Poetry Forum

Thanks for the feedback Poet and Perry. This wasn't intentionally obscure, so it's useful to know it doesn't make much sense to you. The music or 'play' is more than half of it, so I'm pleased you responded to that Perry. A 'playworker' is an assistant/organiser at a summer camp or youth club. It's ...

Thanks for returning Not, 'the horned hemispheres' - the horns, strictly speaking, are the Alaskan Peninsula (which fades into the Aleutians). Vector maps do tend to over-simplify deeply inletted fragmented headlands, but the averaged out shape of Alaska there is essentially a quarter circle. I thin...

Hi Ray - I like it. It has this tragi-comic feel to the pacing and structure - a long set-up and everything revolving around this phrase 'I don't want to start her off'. 'Genetics'? - that seems like a red herring. I don't get the relevance, unless it's saying it's irrelevant. I think I'd leave it a...

Hi Eira - for me the most real part is the lost stanza. It's right in the present and carries with it some of the breathless trauma of the computer session - and then the memories bloom outwards, half consoling, half haunting. So I'd consider beginning with that. And maybe 'there' instead of 'caught...

Hi Steve - deadpan at its best. Brilliant start.
I'm inclined to agree with Ray's edits.
If you are wedded to 'Tomorrow's' return you could drop China and make S3 :

A curtain drawn,
a fire lit.
Tomorrow came;
ashes in an urn,
delivered by DHL.

Jules

Are you a pop star? A boy or a girl? Bit of a prat And this, now Yeah, if you wanna get a head And that, this (do I mean bliss?)

Thanks mac, Poet and Not - did everyone realise the inkblot image is the Americas mirrored horizontally and vertically? mac - yes, a better flow with 'a gent in' If I ever get to make a complete series of these I might call it 'Pages from my Inkblot Atlas' There's a definite parallel between the vis...

Thank you JJ, Miles and mac - a word/image revision posted (with added landlockeds) JJ - delighted with your comment. This is light verse, a form of nonsense poetry, but I seem to be hooked on it. mac - thanks for your suggestion, duly taken on board. This being a circumnavigation, name-checking eac...

Hi Jackie - enjoyed both your recent posts (this and Caravan) - I can't claim to 'get' either of them but both gift the reader with enough to beguile and then proceed to confound in so many seemingly specific and curious ways I keep coming back to them. I know you are interested in Keith Douglas who...

Hi Perry, the first two stanzas of the revision are an improvement but I think the other changes go backwards. I like these strange ramblings of Mr Kent, though I agree with Ray the Trump and global warming refs break the spell. There is a kind of latent Trumpishness in here, maybe do something more...

Boom boom! Very funny Ray, I might steal that
Jackie - I think of it as a collision between two found systems, or maybe a poem in a strait jacket.
Jules

https://i.postimg.cc/vHcGjSpw/americaallthelittle2.jpg Original All the little coasts of America · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · (Costa Rica) All of them orphans · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · (No Panama) Their tongue-tied syllables · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · · (Clumsier and...

It's an odd last line. All the other stanzas end on two beats, this has two and a half or three, with that mushy word 'some'. It's a change of pace, a dying fall, so maybe it works. That's my only stumble. There are two or three other disconnects in the flow of sense/grammar but they all work for me...

It all works well for me, quite a sinister but also vulnerable feel.
Not sure if repeating the 'Make sure you catch…' line four times
is one two many. I f you swap it for the 'Make sure you keep eating…' line
in S5 it's more symmetrical (aa,bb,ab).
Jules

Great news Not.
Isn't that Indigo Dreams? - an inspiring little publisher.
I remember sarcophagus.
Jules

Haha! Thank you for bursting my balloon Tony :) you are closest to the mark. This is not exactly Jeremy Clarkson's Gardening Special but yes, the N is celebrating both grumpiness and the wildness of his garden, body, life. mac - really like your line by line analysis. The 'our', 'we' opens it out to...

Hi Poet, I like it. It might be one of your best. It has a feeling of danger both for the narrator and the reader. You could try tidying up the syntax but I think the uncomfortable, unconventional wording is part of what gives it an edge. So, for example that first line - I sneak to go and drink mil...

Hi Eira, I'd vote for 'as is' until L12 - you're trying to pack a lot of history and meaning into that line - 'immersed' is very good but 'buoyed up' follows on too quickly. I'd suggest something like: 'for long immune to love/words from kindly folk' L13 is good but I agree the last three lines are ...

Thanks lotus, Not and mac and apologies for my slo-mo responses, lotus - thanks for your sensitive comment - we are lucky to have you here Not - thanks for staying with this. Coming back to it now I am reasonably happy with it (good call on the comma after Mum) - the main question being those quirky...

She sounds like she's walked out of a bonk buster novel, whereas he's wandered out of a Dickens . . . poor old buffer.

It starts like a limerick - any mileage in that?

Jules

Title : 'Free Love'?

Our permacultural patch is filling up with
God-Knows-What
quite a bit of Probably-Dead
no small amount of What-the-Hell-is-That
its saving grace a bed of How-Did-That-Get-There
We prune and snarl with glee
uncertify the season
dig the you
of me

Thanks for coming back Not,
one man's sentence structure … it all seems crystal clear to me.
Having said that I suspect I may return in 6months for my D'oh! moment
Jules

Hi camus -very zeitgeisty.
I get the 'then to avoidance' line (maybe 'Then')
but it's a bit dry - maybe 'Cut to avoidance'
or 'Then to misdirection'.
But definitely throwing off a few sparks.
Jules

Hi Tony,
the revision is much better. It makes sense to me, but gives
the impression there was a long term relationship - they are behaving
like a couple.
If you want to indicate an ending perhaps they could both
be signing themselves out.
Liked especially the line 'your stole silently'

Jules

Thanks Not and mac, a revision up, hopefully with a better flow . I can visualise the map if not the plumbing. Yes, Not similarly stumbles . . . I could switch to 'cave systems' but I liked the domestic/natural play, the shift in scale, the oppertunity to characterize a parade of plumbers. ps just r...