Poetry Forum

Having been favourably impressed by Manchester on my last visit I would be happy to go there. The Poets and Players events are always good if there is a chance to combine events. Edinburgh would also rank highly for me.

A friday night might be tough. I could cert manage the rest of the weekend. A chance to visit the poetry cafe?

Ben, the burying bones in the garden is meant to imply, how shall I say it, a certain lack of imagination, limitations to sexuality even. I'm now worried I have just displayed my lack of imagination and what that implies about my limitations. At least I should be safe from people seeking my knowled...

It was generally well received on release but some accused her of being wilfully obscure because of her 'modernist' approach. Obscurity works best for me, as a reader, when it hints at things and allows those things to just flirt with your understanding without becoming fully lucid.

Fully agree.

Not feeling the let down of verse three personally. I wonder about the beginning though

We’d a semi-detached
with not much of a garden,
only so many places
you could bury a bone.

Does this add anything to poem? It doesn't appear to be picked up later. What would you think of dropping it?

Interesting the change from 'she' to 'he'. The original last verse feels playful, whimsical and dark in light sort of way. The last verse of the second verse feels more violent and as you say much darker. Is it just because it is a male protagonist? Or it is a male who is doing things like decoratin...

I love the poem, especially the last verse. I'm still not sure what is being described. My first thought was groynes, my second was a boat, my third I am working on. I don't feel the title is doing enough work, lovely sound to it but maybe it needs to guide (or ground) the reader a little more.

I've no problem with eyes listening, it builds an image of the listener intently watching the speaker, lip reading to gain every word. My problem is that is doesn't go far enough for a master storyteller, for example hear your breathing pause when the words lead you back into the corners of my rooms...

A painful ending! What would happen if you used the center align tag like

[center]she so
resembled
a cello with
her suntanned
back and long dark
etc...[/center]

I like the poem and the way you play on words like bow.

If for no other reason I would love this for its last line. Quite like the result of Brian's edit though.

Particularly like

So fill up my ears
with the beeswax of TV;
dumb me down with tea,

Has echoes of Adrian Mitchell

So fill my ears with silver
Stick my legs in plaster
Tell me lies about Vietnam

There is a lot to like here Jackie particularly the progression of the relationship in such a short piece. The images give it a strong sense of place as well. However for me the best triolets are light on their feet and currently I'm finding this a little heavy footed due to all the end stopped line...

Congratulations Ros I remember the poem well and I'm glad to see it in 'print'.

I'm truly saddened by the demise of Salt as a poetry publisher, they had a range of exciting and talented poets on their lists. Thankfully many have found new homes. Salt has been struggling for a few years though I'm not sure what the real reasons are for that. I would say that print on demand was ...

It is a fine line between humour and disturbing and for me this falls on the disturbing side of that line. Which is not a bad thing if it is intended. As Jackie mentioned using the T-Rex as a protagonist in this instantly sets up an image for the reader of monsters and makes it darker, Crystal Ken m...

I wonder what you would think of the suggestion to lose the third line? For me the result would feel closer to a haiku, currently I find the line to be a little redundant.

By the way welcome to P.G.

After all the waiting and quiet spells I'm pleased to announce that the Poets' Graves collection is complete and the first books are back from the printers. Since the printers provided an incredibly speedy service the rest of the world needs to catch up with them. At the moment the ISBN service hasn...

Hi Dayna

Welcome to P.G. I didn't start writing poetry until 14. I wrote the odd poem at school but never at home before that.

Congratulations Suzanne glad to see you reaping the benefits of sticking with it.

In a sweeping generalisation there are at least two different poetry camps now, literary poetry where poems are designed to be read on the page to get the full depth of the poem and the performance/slam poetry which is designed to be spoken/read aloud. Performance poetry can draw very large audience...

By now everyone should have received an email informing them of the poems that have been chosen along with a request for a brief bio. If you haven't received an email check your spam filter, alternative email accounts, etc and if you still can't find it then give me a shout. I have completed a preli...

Very well done Richard Magma is one of the top range magazines, the best I ever got from them was a rejection letter telling me to go to a poetry school and learn how to write poetry. Lots of practising reading in front of the mirror then

The are no hard and fast rules for deciding where to end lines, but looking at your example provides some guidelines. R.S here breaks his lines on concrete terms bird,dark,etc generally these work better than weaker points like of, the, etc. He also breaks his lines so that they are visually the sam...

The deadline has passed, but we are still receiving and accepting entries.

Did you go Tim? I spent Saturday volunteering there. I managed to see Glyn Maxwell's reading and a couple of the others. A very well organised event and I'm looking forward to the next one.