Radiance Festival

On Saturday - May 26th - members of The Five will be reading at the Radiance Festival at St Matthew's Church, Church Hill, Walsall, UK. WS1 3DG


Radiance is described as a Christian Spirituality Fair. Admission is £5 for the day, running from 10am to 3.30pm.

Chris Warren, Colin Gibson and Simon Iredale, of The Five, are scheduled to read at 11.45am.


Chris Warren will also be leading a workshop on "poetry and prayer" during the day.

The Five first wrote and read together as students in 1977 and reconvened five years ago. Their latest anthology is Five Squared.

The music-makers

We are the music-makers
  And we are the dreamers of dreams,
Wandering by lone sea-breakers,
  And sitting by desolate streams;
World-losers and world-forsakers,
  On whom the pale moon gleams:
Yet we are the movers and shakers
  Of the world for ever, it seems.

With wonderful deathless ditties
We build up the world's great cities,
  And out of a fabulous story
  We fashion an empire's glory:
One man with a dream, at pleasure,
  Shall go forth and conquer a crown;
And three with a new song's measure
  Can trample an empire down.

We, in the ages lying
  In the buried past of the earth,
Built Nineveh with our sighing,
  And Babel itself with our mirth;
And o'erthrew them with prophesying,
  To the old of the new world's worth;
For each age is a dream that is dying,
  Or one that is coming to birth.

 Ode
Arthur O’Shaughnessy 1844-1881

Lyric festival

Check out the Sheffield Lyric Festival:
"Now in its second year, Lyric is Sheffield's only festival of poetry, music and the spoken word and will take place from Wednesday 9 May to Friday 11 May 2012 at the University of Sheffield."
It is organised by poet Simon Armitage, professor of poetry in Sheffield.

More details here:
http://www.shef.ac.uk/mediacentre/2012/stellar-line-up-celebrate-poetry-and-music-at-lyric-festival.html
http://www.shef.ac.uk/lyric/2012

Poems to make you think

Here is a collection of thought-provoking videos of poetry and lyrics. There's a great Dylan song and some up-dated material that's already been on this site. These are poets thinking about life, the universe and everything. Any ideas for additions welcome.


 Full listing:

• Spring - The Innocence Mission
• Stephen Lovatt - title unknown
• Gates of Eden - Bob Dylan
• On Burnham Beach - Tom Rudge
• Dover Beach - Matthew Arnold
• Always Making Things - Stewart Henderson
• Heaven Haven - Gerard Manley Hopkins, music versions by Caedmon and the Innocence Mission

New anthology

There's now an anthology of new poems out by The Five, the group of poets who have contributed many of the poems on this site. In the past we've promoted live readings by the group. There are going to be more this year.

They first published together in the late 1970s and appeared with a band called Candle Factory, whose single album, Nightshift, now fetches largish sums on e-bay. They published a slim anthology then - and many years later, this is their second collection  after "five life-times of beach-combing, of spiritual highs and lows, of taking less-travelled paths".

The new book Five Squared, edited by Simon Peter Iredale, is available from lulu.com for £12.50 It has 25 poems. One or two have appeared here - but most have not.

The five are Max Butcher, Colin Gibson, Simon Peter Iredale, Tom Rudge and Chris Warren.

Christmas morning

Curled together
on Christmas morning
we're the comma
in the year
an apostrophe
of mutual possession
a quote mark that says
the conversation is ended
and is beginning anew

Tom Rudge, Christmas 2011
Copyright: By application


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Suggest a Dylan lyric..

I've been trying to find an appropriate Bob Dylan lyric - words that stand out on the page as a poem in their own right. Dylan is meant to be the great lyricist, the contemporary song writer about whom dissertations have been written. Indeed sometimes he wrote poetry without songs - although unlike Leonard Cohen he was not a poet first and foremost. I confess - I have found the search difficult.

Any suggestions?

Galactic Lovepoem

Some video has emerged on Youtube of Adrian Henri and Liverpool Scene (a rock poetry band) performing live. This is Galactic Lovepoem

Spring

Look out for Spring,

the life underground,
the life underground.
The thawing and the overflow.
Oh early, early in the morning
we’ll go.

Seven shades of green
are painted on your door,
painted on your door,
the field alive under the snow.
Oh early, early in the morning.
we’ll go.

Oh world of rooftops,
hearing one field song.
The walk in raincoats,
the wait for Easter, Tom.
We are awake or waking,
awake or waking from.
Here that day comes.

The Innocence Mission 
from the album my room in the trees

Copyright: The Innocence Mission
Reproduced with permission

Last lyric by this artist

Listen here:

Park and ride

Riding the Metropolitan
Railway I think of Betjeman
rhapsodist of suburban dreams
where golden ochred autumn trees
decorate fading maisonettes
Here I'm a ghost whose journey's past
parallel lives I might have chanced
hanging, like prunes, from every branch
Hillingdon, Northwood, Amersham,
emptied now of aunts, friends, gran,
echo with part-remembered plans

Past Harrow, men play ball on a field
a wasteland has brambles and a horse
near Ickenham an old house in a park
a crumbling Middle Saxon manor
then a station amid half-timbered
homes

here sounds the motorway's call

Tom Rudge, Devon
Copyright: By application


Last poem by this writer

Summoned By Bells - John Betjeman

The Waiting Room

This is where you come, nursing

your dearest fears.

Those that, once on a time, in

the country of the healthy, you

would have dismissed with a smile

turning to your latest love.

Yet, like an animal that follows you

home, they wheedled their way

into your sick affection.

Now, casting their speckled

skin they are revealed

for what they are – loathsome,

predatory, implacable - the

many faces of hurt.

Patient and passive, our

lives in parenthesis, we wait

for someone to call our name.

Though we sit side by

side, we are not companions, each

languishes in their own solitude,

our eyes do not meet.

No one’s file of words bears

exactly the same judgment, illness

is as distinctive as a laugh.

We shall return here like sad

comets every three months, until

some vagary of gravity spins

us off, out, onto a path for which

there is no return.

Simon Peter Iredale

Copyright: Simon Peter Iredale

Last poem by this writer

At the Bar

First position comes naturally,

the body equipoised, tranquil.

The expression is one of unrelenting

surprise, eye fixed and gawking.

The corner of the mouth turned down

in disappointment, disapproval?

How can your world always fail

to live up to expectation?

Second position advances the thigh,

the knee bending backwards, ankle

extending each flexed toe tip.

Often the leg is held with a gesture

of suspense before with effortless

elegance, the foot is planted.

The body glides and the cocked

eye sweeps the matted earth.

Third and fourth positions are

accomplished in a swift lunge, the

body following the stabbing head.

Here, pursuing a hapless insect,

motion verges on an abrupt jeté.

Comb and wattles flutter red

warning as the beak snaps shut.

The glazed eye winks satisfaction.

Fifth and sixth positions are lost

in the straw, grand plié, the feathered

rump descends, neck ruffles raised.

Cruel beak in a gape, eye staring,

a primeval chatter wells up through

the lipless mouth, shriller and more

raucous, shaking the roost, until

a great calm – and an egg!

Simon Peter Iredale

Copyright: Simon Peter Iredale

Last poem by this writer

Burnham Beach - video version

Tom Rudge's On Burnham Beach is now on YouTube:

The Bee Blog

Simon Iredale, a regular contributor to this site, has started his own blog, The Bee Blog.

He says: This blog follows my amateur efforts at bee-keeping through the medium of poetry and prose. They are a source of contemplation since they fill you with a kind of wonder - human beings need wonder!

An appearance in Chesterfield

Four writers who have contributed new work to this site will be leading an evening of poetry on Sunday June 28th in Chesterfield, Derbyshire, UK.

It's at 6pm at the Central Methodist Church, 38 Saltergate, Chesterfield, S40 1UH. Admission is free.

Originally and many years ago known as The Five, Colin Gibson, Simon Iredale, Tom Rudge and Christopher Warren will be presenting some of their work, old and new.

Somerset Moths

Lured by the warmth of summer sun on tarmac,
Lingering long here beyond the fall of darkness:
Trapped between high honeysuckle hedges:
Caught by my hurrying headlights.

I never saw moths like this, a summer blizzard,
Each flashing into brightness just as it withers.
Leopard, tiger, ermine, gypsy, emperor
crackle upon my bumper.

What am I to them? First warmth and honeysuckle
and the comforting dark. Then a ton of metal
Mangling their world, a furious Abaddon,
hurling bright wings to oblivion.

I cannot stop. I am held upon this course
that smashes their fragility. I am forced
by fear for a broken child, to follow his fall
and hurry after him to hospital.

Colin Gibson
Copyright: By application

Last poem by this writer

Saimaa

I seek a lake
and in the lake an isle
and in the isle a pool
and in the pool a rock
and there
held and beheld in the still water
a seat of triple secrecy.

There like the sky
that gazes on the water
and like the waters
shining with the skies
I'll gaze and shine and share
reflected mysteries.

Colin Gibson
Copyright: by application

Last poem by this writer

Running along the beach

Fear binds me as I start to write
Fear after so long holding back
Fear that someone will read
and see what I've become
Fear that no-one will.


So let me write like running along a beach
that stretches to the limitless.
Your waves yelling upon her, shouting me on:
Your winds and clouds wrestling for the sky
and all Your stars are blazing.


And me running, shouting Your name,
Delirious and ridiculous, and wanting
Each breath, step, yell, stride, stretch,
to reach You
Like a demented lover
Like a prisoner in a last dash for freedom
Like a splinter burned in unconsuming fire.


Colin Gibson
Copyright: By application

An AQA Anthology

The new laureate

the nation's pupils mourn
a laureate is born;
the cursed AQA's now
enshrined in the Royal Mall.

Oh Harry you must recall
the pain that Havisham-
-Salome caused your classroom
Go tell your gran before

your family's events
become the stuff of tests
exams and student hatred;
perhaps it's just the thing

poems you can't even sing
and words that bury joy,
a job that's only ever
good to write to order


The new patrons

these are the new patrons of poetry
they'll pay for pointless drivel written
for kids, you don't need art
or even a heart, a place
in the AQA's study
guide will keep you
scribbling, a scrabbling squirrel
who'll find her nuts
in the deadened, graphite trees
of the anthology

The GCSE

Puzzled pupils ponderously parse
particles of words and verse
seeking simile and metaphor
creeping by with sly pretence
of personification
Spot the difference and earn a mark
Get it wrong, you're BANNED from poems
for life - and a day
(now no elation!)

So much for personalisation -
in search of quick-step qualification
they're piling Ossia onto Pelion;
as for alliteration
it's easy to read
rare to write and hard to say

Somewhere in the line
there's a half-rhyme
find it if time
and is a pun allowed
or should it be quiet
(for fear of fun and play)?

Tutored/tortured to rip the heart from words
our prize pupils perspire in their task
a soul could flit across the face
and words unleash a dream's display
but none of that would satisfy
the bald minds of the AQA

Seamus, it's a shame they treat you so
Ted, you should be better read;
chuckle, don't frown, at McGough and Patten,
Duffy, there's enough of Carol-Ann
Harry, quick, go tell the Queen
Oh Mr Motion, how can words
paint a human soul?
Ask Plath, whose tormented talent was beyond
craft or deconstruction long before
the age of GCSE


Here's a plan to help the kids enjoy
and achieve some little poem before
the rigours of work and adulthood
turn their heads bald or grey:

Let them write of their own
crystallise in poetic picture
the fevered feelings of the teen
engrave it on a plaque and hang
it on the wall.
That's all.

Tom Rudge, Devon
Copyright: By application

A Facebook group called I Can't Wait to Burn My Anthology has 37,000 members. TR.

Last poem by this writer