Dalston Anatomy Poems, live at Ace Hotel, 18th Sep 2014

Full video of a 15minute set of my Ridley Road Market poems performed live at Ace Hotel, Shoreditch, London on 18th September 2014 for Local Transport event, introduced by Michael Salu.

Poem for National Poetry Day 2014: John Berryman’s ‘Of Suicide’

Recently, I opened up some John Berryman again and been enjoying his poetry, so for National Poetry Day, I thought I’d offer up one of his poems. Berryman (1914 – 1972) was, says Michael Hofmann in the introduction to my Faber edition, “of the first generation of American ‘professional poets’”. i.e. he taught in university, toured around giving ‘readings’ and winning prizes. He was also an alcoholic and suicidal. His father had killed himself when Berryman was 12 and the poet himself ended the same way nearly 50 years later. The dates of his publications make interesting reading:

Poem for World Poetry Day 2014: ‘Massacre, October ’66’, Wole Soyinka

Massacre, October ‘66

Written in Tegel

Shards of sunlight touch me here
shredded in willows. Through stained-glass
Fragments on the lake I sought to reach
A mind at silt-bed

The lake stayed cold
I swam in an October flush of dying leaves
The gardener’s labour flew in seasoned scrolls
Lettering the wind

Market Cafe

Food is prepared with genetically modified soya bean oil.
We can only please one person per day.
Today is not your day.

On Watching the 1st test: Australia vs British and Irish Lions 22nd June 2013

Second Half.

Stomach-gripping tension.
Do we trust the fates too much to believe
this lead will hold?
Could half-perfect Halfpenny’s half-freakish, half-time miss
be the code for the way this will unfold?

Nerves seem to have got the players too.
Bodies fly into bodies round the fringes of the breakdowns.
Errors abound:
an overcooked kick, a pass spilt
a rolling maul driving headless into touch
and then relief.

The Last Days of Thatcher

We watch Margaret Thatcher’s
bloated face and cloudy mind;
remember the hardlined features,
the decisive fist, the woman not for turning;
as she stumbles in jumble-brain confusion;
discharged from hospital;
not long to go now.

Keep Calm and Carry On

First they came for the disability benefits…
Keep calm and carry on!
Or was that first?
First, didn’t we have unprecedented levels of stress,

Coughing Up

Poem written about a true story that happened on a London train. Happy moral embedded. Filmed by Rob Blake with help from Susannah Trevelyan. Published in ‘Life in Transit’ by Influx Press

Crossing Continents

A poem of disillusion about the conformist homogeneity of modern Europe brandscapes. Filmed in non-homogenous Hackney by non-conforming Rob Blake. Poem published in ‘Life in Transit’ by Influx Press

Trapped

Poem of weary disappointment in the unthinking herd tendency of crowds. True story of a hungover Sunday morning on a train/train station. Filmed around Hackney by Rob Blake. Published in ‘Life in Transit’ by Influx Press