The Songs Don’t Sing Themselves

It was a great pleasure to be at David’s bookshop in Letchworth yesterday evening for the launch of The Songs don’t Sing Themselves, the latest anthology from Poetry ID, the North Herts Stanza of the Poetry Society. There was a great deal of fine poetry to be heard, in a wide range of styles, and it was lovely to chat to the other poets over a glass of wine.

The anthology is a very reasonable £6 (plus £2 P+P) and can be ordered from David Smith (djsapt@gmail.com).

I thought I’d share one of my poems from the collection. This one was first published in Runcible Spoon:

Crowdburst

Tanked-up and black with grudges
clouds are milling, hooligans outside a pub.
First the fighting talk, now fists are flying;
soft at first, as if they’re only joking
but soon enough the body blows
are pummelling the ground – and me.
Punch-drunk and staggering
I stumble on, lead-limbed
till they get bored and slouch away
to find some other fool to pick on.
The weary sun returns
and with its sympathetic shine
points out the silver linings
dumped along the road. 

_{Rain pic (c) Santosh Kumar. Licensed under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/2.0}

The Key

I’ve just come back from my summer school at Lancaster University for the online MA I’m doing in creative writing. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, but I loved it. The week was absolutely packed with workshops, feedback on our work, interesting and useful talks and discussions about writing. I ended the week exhausted, but also fired up with enthusiasm. I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

Anyway, I thought I’d share a little piece I wrote while I was there. This was written at a workshop on objects in fiction.

The Key

“Do you think these earrings work with this dress?” Rachel holds them to her ears – fat globes of grey pearl, dangling from their gold loops.

“Hmmm … a bit too formal, maybe? It’s just a meal – we’re not going to a masqued ball.

“Maybe you’re right. I’ll try something else.” She moves to put the earrings away. Then “Shit!”

There is a microscopic noise of something hitting the floor, then another, then the faint sound of rolling. 

“Bloody hell, it’s gone under the dresser.” She kneels down and starts to feel for the lost earring.

“Let me try – I’ve got longer arms.” I lie on the floor and sink my arm into the narrow space as far as it will go, sweeping left and right under the dresser. “It’s no good, I can’t reach it.”

“Oh dear. Those earrings cost me more than I like to think about.”

“Then let’s move the dresser. It must be under there somewhere.”

“Be careful. It must be three hundred years old, that thing.” Indeed, like everything else in this holiday cottage, it’s made of oak, stained dark with age. I take one edge and she takes another. Inch by inch we move the heavy dresser away from the wall.

“There it is. Thank God!” She retrieves the earring and puts it in her jewellery box. But there is something else. I lean over and pick up an iron key. It looks impossibly ancient – five inches long and caked with rust. A relic from the days when doors were made of thick planks and locks were crafted by hand to fit them.

“How long has that been there,” she says. “And how did it get there?” It was right at the back, by the wall. There’s no way that key could have bounced or rolled there. It wasn’t dropped, it wasn’t lost. It was put there. It was hidden.