The Wearer by Colette Bryce

The Wearer by Colette Bryce

Here is my necklace, blister
pearls, a single garnet
for the eye, diamond sparks,
but where am I?

This loop contained a laugh,
a pulse, a throat
that arched perhaps
in love, perhaps
disdain, that warmed
this chain and knew
itself as beautiful.

Whoosh… life! A peacock tail
can stop a clock, can shock
a room to silence.
Oh I played that game,
observed the trembling
hands of men pause
above my breasts. Exquisite,
they would murmur then.

Feast your eyes, look
for me. You'll find
my books, my silverware,
my gowns, the flute
that held my wine, the fork
that carried food
to my full lips.
The set, the props, and this,

this… my vanity, that loved
the gaze that looked
at me, that bloomed
like any peacock tail
at the soft words
of a lover, who whispered
that my teeth were pearls,
my ear a shell, mother-
of-pearl, that sapphires
were my eyes

but where am I?

This is an absolute whirlwind of a poem I love it. The constant line breaks and punctuation forces you to read it quickly and its that speed which makes that final line seem so much more shocking a stop. Like a train derailing.

My one complaint though is that I don't think the line 'but where am I' should have been in the first stanza, I think it would have been better for it to appear as a surprise at the end.

With regard to the content itself I doubt you really need me to explain the fact that it is a comment on the materialistic world in which the wearer inhabits and that the person is second to the necklace, the only way the lovers can describe her is by likening parts of her to the jewellery. Her actual physical nature is lost beneath the pearls the plaintive question of where am I? borders on rhetorical as she knows, nowhere to be found...

[untitled] by Rufinus

There are days when I'm plodding along, minding my own business, when I encounter a poem which really astounds me with the ability to make me think of something in a different light. Describing it in such a beautiful way that it appears a marvel.

Here below is Exhbit N, which as a whole isn't especially good but...

[untitled] by Rufinus

How could I have known
Kythereia was in her bath,
her lovely hands letting
her hair laugh about her throat.

May she, my queen, have mercy-
my eyes saw what was not meant for me.
Her unspeakable beauty, her graces
have shamed even the Goddess.


Her hair laugh about her throat, as soon as I read this my mind was set alight. What a stunning way to describe hair? I would never have though of it laughing but now I can imagine hair moving gently around her neck as if each strand is playing with the other, it has such a positive feel and makes the mental picture of an attractive nubile lady naked in the bath come all the more alive.

It's great to find little treasures like this.

Affectation by Martin Collins

AFFECTATION

You can find me amidst the plaguescapes.
Beneath the bilious clouds
trapped by foetid air.
Drowning in eruptions
Wens, blisters, tumours, phagadaenas

I know their banal gossip,
Questioning my choice to remain.
The thought makes me expel smoke from my maw
like a daemonic engine releasing rage.

The burning inside tells me this is home,
I do not need to hide who I am.
There’s one thing that won’t infect me here,
their affectation.


This was written in the lunch break of a Poetry Business writing day just before I took it into the afternoon workshop (it would appear one works best under pressure..). The inspiration was that all the poems I had written in the morning session were based on reality or personal experience and nothing imaginary. So my personal challenge was to write something fantastic for which I invented a person and/or creature living a self-imposed exodus in some inhospitable terrain, which I dubbed the plaguescapes (I think that name is probably a product of The Locust album title Plague Soundscapes. Note me using the lower case suggesting it is something that can occur in multiple places, not a singular event...I'll stop babbling now).

The title is my joke upon the voice of the poem as although he claims he will never suffer from affectation like those he detests, by his very nature he is affected to do what he does. However the fact the voice is not fleshed out or given identity a few of the people at the workshop stumbled on this and couldn't engage with the poem without knowing who was speaking.

As a result, I'm not entirely sure if its finished in this format, by which I don't know if I am going to change the poem so that is feels stronger and more effective as a stand alone poem to deal with issues of 'Who is the voice?' or make it part of a series... more importantly whether one has the time...

Musician's Circle by Martin Collins

Musician's Circle

When asked how long we've played together,
we recount the years with a pleasant surprise
before a knowing wink starts the next tune.
Our shared memories, different colours
refracted from the same pure light,
evoke the melody which fills the room
the glory of our days and adventures
lay beside the trials we've overcome
and the odd missed or mangled notes,
private sorrows we helped each other through.
Each bar is a story only we know.
Even so, all who hear our song
feel the human beauty of these moments
which resonate with their exploits
until the end when they applaud
not just our sound but all of creation.

M. Collins

Went down to the folk session at the Kelham Island Tavern and it always amazes me how a bunch of people who have never seen or practiced with each other before can (to my eyes and ears) miraculously play such awesome tunes together.

There was a woman who lead the session for quite a while who had turned up with a friend and somebody asked them how long they had been playing together and as she smiled and replied a good few years now I immediately started writing and redrafting this for the rest of the night.

Still not 100% with the ending, it captures a large part of what I was thinking but seems a bit too Christian for my liking.

The Donkey's Delirium - Martin Collins

The Donkey's Delirium

The stage sees countless men and countless Pucks
find their delight debasing other souls.
They laugh as cruel children do at violence.
I’m not as dense as my visage suggests,
her faerie beauty beyond this actor
playing a farce so inconsequential
but why must I embrace my wretched fate?
When I can kiss her pale and perfect form...
Why cannot I dream this midsummer night,
that this moment will stretch on eternal
and I shall not afear the coming wake
until the Dawn’s fingers do sear my skin.


So through the wonders of Facebook this group was found
http://www.facebook.com/#!/group.php?gid=109264991400&ref=ts
A monthly spoken word night at the Hallam Hubs and tonight was their last one before taking a break for the summer. The theme was Midsummer's Nights Dream (although nobody really followed it) and despite having well over a week to prepare it I furiously scribbled this in 45 minutes before heading down.

I wish I could understand why if I have plenty of time I can produce nothing but shitty half-arsed lines and yet when the deadline is about to rape I'm suddenly full of inspiration. There's been a couple of Northern Oak songs where I've been hitting my head against a brick wall then suddenly wrote all the lyrics the night before a practice. I know the ideas sort of gestate in my head beforehand, I'd had been toying with writing something about the relationship between Titania and Nick Bottom before I sat down to write but still it turned out a lot better than expected.

I hope you like it, it got a decent cheer which was good enough for me! The quality of the performances were all good but not scary like the quality of some of the poems taken to the Poetry Business writing workshop. My favourite was a guy who turned World War 2 into a football commentary!

Now to put more time and effort into setting up my own spoken word night like I have been planning...

Untitled 3/5/10 - Martin Collins

We would go to stately homes and grand summer houses
in whichever country, whenever the opportunity. Wander
through more rooms than you could ever need. Marvel
at all the fountains, fixtures and furniture
decorated in decadent details.
It always made me want to vomit.
Someone owning such grand structures for mere months
while generations of families huddle together
in tiny terraced houses.
Regardless
there is still some part of me
that would like, in later life,
to take tea in the drawing room
and as light streams through
impossibly large curtains,
act like it was worth it in the end
-M. Collins 3/5/2010

Of the poems I wrote at the workshop, this is my favourite which has been slightly edited since then. The exercise had been to think of a place that we wanted to be with Sebastian Barker's 'In the Heart of Hackney' as an example to inspire us. I'm really struggling with a title though, all I can think of now is 'The loathsome frivolity of the larger home.' however that warns the reader what my opinion is and I want the line "It always made me want to vomit." to be unexpected. It certainly elicited the desired surprise and laughter from the other people at the workshop without such a title.

One thing I noticed about my writing after doing a number of exercises in a row is that I have a penchant for taking the first person and being very autobiographical. It not only makes me worry about my own self-absorption but that I may be misinterpreted when I write something that isn't about me in the first person. Perhaps I'm worried that I have written about myself and just don't want to accept it? Ho-hum.

The Lower Jaw Trick - Simon Currie

So I remembered literally a couple of days before the event that there was a Poetry Business writing workshop on last Saturday so I decided to bite the bullet, book a place and pay the man. I'm glad I did as I actually had a brilliant session and wrote more in a matter of hours than I've been able to make myself in months. I will be sure to put some of it up on here once I've type them up.

The first half of the day was writing exercises and the second half was a writing workshop. All the poems brought along were of a great quality but one of them really stood out to me, so I'm going to type it up here and hope that he does not mind...

The Lower Jaw Trick - Simon Currie

That move, accomplished only once,
when, comfortably seated, shot-gun cocked,
cartridge loaded, muzzle in your mouth,
you pull the trigger with a big toe (either will do).
My son, who knows about such things, tells me
it takes off all your head above the lower jaw.

The sound will bring anyone in earshot
to find a colourful scene:
blood and brains up the wall,
you, sat on your chair insensate,
natty moustache gone forever,
the smile wiped off your face.

The nearest I have got to such a sight
is when my mother took me to visit an aunt
whose pressure cooker had blown up,
a grain of barley stuck in the safety valve.
Walls and ceiling were draped in fronds of leek,
a pattern William Morris would have died for.



Just the look of it is macabre with the three verses of 6 line and as you read the initial verse you are immediately filled with dread at where the poem is going to take you. So when the ending does arrive its so unexpected, bizarre and comical. We all burst out laughing when he finished reading it although I wonder if some of us were laughing in relief that he chose a lighter ending.

It's how we as the reader change after finishing the poem. Go back and read it again, now you knowing where the poem is going you suddenly notice all the lighter touches more like the natty moustache. With no suicide impending in the 18 lines you are able to remove yourself from the subject matter and take a more objective view, the whole thing stops being so sinister.

It is so clever.

There was a discussion of whether he should include 'my son' on line 5, the lady hosting the workshop thought that it threw up uncomfortable questions about the son and his relation to suicide. However I argued that it should be kept purely because of how much more detached it makes the poem. It leaves me imagining him discussing the subject matter over the dinner table with his son and the funnier thing is that people generally do....