Poetry Forum

Hi Ray, A lovely read, very well constructed and although the specifics of the narrative eluded me a little, especially at the end, that only seemed to make the poem as a whole more poignant. I also really liked the way its moves, with some subtle and telling enjambment, especially the break between...

Thanks for the kind words about this, and my apologies for not responded to the comments sooner, both on this poem and others I've posted. The last few weeks have been an even more brutal-than-usual grind, and left hardly any time for writing. I must say I'd more or less given this one up for dead, ...

Visiting Every day between the hours of six and nine, the Royal Victoria's east wing, five rows up and four along, its squares of blue and yellow light falling into line like a squad of soldiers marching out to troop the colour, each rigid measure part of that post-war mania for routine and order. M...

Hi Bryan, Thanks for the poem. I'm afraid I have to agree with Roz for the most part, in that it is very overwrought. You're obviously got a good ear but there's so much going on acoustically that, overall, the poem sounds like a wall of white noise, with the reader unable to pick one sound out from...

St. Michael’s Belfry In the dark you could think it almost anything – the tooth of a giant or fin of a whale, a bluestone trilithon’s jamb and lintel, a dhow’s flapping sail or the mast and oars of fleet of triremes, their forms ebbing and flowing in the tide, each prow flush against the wind and ma...

Thanks for the comments all. There is a high degree of randomness about the reference in the final line, though the overall intent was, as Peter noted, to go from the personal and the impersonal and perhaps along the way to query what we regard as random. With regards to the title, I had in mind thi...

MCMXCV She used to hang our pictures in procession down the staircase wall, puppy-fat and curls giving way to crew-cuts, bum-fluff and a pair of dirty-blonde sideburns, to inch-thick jam-jar glasses, their tortoiseshells making that the year that Billy Jackson turned you over for your leather brogue...

Thanks for the comment everyone. I was wondering about the title too - I'm toying with the idea of changing it to 'Eulogy', which might offer a little exposition and also situate the clichés of the first two lines, which I'm keen to keep because I like the idea of working down from surface banalitie...

Hi Ray, I enjoyed this. If I'm reading it right, it turns on a contrast between an outer, mortal world of either atrocity (spiked heads) or inanity (tourists) and an inner world of either carefree passion or peaceful snoozing (or both, I suppose). I enjoyed the subtle rhyming and thought 'Bluebottle...

Thanks from the positive words all. I take the point about the names, which might be why the central conceit doesn't have a lot of emotional charge for some. I'll have a think

Thanks again for reading

Great stuff! Especially enjoyed the internal rhyme of 'Anti-Psychiatry' and 'irony'

Thanks for the read

Cloud Life ‘the soul-free cloud-life’ – Seamus Heaney But for that flock of starlings taking its helical turn around the ice-white anvil wedge of a cumulonimbus floating overhead, we’d have struggled to say what was land and what was sky. And as they sailed by, the passing forms of that inch-to-the-...

Hi Mike, An interesting conceit, with some suggestive descriptions, though like David I think some of the language isn't working (though I don't agree that the piece is un-poetic). The first stanza was pretty flat - I don't think 'beatific' and 'contemptible' are contributing much and I personally f...

Still Life Three score and ten. Two point four children. Truths universally acknowledged. For though he has lost an inch or two, a tooth or two, and though his hair has thinned to a pair of white tufts pinned behind each ear, its slow retreat ceding the bulk of his freckled scalp to the hard-wearing...

Thanks for the comments, as always. I had clocked the degree/divorce connection, though now I have I'm glad it's there - I quite like having conflicting resonances in poems, so I'm pleased to discover it. I hadn't made the Greek connection - I was thinking of the zodiac - but again, I glad to have i...

Hi Tristan, I think you're on the right track but there's something slightly amiss. I really liked the first three lines, which are beautifully paced (though I second JJ's recommendation for changing the line breaks) but then I stumble after that. I think there's an issue with syntax in line four - ...

Hi Ian, I'm sorry, but this isn't working for me as it is. It's certainly a scene pregnant with possible meanings, and there are a couple of suggestive turns of phrase - I particularly enjoyed 'I took my spoon to taste the world' - but overall the poem seemed a tad listless, a collection of impressi...

(With apologies for a prolonged winter absence)

Epithalamion A decree as absolute as the expulsion from Eden. Pompoms , you said, so there they were, coiled around the corners of the house like a pastel tinted hydra and hissing, until that moment weeks later when we side-stepped the churning flow of friends and guests to peer into the rafters of ...

Metempsychosis Strange currencies, these salts and acids, their pop and fizz recalling nothing so much as birdsong down the Amazon, snakes trails over the Gobi and there, under tripods and gauze, a faint residue of the form of Muhammad ibn Zakariyā Rāzī as he hunches over his alembic, sifting distil...

A brave and valuable poem. I think most of us, if we are being honest, would have to confess to moments like these, when we want to be a better version of ourselves but let darker impulses creep in. Technically, I think the poem works very well, and you have a good control of the rhythm and sense of...

Thanks for the comments and insights all. The consensus seems to be that the second half is weaker and in need of some work, which I'm inclined to agree with. This is mostly based around a gentleman who gets on an early morning bus that I sometimes also get on, and who, as far as I can tell, does so...

Incidentally I apologise for a staggeringly self-indulgent title, any suggestions for something better will be very gratefully received

The Common Reader 2.0 These kinds of things are wont to simmer below the conscious mind: mud cakes, thick night sweats and a sickly sweet scent of shit catching the back of your throat as you try turning up your nose. How many days he boarded like this, I do not know, but the routine would always st...

Hi David,

Sorry to have gone off the grid so completely, have had a busy couple of weeks. In answer to your question, I really like the line break on 'sheer', but I'm not as convinced by 'open parenthesis', though I can't say why. Just re-read your poem again, and still think it's great. Kudos!