Way back in December last year, as I was first wallowing in the delights of Canadian poetry and checking out the magazines that had published poems I particularly enjoyed, I came across something that sounded interesting: the Contemporary Verse 2 Two-Day Poem Competition. Very simple – you sign up, and at midnight on the first day of …
You know those poems with amazing titles
that suggest anything could be about to happen, anything might lie hidden behind the words about to leap forth – the soldiers of syntax marshalled on parade, the magicians of imagination warming up their wands – but which, like the contents of a Fabergé egg or a politician’s promise or Don Juan’s trousers add the …
Poem in progress – a cento for Yogi
Déjà Vu a cento i.m. Lawrence Peter ‘Yogi’ Berra It gets late early out there. It's déjà vu all over again. We have deep depth. He’s amphibious. If the world were perfect, it wouldn’t be. When you come to a fork in the road, (What time is it? You mean now?) take it. Pair up …
Tragedy (when you lose control and you got no soul)
I’ve just spent a week trying to work out, to my own satisfaction, the difference between ‘unknowable’ and ‘unnamable’. I know. It’s simple – the first means ‘you can’t know it’ and the second ‘you can’t name it’. But there’s so much more to it than that. It’s to do with a poem I’ve been working …
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Chinese Whispers and Collins-ese Whiskers
One of my (current) favourite writing exercises (and one which will be making its way into the next Reading for Writing workshop – you have been warned!) is based on the old game of Chinese Whispers. You know, the one where you whisper something into someone's ear, then they whisper it to the next person, …
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