followed by My Memory Foam Pillow - “Will my brain fill up with memory or with foam?” In My Polish Grandma, your reviewer told of that fierce woman's arrival in England, her romance with a Frenchman and his leaving her and their two chilren, yet “she never said a word against him...for ever the love of her life.”
Bruce Parry read from his new book, Silver Charms and Other Stories, the poem Lilibet by Diana Ashman about “a jolly little girl” who became our Queen, following with his poems, Gone Home about a run-down seaside town and then Time In Memorial: “Love was skin deep, that was all we needed.” He rounded his contribution off on the hammer dulcimer, with Bear Dance and Swallowtail Gig. And, the luck of the draw was his as he won the raffle for a lunch for two at the delightful Lemon Grass Thai restaurant.
Jilly Funnell's poem, Air Kissing in the United K had us hysterical laughing at her predicament: “What if I turn the right cheek, which is the wrong cheek....? She then sang her break-up song, Darling, Don't Save The Last Dance For Me. Jezz and his guitar rounded the evening of poetry and music off with strong and emotional renderings of Fake Plastic Trees and Copperhead Row. It was a good evening with many 'thanks' received as the audience left.
Jake Claret
Review is about WRITE ANGLE POETRY & MUSIC +OPEN MIC on 16 Jan 2018 (event)
<Deleted User> (18118)
Thu 25th Jan 2018 21:00
Amazing work, all life is here, all the characters that make up a village, a community, an estate.
Recognised many of them, especially Mrs Ashall and Francesca.
Hannah
Comment is about The Close (blog)
Original item by Jon Darby
<Deleted User> (13762)
Thu 25th Jan 2018 20:56
I think this needs and deserves another read. I'll be back in the morning!
Comment is about Echo (blog)
Original item by Douglas MacGowan
Hi Keith
I enjoyed this very much. It made me feel calm as I read through the piece as though it could be as much about a state of mind or a state of being as much as the admiration of a physical place?
Jon
Comment is about A Living Creation (blog)
Original item by keith jeffries
<Deleted User> (18118)
Thu 25th Jan 2018 20:46
Love this.
Check I'm not wearing beige.
Hannah
Comment is about EMBRASING DIVERSITY (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
<Deleted User> (18118)
Thu 25th Jan 2018 20:37
Beautiful poem.
I enjoyed this.
Hannah
Comment is about A Living Creation (blog)
Original item by keith jeffries
<Deleted User> (18118)
Thu 25th Jan 2018 20:35
<Deleted User> (18118)
Thu 25th Jan 2018 20:34
Beautiful writing.
Read it through twice.
Hannah
Comment is about Walk With me At A Distance (blog)
Original item by 220August
<Deleted User> (18118)
Thu 25th Jan 2018 20:32
Thank you for your message. I look forward to reading your writing.
Hannah
Comment is about 220August (poet profile)
Original item by 220August
Really good creation of strong visual images.
Comment is about NO MORE SILENCE (blog)
Original item by moveinslience
Hi Jon, thank you for stopping by and sharing your thoughts on this piece.
Comment is about Freedom (blog)
Original item by Emer Ní Chorra
I like how you take a simple and common situation and make it feel more aware and special.
Comment is about A Living Creation (blog)
Original item by keith jeffries
Wonderful winning poem congratulations Rachel, and to all shortlisted poets.
Comment is about Rachel Plummer wins WoLF poetry competition run by Write Out Loud (article)
Original item by Greg Freeman
Thu 25th Jan 2018 19:15
Wow bro, this is really remarkable, you have quite a talent
Comment is about Heart Beats (blog)
Original item by Brian Belyea
Another worthwhile read about the whole business is this balanced blog by poet Melanie Branton https://melaniebranton.wordpress.com/2018/01/21/accessibility-vs-elitism/
Comment is about Magazine pours bucket of 'literary criticism' over award-winning Hollie McNish (article)
Original item by Greg Freeman
Maggie Sawkins
Thu 25th Jan 2018 17:07
Good luck with the two new collections Fiona Pitt-Kethley! I bought your 'The Perfect Man' in 1989 and certainly all the poems stand alone on the page. One of the criteria for the Ted Hughes Award is for bringing poetry to new audiences and Holly McNish certainly has done that through her performances. Kate Tempest's book of her Ted Hughes award winning performance 'Brand New Ancients' states 'This poem was written to be read aloud.' I wonder if Picador advised Holly McNish to add that proviso.
Comment is about Magazine pours bucket of 'literary criticism' over award-winning Hollie McNish (article)
Original item by Greg Freeman
Thanks for liking this poem Big Sal
Comment is about The rhythm of the trees (blog)
Original item by Martin Elder
Now there's a thought. I shall think on that one. Hum you really have got me thinking now
Thanks
much appreciated Frances
Comment is about Who is the fairest (blog)
Original item by Martin Elder
The WoLF anthology, featuring the winning poems and the forty poems in the shortlist, will be on sale at the festival bookstall as of Saturday morning. Another good reason to get yourself to Wolverhampton!
Comment is about Rachel Plummer wins WoLF poetry competition run by Write Out Loud (article)
Original item by Greg Freeman
Shirley, Thank you for this excellent poem and for standing up and being counted, for exposing such disgusting behaviour and so eloquently. My dear Nan, long departed this life, would have wiped the floor with them and left them all behind. Very well done and said. Great words. Keith
Comment is about Presidents Club (blog)
Original item by Shirley-Anne Kennedy
Does this go hand-in-hand with the feminist view that
rejected men holding a door open for a woman or rising
from his seat in their company, or other acts of respect
that were encouraged by their mothers? Perhaps it is
for increasingly confused men to enquire of today's women: "Who are You?".
Or as a film title once asked: "What Do Women Want?".
Comment is about #MeToo movement leads to women's poetry anthology (article)
Original item by Greg Freeman
It might be said that -
There is reason for resentment
When reason is resented!
Comment is about RESENTMENT (blog)
Original item by ray pool
The general rule of pro rata pay and recognition for
the same work done is to be supported in all works of life
and any discrepancy must be able to withstand both
moral and legal examination.
The Presidents Club has been going for over 30 years,
yet the media source (the Financial Times for heavens
sake) chose only now to make its "investigative" report.
Women have been dealing with this aspect of male
behaviour efficiently for generations if we are talking
about boorish juvenile efforts to be "one of the boys" in
an all male testosterone-driven setting. The fact that
this fund raising event is suddenly under the "how awful"
microscope of front page headlines says much about how the media loves to lead on "outrage" and "shock" when
far more important, far more shocking things are
happening in the world every hour of every day.
"Rich" has more than one meaning when considering the
scenario and the elevation of bad behaviour into a
social solecism of the most grievous kind.
Comment is about Presidents Club (blog)
Original item by Shirley-Anne Kennedy
Manisha, Thank you. Thanks for taking the time to read and comment...
Comment is about Walk With me At A Distance (blog)
Original item by 220August
keith jeffries
Fri 26th Jan 2018 18:07
MC., you pose an interesting question or questions here. The absolute truth needs to be addressed. The majority of people who want to live in the UK do so in search of security, employment and a better standard of living. Religion is often, but not always, a part of their their baggage. Some may feel the need to proselytise. Others are concious of being in a non muslim country and wear their religion like a label or badge of pride. Then there are those muslims who flee the prescriptive demands of islam and welcome life in a secular state. Hope this goes some way to answering your query. Keith
Comment is about FLYING WEST (blog)
Original item by M.C. Newberry