Long Poems and Series
SYNOPSIS
Long Poems and Series is a collection of closely linked or extended poems written around a range of very specific themes.
BACKGROUND
The extended structure of the poetry in the book allows subject areas to be explored in more depth than a single, short poem might allow.
The book covers some serious themes. I think there is a responsibility when writing on such subjects to ensure that it is undertaken for valid reasons. That is, it is a serious attempt to illuminate some aspect of an issue or to make an important point. Hopefully, that is the case here. For me, it is not acceptable to use such issues simply for ‘shock value.’
Long Poems and Series is, perhaps, the most introspective book of the series.
SAMPLE VIDEOS
SAMPLE POEMS
Owl
On blunt and arcane eye
an evening dies.
Across green copse, skylines
of dancing feather spies
– no not I
to take a dormouse’s dour life –
over picket tower, branch tenement,
blows a fitful breeze
whose substance,
bled dry by bush and tree,
still patrols intent.
A hunt begins.
No more the open grove,
no more
the resting wing.
In motion, an unequal duel
poured as fury from shadow’s black coils,
moon cast in a chasm of pupil.
Hare
The feather-snap stride
of spring mayhem
cluttered by passing fancy
and fable of moon,
tie love’s gold charm around youth’s jet feet,
speak dream and myth as consequence of blood.
In pantomime
dance deer and harvest,
tournament of snare and hound.
As an ocean lunar tide
calls canvas to master, curse softly into night
never below ground
never below ground.
Bloomsbury
Today I will walk down Marchmont Street
not from any particular want or need
but because it is there, and at dawn the roads
are mine alone, and sometimes I cannot sleep.
Silence before the storm. While at King’s Cross
the bustling crowds will have long since slipped away
leaving only tramps at rest in shop doorframes.
In my wandering, perhaps I will stray
into Russell Square. Dream of Woolf and Bell
lost in some bookish fantasy or such,
as the underground starts to throb and pulse
and work with its foul breath taps its watch.
Totalitarian Commission
The poem will be constructed
by deliberate plan. Narrative provided
by ordinary, not literary, hand.
Individual emotion abolished
for that of the crowd. Exhortations
to be polished, then left to stand.
The framework will be ruthlessly
applied. Scanned for veracity
by many eyes. Verse will celebrate
the common man or woman.
Rhymes, a reminder of when
promises were broken – times
before the poem was spoken.
All slogans combined within
the limits of predetermined lines.
Any deviance from rhythm or style
will not be tolerated. Words
used from a list already edited.
.