by Admin -

Glyn

An inside joke formed between a literary couple,

Upon sitting under the fluorescent lights,

Of a hospital waiting room.

To name a child after an erotic writer,

A socialite and friend of Chaplin.

Elinor was crude, brash, but exhaustingly charming;

When she wished to be.

 

So naming a child after such a sublime creature,

Is that what they expected of me?

To dominate conversation  and sprawl across a chaise,

To dictate women’s ideals by an infamous creation;

The ‘It’ girl who is adored by men,

And detested by women.

 

A woman who’d flutter among the stars,

And then slowly fade away.

The stars are dead,

And we only see the past light.

A distant lifeless light that blemishes the sky,

Like the freckles on my skin,

That disappear in the winter.

by Admin -

Three Incredible Women Poets Workshop

Collars Up

Thumb and forefinger tap out rhythms,

Upon my collarbones.

Tentatively feeling for the smooth caressable bone,

Bone that is sometimes prominent,

And sometimes not.

 

Skin stretches over containing me,

Stopping the bone from tearing out in protest.

Milky skin that hides milky bone,

Yet dotted with freckles and scars.

But below is ivory pure,

Not blemished or faded or flawed,

Nor tender or feverish or worn.

 

Following the cascading bone down,

As it joins with others to create a frame.

Then padded out by muscle and fat,

That clings onto the ivory pure.

 

 

Southport is an open grave

Southport: The place corpses are stacked high,

And the sea is far from sight.

Where mobility scooters reign the pavement,

And the A&E waiting time is seven hours.

 

Southport: The place I would call home,

And on dull summers days I’d go to the fair.

Where the roller coasters would swoop like finches,

And the haunted house would scare your friends.

 

Southport: Where I buried my father,

My uncle, my pets.

Where the burial plots are filling,

And cremation if rife.

Where the sea is always just out of sight.

 

 

38 Mount Culver Avenue

Glass crumbles underfoot,

As moody winds brush against the windowpanes.

Cans crushed by aggressive hand litters the floor,

Small stove lies docile in the corner.

 

Home.

Where I can hideaway from bitter thoughts,

The ones that try leave an after taste in your mouth,

But here is cold sunken peace.

The kind that echoes in the damp rooms,

And leaves its scent in the upholstery.

 

Some cans rusty, some gleaming,

But all empty inside,

Casings from bullets, now dormant.

 

Home.

Where I can imagine you sat besides me,

Legs crossed and arms outstretched.

Welcoming me home with an embrace,

Perhaps dinners in the oven and awaiting our taste.

by Admin -

Short Story Workshop Piece

Written from the prompt quote: “I shall not soon forget the peculiar feeling with which I my blind and looked out upon the unknown world: a wide, white wilderness was all that met my gaze…”

The azure heavens cause the deep murky snow to glisten and hurt my eyes. Even if I close them I feel a soft tingling as if a snowflake has caught itself under my eyelid. Melting to cause little droplets of salty relief. The pond has frozen over trapping the koi below, like placing a butterfly in a jar and allowing it to suffocate. I imagine the now still fish are creating a kingdom under that ice, one where the world cannot penetrate, no cat shall stick its greedy claws into the pool and no algae will cloud the fishes sight. They are freed; freed from their large golden bodies.

The snow entices me with its silencing quality, it muffles the trees movements and the milkman’s steps. It hides the concrete and the tarmac. Yet the snow is tainted already, lines of grey sludge streak the virgin white. Like the  spots of red against white sheets, which spread outwards like pools of rain. I wish the world were clean so that the snow would always remain milky pure. It would cushion my steps and comfort my mind with its beautiful crispness.

Since the snow fell the world seems stiller. Both internal and external reality have aligned and now lie silent, peaceful and Holy. I hate to see snowmen lining the streets at night, the children spoiled the snow with their sticky fingers and muddy boots. They’ve lifted the veil off the one they love to find a stained carcass below. One whose eyes are glazed not unlike my homes snowflake covered windows.

As the days begin to grow my beloved snow does suffer. I hear it cry out and wail and screech, as it clings onto the mucky ground. It’s softened and darkened, like a rotting apple, gone brown and gooey by the passing of time. But my snow cannot leave me, it will take with it everything and leave one against the dirt.

 

by Admin -

York St John Student Writing Showcase

Tonight I attended the York St John Student Writing Showcase and I was very impressed at the poetry and prose of students across all years. Nuala Casey spoke at this event, a woman whose works I have become very aware of in this semester. She previously took a lecture for my Writing to Order module and I found her début novel Soho, 4 A.M absolutely fascinating. When reading this novel I presumed the author was closely linked to the character Stella. Which tonight revealed this presumption to be true. I learnt that Nuala had bulimia in the past, I found this revelation highly interesting because so many authors who write about eating disorders in fiction have actual first hand experience of one. Upon hearing this I decided to write a poetry collection about my complex relationship with food.

by Admin -

First Words: My First Poetry Event

On Wednesday I had my first poetry event. I have been organising this event for the last three weeks and it has been a struggle. I quickly realised several problems with my organisational skills:

  • Don’t organise an event for the first time alone! You will get extremely stressed and upset if you are prone to anxiety.
  • Don’t attempt to carry over ten litres of alcohol! You will end up with bruises across your hips where the bottles have hit against your torso.
  • Don’t expect everyone speaker to turn up! Two speakers did not attend the event and I was not prepared for this, resulting in stress.

On a whole I enjoyed the event and I was very impressed by Henry Raby’s performance poetry, as it lifted the mood of the event. I am very grateful to all the first years at York St John who performed and those who attended the event.

Finally my last piece of advice, do not drink all the left over wine!

by Admin -

Dom & Ink

Last week the guest speaker Dominic Evans came into our seminar and spoke about his début illustrated novel, Map My Heart. His enthusiasm and dedication appeared flawless, however I could not quite distinguish his work from Keri Smith’s works such as Wreck This Journal. Perhaps because I have only just completed my own copy of Wreck This Journal, but they seem indistinguishably similar. However Dominic’s work focuses mainly on stylised caricatures and fashion illustrations unlike Keri’s more ambiguous work that demands you fill it in. I think ideally one should read and colour in the two and compare them. Plus it means you can crack out the crayons from your childhood!

by Admin -

Young Adult Fictional Opening: Scaling Down

The sickly dishes were being passed around, like the flu was spread from student to student in my chemistry class. The uproar from the Bar Mitzvah caused tinnitus clouds to disperse my thoughts. I watched as my mother woefully consumed knotted bread, like a locust that didn’t wish to feed but has the subconscious urge to do so. That was Day 6 of the Purge, I named it so due to the euphoria and purity emptiness gives me. I should probably explain what triggered Day 1, but even now I cannot quite recall where the thought came from.

I heard an array of explanations for my situation , but still none seemed to make much sense. It was not societal pressure branding me with unrealistic images. It was not so I could improve my long distant running skills. It was simply a thought that made perfect sense.

I’m Jake. 17. Jewish. Semi-orphaned. Anorexic. My mother and I are binaries that only exist because of the other. I am anorexic and she is obese. Without my anorexia she would not be obese and without her obesity I would not be anorexic. She says it is as if I am the sun and she the earth; she can always see me and I her. However we will never touch, never meet, never embrace one another. Our distance is fated and set out in stone, we cannot ever truly understand one another.

Since my father died she has been cooking. Borscht, Brisket, Farfel, Goulash, Knish, Lox, Schnitzel. A range of foods that only the Jewish seem to know. But since my father died I have been starving, perhaps as a form of rebellion against the deeply embedded shards of Judaism that I wish I could remove. To me the performance in the Synagogue is unbearable, like a terribly cliché melodrama where all the actors are oblivious to the fact it is indeed just a pretence.

by Admin -

A Very Brief Review of ‘Requiem for a Dream’

Hubert Selby Junior’s 1978 novel Requiem for a Dream is considered a cult novel by many, upon reading it for the second time I also came to realise its powerful impact. If you perhaps thought Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby or Wilde’s The Picture of Dorian Gray depicted hedonism to a high degree then you have not experienced anything yet. Requiem for a Dream follows the lives of four New Yorkers who all experience intense addiction. The gritty and raw slang filled dialogue between Tyrone and Harry can initially be very difficult for a reader to decipher, however if you persevere you will completely succumb to the charms of Hubert Selby Junior’s writing. The addictions range from heroin to weight loss. Sara, Harry’s Jewish and television obsessed mother becomes slowly more preoccupied by the need to lose weight, which climaxes to a dramatic and unsettling account of her experience in a mental health institute. Similar to Piercy’s Woman on the Edge of Time societal corruption is at the forefront of this novel; with Tyrone being racially discriminated, Sara being force-fed and made to endure electrotherapy and Marion, Harry’s girlfriend being forced to prostitute herself in order to score a hit.

This novel has the tension of Palahnuik’s Fight Club and the gritty vocabulary of Ginsberg’s Howl. Although I highly recommend the film adaptation I still urge you to read a copy of this novel as it is devastatingly poetic and beautifully sublime.

by Admin -

First Words

This is a York St John University poetry event I am chairing. I decided to organise this event as a response for being awarded the SPARK Arts scholarship. I have seven poets performing alongside myself, so hopefully I can muster up an audience.