Being the latest in an erratically occasional feature whereupon I share some poetry what I found and liked on the interwebs…
I want to dance with
something tangible, other
than my shadow
Let’s you and me
cascade across the
lounge room floor
Not sure I’m 100% comfortable deep-linking into Google Books, but I was thinking of Lisa Bellear today, who I had the pleasure of meeting once or twice, and this poem of hers about the joy of staying in with the person you love always comes to mind when I think of her, I just felt the need to share this simple, beautiful, joyful, truthful, universal poem.
Scroll down for “The Promise” on the page afterwards, too. It’s also freakin’ ace.
Miles and miles of quiet houses, every house a harbour,
Each for some unquiet soul a haven and a home,
What I love about this poem is the unexpected (for contemporary thinking) way that Derham sees the suburbs as the thing that they were originally sold as: a place where everyone had a home and could be safe. I choose to read this completely unironically. Which is actually rather refreshing.
Milissa Broder (author) & Paul K Tunis (illustrator) – Bones
I have to confess, when people normally say “poetry comics” to me I don’t imagine something so beautiful and expertly executed. I’m not familiar with Broder, but I’ve recently discovered Mr. Paul K Tunis and it was his blog that directed me to this particular collaboration. The thing that makes it sing is that Tunis’s imagery complements Broders own words and imagery without either of them contradicting, overemphasising or otherwise tripping over the other. Which is a pretty hard thing to do, I reckon.
Burning my lips’ edge
like echoes of rough play
Or the way childbirth
Forced me to walk bent
I came across this poem while lurking on a poetry blog whereupon a heated internet-style argument was taking place between the blog’s author, a poet, and a commenter. The essence of the argument was that the poet-blogger was claiming her poetry was being ignored because it was too sexy and confrontational, and the commenter was making the point that what the poet-blogger was doing with her poetry had not only been done better and more skilfully elsewhere, but that it had also been done sexier. At which point they linked to this poem. Set and match, what?
Maria Takolander – Electronic Music Studios
The impresario, trapped by the light, comes across as moth-like and religious. You are to hear, he announces, what you are here to hear. It is all perfectly English, upper-middle class. Picture the audience below him in their sixties gear of various colours of vomit: the women’s hair like turbines, their eyelashes curved like steel; the old gentlemen with their arms crossed; the middle-aged music journalists with pencil stubs. The beige curtains part, and on the wooden floor of the stage is the C‑O‑M‑P‑U‑T‑E‑R.
Prose poems about the early history of electronic music just make me smile. A lot.
The Other Adam Ford 