Some publication news...

I'm very pleased that one of my short stories, For the Sake of the Children, first published in Night Train was chosen for the Chamber Four Fiction Anthology, a selection of 'outstanding stories from the web during 2009/2010'.



You can download the anthology here and please do, not least because it's FREE!

Also I wanted to tell you that a poem I wrote during Pascale Petit's wonderful Monday nights at the Tate Modern is included in the pamphlet, Poetry From Art. This is only available from the Tate, but I really recommend you getting a copy. Not just for my poem, of course, but for those of the other contributors including Karen McCarthy Woolf, Naomi Woddis, Malika Booker, Rowyda Amin, Matthew Paul, Anne Welsh, Rebecca Farmer, Zillah Bowes, Cath Drake, Rishi Dastidar, Beth Somerford, Roberta James, Cath Kane, Kaye Lee, Lynn Foote, Seraphima Kennedy, Ali Wood, Julie Steward, Elizabeth Horsley, MJ Whistler, Andrea Robinson, Angela Dock, Beatriz Echeverri. Good stuff.

It really is such a privilege to walk around a gallery like the Tate Modern after hours thinking and writing poetry, but what gets me most is how good it feels just to sit and stare at ONE thing, rather than do what I normally do which is to try and see everything. Thank you Pascale!

Here's a poem I wrote in response to Anselm Kiefer's amazing installation, Palm Sunday:



Seeds


Down in the root ball of the ship
the plant collector is making a nest.

He counts his catch, tucks each seed
up in its own handwritten box, an ebony

cabinet ticking with paused hearts.
He dreams of growing a fresh desert

one day, of these dried moments
in the old land coming back to life.

His bones ache as he waters
the dust, while on the deck above,

sailors sleep, the wooden mast dances
again in perfect tune with the winds,

until reaching for water, it leans
too far, loses balance. White sails,

like baby gowns, christen the sea.

I also have poems in two more anthologies coming out soon, WordAid and South East Poets, but more on those shortly.

WHAT DO WOMEN WANT?

Somehow I like it even better when it all goes a bit wrong - do LOVE Kim Addonizio and want to make my own videos now. The only recent one I've got is of me doing my party trick of sucking up a creme caramel directly from the plate and believe me, that is neither pretty or poetic.

You MUST read this book...

Nik started a great book recommendation meme yesterday, and Benjamin Judge joined in. AND BOTH RECOMMENDED ME! Thanks guys.

And to add my pennyworth, here are five poetry books I've read and loved this summer:

1. Furniture, by Lorraine Mariner. I came across Lorraine's work first when she read last during a packed Oxfam reading. Packed with readers, that is, and I'd heard some good things but to be honest I was a bit jaded by the time Lorraine stood up. Not for long though. The minute she started a poem about Stanley, an imaginary boyfriend, who has to go because 'nothing in our relationship has ever surprised me', she had charmed everyone in that room. I rushed to buy her book after the reading but she had already sold out. Even if it wasn't for the fantastic series of poems in the narrative voice of 'Jessica Elton', this collection would still be on my favourite shelves.

2. I wrote about Simon Armitage's Seeing Stars here and I have been coming back to it again and again this summer in admiration and yes, envy.

3. Human Chain by Seamus Heaney is my newest acquisition but I've already read it three times. A lot of the poems are dedicated 'i.m' but the whole book feels 'alive and living' in the best ways. I am sure there are a lot of references here I'm missing, but the joy of it is that it makes me want to read more, rather than just making me feel stupid. And in the meantime, the words are so beautiful I am enjoying just tasting them. In fact, I could almost lick every page of this book like 'Lick the Pencil':

'Lick the pencil' we might have called him
So quick was he to wet the lead, so deft
His hand-to-mouth and tongue-flirt round the stub.

4. Source, by Mark Doty is a good accompaniment to Human Chain, in that both seem to focus on what is left of the human being when the material elements are stripped away. Where is our place in the world? And how do we learn to see things through our own eyes rather than other people's? There is a lovely 'Letter to Walt Whitman' here that I read twice before I realised I was holding my breath each time. And then I raced to the page myself, wanting to write as directly as Mark Doty does here.

5. Not a poetry book but a book for poets that I have come to very late, Wabi-Sabi for Artists, Designers, Poets & Philosophers has made me look at nearly everything differently this Summer. The book describes Wabi-Sabi as 'a beauty of things imperfect, impermanent, and incomplete,' and is a practice rather than an end result. The tension it describes between the meanings of Wabi and Sabi is perhaps the most exciting one thing I've read for a long time.

And now I'm off to add a few of the books recommended on other blogs to my reading list. Good idea, Nik!

ANOTHER POSTCARD FROM GHENT

Finding poetry outside book covers makes me happy.

Even though i couldn't understand what they say, and one of you may write in to tell me they are actually an advert for toilet paper, these poems in unexpected places.





Let's have more poems.

Everywhere!

Troubadour Poetry

I'm sure I've written about the Troubadour before but I can't find the details. Anyway, for those of you that don't know it, go. It describes itself (or the brochure does, I don't actually think the cafe can speak) as "the last 50s coffee house in Earls Court with a proud history as a low temperature centre of courtesy, peace and artistic energy."

I'm not altogether sure about that low temperature bit because it always makes me feel as I'm in hot hot hot New York and I'd love to know if other people feel the same. Mind, that's maybe not surprising given that the Club downstairs is where Jimi Hendrix, Joni Mitchell, Bob Dylan and Paul Simon all played in the 60's.

The upcoming poetry programme has just come out and I want to go to them all. In fact, I'd like to live there and yippee, look, I can. All I need now is to will that chocolate van below away from Kathryn's house and to Earls Court, presuming of course that she's left something for me to enjoy.