Poetry

I've been waiting for my MA results, and to ward off the inevitable inertia, have been writing poems.

And reading them.

In public.

Seeing as this is of a more 'professional' endeavour, I've blogged about them on my proper website, rather than here, which is fast becoming a ramshackle array of words.

Here I talk about Poetry Action in Swansea Market

& here I talk about the Made in Roath festival.

I've started going to the excellent Howl open-mic in Swansea, where everyone is lovely. Apart from the heckler on my first visit. He was a bit mean.

I'm also writing for Wales Arts Review - read my Manics piece here and my review of the Rhys Davies Short Story conference here

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Post-Graduate Post #1

So, then, University, eh? Cardiff is a wonderful place to do anything, especially to learn. I've had to re-learn how to cross busy roads, and how long it takes to walk somewhere as opposed to how long I think it takes to walk somewhere, for example. And lots about writing and creativity, too.

My fellow students are all very lovely, although they make me feel a bit old: the majority of them are around the 22-25 mark, and I was born in '77 as my digital identity will forever remind me. One of my classmates blogs here: http://owainglynevans.wordpress.com/ on the whole, some very tight and concise and enjoyable short stories.

My Course Director / main Tutor here is the awesome Richard Gwyn who also blogs under the alter-ego Ricardo Blanco. After embarrassing myself with a tale of Dionysian excess in the first workshop, I shall endeavor to Google all of my tutors and read their whole oeuvre in advance, rather than accidentally trip onto their territory with a clumsy stumble... luckily next week's guest tutor is a poet, and I don't do serious poetry, nor do I do poetry seriously, so shouldn't have any problems there. Given who s/he is, it certainly won't/ will help that I've watched The Wire, but couldn't get into Treme.

One important part of our course is the regular open-mic style events that we take part in. Our guest tutor, a writer of some repute, will do a reading of some description, then myself and the rest of the class read some of our work. At our first session, I read my piece 'Points of Articulation' that was in Evergreen Review, and a new story called 'Discussion', which I'm just about to post here. In fact, you may just have read it. It's kinda weird reading your work out like that, but I'm actually really excited about next weeks session. And only maybe a little bit 'cos it's held in a pub bedecked with Manic Street Preachers memorabilia.

Poem: Consoling Myself After Your Affair

Consoling Myself After Your Affair

After James Tate.

My television is mocking me:

staring me into a strange proposition - the beguiling seducer -

compelling me to stare back and be sucked into its pixels.

No, [presses button] I have remote infrared power

sending out infrared beams to distant civilisations.

(It has no idea it is doing this,

it thinks that it is just sending out ‘On’ ‘Off’ ‘117’

but it is actually calling out to occupants of interplanetary craft

‘Come to Earth, invade, it’ll be fine

if you do it on a Saturday, around X-Factor time’).

I don’t need a custom kitchen or MTV or CSI or

to text flirt with real girls in my local area.

I miss you sitting next to me so badly

like ‘And Smith must score’ but even more painful,

and with that I taste the sweet fresh air,

running away from the home that you left.

Poem: Final Destination (not a film)

Final destination
Swansea Railway Station
Welcome to Swansea Croeso i Abertawe
A commuter WH Smiths, un petite boulangerie,
A classy glass enclosed ticket office with plenty of desks
Step Outside:
The Grand Hotel with its vibrant ground floor bar
The Park Lane Club
Bendy Metro buses with TV screen updates
Special, Super, Diamonds, International
And down at your feet, a line confronting the bard
Ambition is Critical - well, here’s my critique:

Pigeons at home and uncovered platforms
A faux-langerie and an overpriced Smugs
A ticket office that is always closed
Don’t step outside:
The Grand a mass of façade weathered and grey and aged
Like a gossip of pensioners wearing fluorescent socks in the post office on pension day
The Park Lane Club salacious not salubrious
A happy ending massage amid Mos Eisley surroundings
The METROFTR – the bus of a vowel-less future
Unlike the TARDIS inside it is smaller than a regular bus
Time-tabled secrets never to be told
And the news and the weather on the TV screens is three months old.

The bus stop a shelter for the street drinkers
The junkies and the alkies
And the criminally inclined
The bloodied of hand and the addled of mind
Special Vat, Super T, Diamond White, Carlsberg Export
Ambition is Critical? Here’s my irony’s retort:
Ambition is Critical, it’s on life support
Pull the plug and write it off, it’s just not worth the effort
The Bus Stop crew, Dylan Thomas and me
We’ll just sit here and get pissed
Come here friendly bombs, Betjeman picked the wrong town
Please flatten the bits that the Luftwaffe missed.

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AMBITION IS CRITICAL – Dylan Thomas noted Swansea as the ‘Graveyard of Ambition’ and this engraving is Swansea Council’s response. Anagrammatically, some ‘CLAIM IT’S A BIT IRONIC’
SMUGS – In satirical magazine Private Eye, WH Smiths is referred to as WH Smugs
METRO FTR – The so-called BendyBus service. All have TV screens on board, and at some special bus stops too. They display the time, and the news from 19th December 2009.
LUFTWAFFE – The Germans bombed half of Swansea town centre during the war. The bit they bombed is now the nice bit, shopping centre, nice buildings etc.

Poem: The Upset Mariner...

The Upset Mariner Who Took Post-Relationship Advice From Rogers and / or Hammerstein (whichever of them wrote the lyrics)

In the old South Pacific,

They said a shampoo would fix it,

But that’s just some rime in a song;

‘Cos even prolonged amnesia,

Sustained in Micronesia,

Couldn’t cleanse me of all you’ve done wrong.

You said ‘I love you’,

On a beach in Tuvalu,

And you said that you’d never leave me;

But you ruined the party,

When, in Kiribati,

You confessed to sleeping with a girl from Fiji.

When I told you it was over,

In Western Samoa,

You got on the first plane out of there;

And now I’ve tried every shampoo,

From Bali to Nauru,

But I can’t get you out of my hair