Anne Enith Cooper

Biography

Anne is the writer-in-residence at Cressingham Gardens and is an activist, writer, photographer and poet with 15 years experience working in the community on writing projects. She is the author of Touched, editor of And Then There Was Light and Out is the Word and the founder of The Way of Words Creative Writing and Live Literature Events. For over a decade Anne performed with Poets Know it including a residency at The Fridge Bar. She took part in Lambeth Libraries Write Around Lambeth and the opening of the Norwood Library Poetry Garden with Lemn Sissay. She participated in the Poem-A-Thon for Refugees that raised over £20 000 for Médecins Sans Frontières and has appeared at The Bowery Poetry Club NYC, the Iraqi Cultural Centre, Loose Muse, Beyond Words, Lumen, Hearing Eye and Angel Poetry. Her poem essay 21st Century Guernica about the massacre in Fallujah Iraq was published by the Stop the War Coalition, broadcast on the Islam Channel and described by the late Tony Benn as “Powerful and intensely moving.” She has had flash fiction and poetry published in Leaf Books, Inner City Magazine, Proletarian Poetry, Atom Bomb Bubble Gum and the Loose Muse Anthologies. Anne is a member of Malika’s Poetry Kitchen – a writers’ collective, has a Level 3 Award in Education and Training and a Certificate in Writers in the Community from The University of Sussex. She is a member of NAWE and Unite Community, a branch of Unite the Union.

Samples

Slant encounter I ran into him today, at the newsagents. He saw me first. I think. Now in my memory it’s like a movie in fast forward. Our interactions are often like that. So fleeting, so swift. We kiss, on each cheek, embrace. He looks so pale, his eyes show the strain of too little sleep. "You look... tired." He replies, “Yesterday… I nearly fell… what’s your word... fainted.” I’m touching his face, he doesn’t draw back. I just want to hold him. (Hold him 'til the world stops spinning.) He looks, if I’m honest, like he hasn’t washed or slept for a week but, still I want him. Worse, I want to look after him. Can’t help reflecting that even after all this time there is still such an easy intimacy. It is so much more natural for us to touch than not. He does seem to mind that I’m holding his hand in mine or he is holding mine in his, it’s hard to tell. We kiss again, on the lips. As disheveled and in distress as he seems he says to me, “How are you?” And when I reply, “Ok,” in the manner that say’s, merely I’m surviving, he leans toward me, so close our faces are almost touching, says, “Are you really ok?" With a look so intense, concern carved on his pockmarked face, and in his eyes, in his eyes, in his eyes… Rough Justice The bell had gone but the girl still heard its echo. Everyone else had left. She sat shoulders hunched, head down, cradling the blue pencil, pressing it hard into the page. The point broke. Pursing her lips she broke it in half. The teacher, looked up, marched over and said: Look at the mess you’ve made sometimes I wonder if your mother dropped you on your head when you were a baby. Tears welled up in the girls eyes, though no words swam in them. She took the red pencil, twisted it then stabbed the teacher in the leg, the scream could be heard all the way to the village. After Laign He said: I can’t come. She said: You don’t have to. He paused, he’d anticipated an argument, insistence he would then have dug his heals in, rolled out a series of excuses. He started to say: of course if it’s going to be awkward. It’s ok, she replied casually. He turned away, half halfheartedly began to scrub at a pan that had lain on the draining board for a couple of days. She briskly prepared to leave. He turned around to say something, his mouth half open but she had left the room. He could hear her in the bathroom cleaning her teeth. A burning silent rage seized his gut, rose to his ears. Inspired by RD Laign’s Knots, described as a series of dialogue-scenarios, which can be read as poems or plays, describing the "knots" and impasses in various kinds of human relationships.

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.