Evocative and classy. The ending is excellent.
Comment is about Burnt (blog)
Original item by Alexandra K. Parapadakis
Greatly enjoyed; fabulous diction expertly used to extract every nuance.
Comment is about AT THE CAFE ROYAL (blog)
Original item by ray pool
Lynn Hamilton
Mon 29th Feb 2016 20:04
Thanks Candice, for reading and commenting. Photography is another hobby (and I say hobbies because, unfortunately neither are going to earn me a crust) so I consider you very lucky to spend your working day doing what you do. X
Comment is about Roller Shutters (blog)
<Deleted User> (6895)
Mon 29th Feb 2016 20:03
Wesly Kiplimo Ng'etich
Mon 29th Feb 2016 19:35
I love your work, Cynthia. You are incredibly talented. The imagery in some of these poems is breathtaking. I am especially loving 'Lines on Pablo Picasso’s ‘Aperitif’' and 'Girl in the Lake'.
Comment is about Cynthia Buell Thomas (poet profile)
Original item by Cynthia Buell Thomas
Wow, thank you Cynthia. Your feedback and appreciation means so much to me.
Comment is about Edge (blog)
Original item by Scarlet
I love how original this is whilst really resonating at the same time. Beautifully written.
Comment is about In Limbo (blog)
Original item by Juhi Gupte
Captivating thoughts here Jeremy. I like the use of faggots with smoke , a thought pattern as if under threat.
It almost feels that any mention of racial origins is immediately risky. What changes?
Can I just say I think peddle should read pedal, with respect.
Ray
Comment is about Safe Space (blog)
Original item by jeremy young
So gratifying this one Tom. Simple and heart warming and well - turned, a soufflé of words for what is obviously a deep experience.
Comment is about Little Boy Blue (blog)
Original item by Tom Doolan
I love this, Ray, and very much admire the music and craft of it, the plinths and synths, the foppishness, sweet curse, and stairway plush. Lovely conclusion. Nothing wrong with Dancing Queen and Dancing in the Street, mind you!
Comment is about AT THE CAFE ROYAL (blog)
Original item by ray pool
Mon 29th Feb 2016 08:06
bloody BRILLIANT! Thank you so MUCH!
Jemima.
Comment is about AT THE CAFE ROYAL (blog)
Original item by ray pool
Mon 29th Feb 2016 08:01
hear! hear! (check spelling-their not there) Thank you.Jemima.
Comment is about The Gravy Train (blog)
Original item by Wendy Higson
Wow. This has a smooth rhythm and tells the story with such few words, beautifully placed to please my eyes and ears.
Comment is about Roller Shutters (blog)
"This forum is for sharing poetry, not distributing dodgy diatribes intended to hit imaginary targets."
I invited you, within the poem, to state that it is not a poem: because you disagree with the dialectic, and don't wish to consider the issues - and you have.
I fail to see the imaginary.
Comment is about What You Won't Read in the Guardian (blog)
Original item by jeremy young
A popular misconception on WOL is that much of the work is autobiographical. I'm not going to assume so.
Verse two is of course the strongest. However, the choice of "one's legs" instead of "my legs" I feel is out of place.
In verse three I would exchange matches (too weak) for torches.
Alexandra, you have really ramped up the ante with this piece.
Comment is about Burnt (blog)
Original item by Alexandra K. Parapadakis
Hi Cynthia, I'm not sure why you suggest the final stanza lacks discipline, it is constructed and expressed with the same care and attention as the rest of the poem.
Yes, I agree 'slags' is a strong term, and the women involved were frequently labeled as such throughout this affair, and also in the recent court cases, and indeed still are in some quarters - hence why I use the word.
http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm201213/cmselect/cmhaff/uc182-vii/uc18201.htm
Comment is about What You Won't Read in the Guardian (blog)
Original item by jeremy young
As ever, MC, I respect your viewpoint. The real strength of our society is that we will decide this matter in the ballot box.
Comment is about WHAT ARE THE ODDS? (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
So many veterans experience real issues of reassimilation into a society which has no idea of what they have returned from.
Comment is about AN UNKNOWN SOLDIER GOES HOME (blog)
Original item by M.C. Newberry
Jeremy, so much of this is really good, especially at the beginning. IMO, the first four stanzas are super, a complete work. The next stanza is good in itself, another poem. And then, it just seems to derail into a third 'work' that takes off like an express train without a driver.
I'm not quite sure what you mean by 'sorry slags', which may not be derogatory at all by intent. Words are so powerful, and open to singular or regional interpretation.
You are a classical thinker. And I greatly admire that. Just not sure what happened to your instinctive discipline.
Comment is about What You Won't Read in the Guardian (blog)
Original item by jeremy young
This is not easy reading once through; but given the courtesy of a reread, or even two, the word associations become very intriguing indeed. I, also, enjoy this.
Comment is about Sleet (blog)
Original item by David Blake
Adam - thanks for reading and commenting.
Graham - with ancestors who served (some who died),
in the armed forces, I can believe this is a situation that is experienced in far too many cases and is an inescapable
burden that lingers on after the initial call to arms.
Comment is about AN UNKNOWN SOLDIER GOES HOME (blog)
Original item by M.C. Newberry
JC - I always appreciate the restraint and even-handed
nature of your responses - especially on an emotive vital topic like the EU Referendum - IN or OUT.
I caught (on TV) the recent lecture in favour of "OUT"
given by former Tory minister and Grandee Lord Lawson
- who now lives in France! It was quietly and cogently
delivered - and, to me, most convincing in its considerations of past and present...and why we should
say goodbye.
There is no real reason why the future of the UK
should be guided by an EU which thinks itself the centre
of the world (very far from it) and limits our national self-determination and wider trading potential within its
own framework. It has no defence position unlike NATO
even while it makes no bones about its own army and
a police force that will not accommodate complaints.
Who would invest in a supra-national business that allowed no access of inspection to its accounts and
ran a security set-up that did not tolerate any
come back about its behaviour?
OK - off my soap box.
Cheers.
Comment is about WHAT ARE THE ODDS? (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
HI Jim. This looks so good on paper as well as live, and just has so much penetrating power that America is encapsulated in its almost Hollywood presentation. You can feel both resentment and incredulity pouring off the page, plus of course that big serving of semi - rant. John Betjeman it is not!
Wonderful stuff.
Comment is about A common language (blog)
Original item by Tramping Artisan
Thank you everyone for your wonderful comments!!
Comment is about The stranger on her neck (blog)
Original item by Alexandra K. Parapadakis
Poem? I don't think so.
This forum is for sharing poetry, not distributing dodgy diatribes intended to hit imaginary targets.
No reconstruction here, sadly.
Some innovative use of colons though.
Comment is about What You Won't Read in the Guardian (blog)
Original item by jeremy young
Where is The Heart of Stockport?
Now on at the Art Gallery till March 22nd - - -
My heart
was left
getting on
public transport
route 192
it sank
when I
saw them
both kissing.
My heart
completely broken
in two
then suffered
another blow
the bloody
bus fare
had gone
up too!
Comment is about Stockport WoL (group profile)
Original item by Stockport WoL
When a man is made into a warrior he can never truly return to just being a man. He is always waiting for the next battle.
Comment is about AN UNKNOWN SOLDIER GOES HOME (blog)
Original item by M.C. Newberry
Jess Green's poetry certainly strikes a chord with me, Steve, as the husband of a primary school head who has packed it in early, in despair at the destabilising edicts from the likes of Gove and Morgan. If you didn't know better, you would say that they are out to wreck the state school system. No, delete the first part of that sentence. I'd also like to say thanks very much to the Bang team for being so warm and welcoming on the night.
Comment is about Bang Said The Gun still firing on all cylinders in new theatre home (article)
Original item by Greg Freeman
A great article, Greg. And thanks for the link to Jess Green's poems – I hadn't heard her poem to Nicky Morgan. Wonderful stuff!
Comment is about Bang Said The Gun still firing on all cylinders in new theatre home (article)
Original item by Greg Freeman
A defensible interpretation of our past, MC, but not in my view a viable blueprint for our future.
Comment is about WHAT ARE THE ODDS? (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
Thanks for this good poem :)
Comment is about AN UNKNOWN SOLDIER GOES HOME (blog)
Original item by M.C. Newberry
Information and misinformation...or black ops. in action.
JC - I've followed the creation of the current EU closely -
with increasing resentment at its transformation from
the trading enterprise we originally thought we were
joining via the cunningly crafted change to political
entity. Government of a single nation demands the
most rigorous attention from its electorate and the idea
that this sea-faring powerhouse with a matchless
history of setting out and achieving wealth and influence
through its buccaneers, explorers, merchant venturers, evangelists and armed forces that remains unequalled -
should hand its sovereignty and trading decisions to
those stay-at-homes, failed dictatorships and the rest
who now strut the EU stage with our billions to fund
their inadequacies, is. frankly, grossly insulting in its
betrayal of everything that UK Ltd. achieved against
all the odds in the past.
Scaremongering would like us to believe we couldn't
succeed again - so yah-boo-sucks to those nay-
sayers in their tax-relief banks and business offices and
the troops of yes-men at their financial beck and call.
As for the SNP and their pro-EU position...let us
remember their historical affinity with "abroad" from
centuries ago - AND their attempts to forge alliances
with Nazi Germany during WW2 (Public Record at Kew)
- and think on that when they trot out their
self-serving spiel now. The Nazis, it has to be said,
didn't exactly take their wartime overtures (made
to their man across the sea in Dublin!) - too seriously!
Sovereignty rules - and let the devil take the rest!!
Comment is about WHAT ARE THE ODDS? (blog)
Original item by John Coopey
Indeed - thank you for confirming that the poem hits the intended target.
Comment is about What You Won't Read in the Guardian (blog)
Original item by jeremy young
JC - my response...
Dog-gone!
:-)
Comment is about DOG DANCING (blog)
Original item by M.C. Newberry
<Deleted User> (5508)
Sat 27th Feb 2016 18:01
I loved this show when I first saw it at the Latitude Festival last summer and even more so at the Edinburgh Fringe. It is deeply moving and resonant if you were liked into the failed hope of the Blair years and the state we are in now. The writing is urgent, poetical and knowing. Go see if you can.
Comment is about Luke Wright in London, 2016 (article)
Original item by Greg Freeman
Interesting take there Trevor. Come the Revolution ALL bared marble and other stone statues will be painted in appropriate and original hues.
Comment is about Ode To Lely’s Venus (blog)
Original item by Trevor Alexander
This poem led me to check today's Guardian website. There at the top of the page, alongside pictures of the guilty: "Ringleader of Rotherham sexual abuse gang jailed for 35 years". I scrolled down the page: no mention of Savile (note the spelling, btw). So much for a cover-up.
The sad and ugly truth is that men of *all* backgrounds commit abuse. Savile mixed with the great and the good; the men from Rotherham did not. I doubt that fact (or their ethnicity) mattered a jot to their victims.
Did the girls in Rotherham have to wait far too long for justice? Yes. But now it's finally arrived it has been neither denied nor overshadowed, and I feel it's unhelpful to misrepresent that. Savile's victims suffered appallingly. These girls suffered appallingly. We're quite capable of understanding that they were poorly served by a system which let *all* of them down. Whatever the intention of this poem, I respectfully suggest the girls deserve better than being described as 'sorry slags', and the pain of Savile's victims is not something which should be written off as usefully proving 'white men do it too'. Abuse is not an issue to play politics with.
Comment is about What You Won't Read in the Guardian (blog)
Original item by jeremy young
I enjoyed this very much, David. Concise, but contains so much.
Comment is about Sleet (blog)
Original item by David Blake
<Deleted User> (6895)
Sat 27th Feb 2016 10:46
take care Steve-hope to see you soon.
our very best regards to you sir.
Patricia and Stef.
Comment is about The Rain (blog)
Original item by Steve Higgins
Thanks for looking in once again guys.Can't seem to knock out those verses like I used to! All the best, Steve
Comment is about The Rain (blog)
Original item by Steve Higgins
This piece has a similar feel...;#)
Comment is about I write for HIM (blog)
Original item by Juhi Gupte
Delaney Coyne
Fri 26th Feb 2016 22:46
I really liked this! You have so much cool imagery and it really feels like you're there too -- beautiful piece.
Comment is about Wind from my Window (blog)
Original item by Cynthia Buell Thomas
Thanks Harry. I had this idea of cowboys and fell back on that idea in those lines. I 'm pleased you think it worked, as it takes nerve to shatter an image.
Ray.
Comment is about CRUISE LINER (blog)
Original item by ray pool
Oh no! Really? I know I can be obscure but I thought this one was more accessible...hey ho! The whole or just parts Tommy?
Comment is about Tommy Carroll (poet profile)
Original item by Tommy Carroll
raypool
Mon 29th Feb 2016 20:11
Much appreciated comments folks; makes it all worthwhile. Greg, all us function musicians loathed the get in - I got a parking ticket after five minutes. Mind you there were no red lines then!
Ray
Comment is about AT THE CAFE ROYAL (blog)
Original item by ray pool