Hi Everyone….Our next meeting is on Monday 11th January, 2016.
Please arrive any time after 10 a.m. and we'll start proceedings around 10.30 am.
At the Pimento tearooms in Lincoln…….
Happy New Year and Best wishes for 2016!
Wednesday, December 30, 2015
Friday, December 4, 2015
Next and Last…..
Our Next and Last meeting of 2015 will be held on Monday 14th December.
At the Pimento Tearooms starting at 10.30 a.m.
Please bring some poetry to read……..
At the Pimento Tearooms starting at 10.30 a.m.
Please bring some poetry to read……..
Friday, September 18, 2015
Meet the Poets: John Malvert.
Pimento Poets: Meet John Malvert.
Bumble bee
Engineers inform me
that technically,
the bumble-bee due to its weight,
shape and size,
should not be able to fly,
as it defies
all the known principles
of aero-dynamics.
Yet to every engineers’ surprise
it does!
How pleasant to know that even now,
not everything,
Conforms to the so called
'norm' of things,
and that a bumble bee with wings,
has now become an enigma,
and carries the stigma
of being called
'odd.
Copyright by: J. Malvert
Bumble bee
Engineers inform me
that technically,
the bumble-bee due to its weight,
shape and size,
should not be able to fly,
as it defies
all the known principles
of aero-dynamics.
Yet to every engineers’ surprise
it does!
How pleasant to know that even now,
not everything,
Conforms to the so called
'norm' of things,
and that a bumble bee with wings,
has now become an enigma,
and carries the stigma
of being called
'odd.
Copyright by: J. Malvert
'As I Am' by Paul Mein.
As I am
He is a man,
as I am,
but he plots in palaces,
holy places, holes in the earth.
His words reach
to soldiers, apostates,
blind followers;
words wrapped around
misguided, blinkered philosophies;
bleak words, excluding words,
inflaming words;
words inciting to hatred, killing
with extreme prejudice the women who dare
to bare their heads,
teachers and writers
who set minds free,
the wideeyed orphan in
the bombedout basement,
the doctor trapped by bodies
in bolddrenched corridors,
men like me whose ‘crime’ is to
be overheard, seen,
in the wrong place, wrong time.
So I run, walk, carry, crawl
with others like me,
to break, an exhausted wave,
on the razor wire
of far borders,
tear gas and batons
our welcome to uncertain freedom;
ripped from our birth-country
because a man, as I am,
decides which side
of colour, belief, tribe
is right or wrong;
a man, as I am,
who plots in palaces...
© Paul Mein 26/8/15
He is a man,
as I am,
but he plots in palaces,
holy places, holes in the earth.
His words reach
to soldiers, apostates,
blind followers;
words wrapped around
misguided, blinkered philosophies;
bleak words, excluding words,
inflaming words;
words inciting to hatred, killing
with extreme prejudice the women who dare
to bare their heads,
teachers and writers
who set minds free,
the wideeyed orphan in
the bombedout basement,
the doctor trapped by bodies
in bolddrenched corridors,
men like me whose ‘crime’ is to
be overheard, seen,
in the wrong place, wrong time.
So I run, walk, carry, crawl
with others like me,
to break, an exhausted wave,
on the razor wire
of far borders,
tear gas and batons
our welcome to uncertain freedom;
ripped from our birth-country
because a man, as I am,
decides which side
of colour, belief, tribe
is right or wrong;
a man, as I am,
who plots in palaces...
© Paul Mein 26/8/15
Thursday, September 17, 2015
Next two meetings of Pimento Poets
Next two Meetings of Pimento Poets will be on :
Monday 12th October, 2015.
Monday 9th November, 2015.
Please add to your diaries if you haven't already done so.
Monday 12th October, 2015.
Monday 9th November, 2015.
Please add to your diaries if you haven't already done so.
Meet the Poets: Gerry Miller.
Gerry Miller
THE KISS
(or every Parent's Nightmare)
When he was born and came home with his mother
we were afraid on our own to look after our treasure.
When he lay still in his cot we looked at each other
and gave him a kiss to check he was breathing.
He was just a small child that first day at school.
Proudly we watched as he skipped with his friends up the lane.
He never looked back nor saw the tears in our eyes
as we blew him a kiss from hearts full of pain.
Later he walked to the Cubs with his friend
staying together and looking both ways at the kerb
before crossing the road, then straight home at the end.
Both going and coming too old for a kiss.
In his teens he loved going out in his bike
up and away when he saw the sun rise.
He was always home before darkness to tell us
where he had been. The kiss was in all our eyes.
When he started to drive he knew how we worried
and told us exactly where he would be.
He assured us that driving he never hurried
and gave his mother a kiss before going to bed.
Until that night. We both looked at each other
when the clock struck eleven and our hearts turned cold.
We made excuses and turned the t-v down
to hear the car come home. The kiss was on hold.
Minutes turned into hours and our feelings changed.
Telling each other there was nothing amiss
but increasingly angry because it was strange -
bewildered and aching to give him his kiss.
Saying nothing we knew we would have to ask
how he could treat us like this after all we had done,
and ask if the kisses meant nothing to him
when he knew how we worried until he came home.
The phone never rang. Lights went out all around.
Anger plotted how to deal with the boy. Night wore
on and off until the doorbell rang as daylight dawned
to silhouette a policeman standing at the door.
We were shamed of our anger as we were told
that our precious son did all he could to miss
the speeding driver. For hours he lay dead in a ditch.
And we were not there to give him his kiss.
Copyright by Gerry Miller.
www.gerrymillerpoetry.com
THE KISS
(or every Parent's Nightmare)
When he was born and came home with his mother
we were afraid on our own to look after our treasure.
When he lay still in his cot we looked at each other
and gave him a kiss to check he was breathing.
He was just a small child that first day at school.
Proudly we watched as he skipped with his friends up the lane.
He never looked back nor saw the tears in our eyes
as we blew him a kiss from hearts full of pain.
Later he walked to the Cubs with his friend
staying together and looking both ways at the kerb
before crossing the road, then straight home at the end.
Both going and coming too old for a kiss.
In his teens he loved going out in his bike
up and away when he saw the sun rise.
He was always home before darkness to tell us
where he had been. The kiss was in all our eyes.
When he started to drive he knew how we worried
and told us exactly where he would be.
He assured us that driving he never hurried
and gave his mother a kiss before going to bed.
Until that night. We both looked at each other
when the clock struck eleven and our hearts turned cold.
We made excuses and turned the t-v down
to hear the car come home. The kiss was on hold.
Minutes turned into hours and our feelings changed.
Telling each other there was nothing amiss
but increasingly angry because it was strange -
bewildered and aching to give him his kiss.
Saying nothing we knew we would have to ask
how he could treat us like this after all we had done,
and ask if the kisses meant nothing to him
when he knew how we worried until he came home.
The phone never rang. Lights went out all around.
Anger plotted how to deal with the boy. Night wore
on and off until the doorbell rang as daylight dawned
to silhouette a policeman standing at the door.
We were shamed of our anger as we were told
that our precious son did all he could to miss
the speeding driver. For hours he lay dead in a ditch.
And we were not there to give him his kiss.
Copyright by Gerry Miller.
www.gerrymillerpoetry.com
Thursday, September 10, 2015
Writers Live!
Writers Live!
Friday 13th. November
7p.m.
Southwell Library
Paul Mein presents this exciting opportunity for local writers
(of poetry, short stories, novels plays...) to perform their work
in public.
(of poetry, short stories, novels plays...) to perform their work
in public.
Book in advance for a 5 or 10 minute slot or come along and
listen to the wealth of talent we have in this area. Slots are
already being filled so please make sure you get your name
down soon.
listen to the wealth of talent we have in this area. Slots are
already being filled so please make sure you get your name
down soon.
Free event with light refreshment, bar available.
'Please contact Southwell Library on 01636 812148 to book a 5/10 minute slot.'
Thanks.
Thursday, September 3, 2015
New Readings by Pimento Poets on 11th September, 2015.
In connection with the recent exhibition
‘Picture the Poet’
And the Summer School Photography event
held at Lincoln University
Pimento Poets will be reading their poems on: The Magna Carta, Freedom of Speech and Democracy.
On Friday 11th September, 2015
(10.30 – 12noon)
At The Collection and Usher Gallery, Lincoln.
Poets reading will include: Shirley Bell, Vernon Goddard, Susan Flower, Nic Lance, John Malvert, Celia McCulloch, Paul Mein, Gerry Miller, Paul Sutherland, Maureen Sutton, and Susan Wallace.
For free tickets please visit our Eventbrite page http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/pimento-poets-tickets-18324328560 or call The Collection on 01522 782040
Teas and coffees provided
Free Event.
All welcome.
Sunday, August 23, 2015
New poetry by Maureen Sutton.
Sir John Franklin’s Mitten
And Snow Shoes
I want to connect with your spirit,
place my feet upon your snow shoes,
imagine each determined step,
hear the ghostly echo of your footfall,
inhale scented remains of leather boots.
I want to place my hand inside
your left-hand mitten,
touch its black baize cuff
feel the softness of red silk edging,
recover the warmth of your hand.
I want to read your watch and compass,
follow and time your route, count wild stars,
listen to the bull-seal’s roar, return to the
Northwest passage where the Intuits
in skin canoes found the way through.
In this alien landscape howling gales
have sculptured ice and snow, forged
icebergs, opened and closed frozen waste.
I want to build you a cairn on the shoreline,
admire your courage, find your remains and
bring you back to Lincolnshire.
Copyright Maureen Sutton 03 08 2015
Franklin and his 128 officers and crew died during the mission to find the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Artic. The two ships-Erebus & Terror- were last seen on July26th 1845 at Baffin Bay.
And Snow Shoes
I want to connect with your spirit,
place my feet upon your snow shoes,
imagine each determined step,
hear the ghostly echo of your footfall,
inhale scented remains of leather boots.
I want to place my hand inside
your left-hand mitten,
touch its black baize cuff
feel the softness of red silk edging,
recover the warmth of your hand.
I want to read your watch and compass,
follow and time your route, count wild stars,
listen to the bull-seal’s roar, return to the
Northwest passage where the Intuits
in skin canoes found the way through.
In this alien landscape howling gales
have sculptured ice and snow, forged
icebergs, opened and closed frozen waste.
I want to build you a cairn on the shoreline,
admire your courage, find your remains and
bring you back to Lincolnshire.
Copyright Maureen Sutton 03 08 2015
Franklin and his 128 officers and crew died during the mission to find the Northwest Passage in the Canadian Artic. The two ships-Erebus & Terror- were last seen on July26th 1845 at Baffin Bay.
The Beautiful Game by Susan Flower
THE BEAUTIFUL GAME
We scatter the last crumbs of home-made quiche
And iced cake for bird fodder as we shake our picnic remains
Onto Clumber Park’s grass – still verdant green patches
Thrive despite an August drought and a high summer wind
Makes the heat more tolerable as it snakes amongst tree-tops.
Three thousand eight hundred acres, once the country estate
Of the Dukes of Newcastle. Open heath, woodland, rolling farmland,
Swan-dotted lake, a ‘cathedral in miniature’ chapel, playgrounds
For children and adults, the ubiquitous National Trust merchandise
Of Orla Keirly woven red and blue picnic rugs, wine-goblets, flasks.
The air smells summer- green and herby, we rise from our blankets,
A racing-green painted seat, grab Evie’s ball won at Sheffield’s
Lucky Duck race and fan out in a roughly circular layout,
Clout a hand-ball, kick a high one, and flick an overhead pass.
It is fast, furious fun; the wind as light now as our thoughts.
Evie-May runs deftly as fast as her daddy-long legs
Can carry the full weight of her five and a half years,
Dribbling the ball a specialty, her aim and sense of direction
Charming in its youthful inaccuracy. Her father plucks her up,
Swings her legs at the ball time and again; we are all dizzy
With laughter as the ball escapes to the lake-edge
Nested with swans and humans clustering its reeded banks.
Evie in hot pursuit, whooping at full-pelt, a red-headed whirl-wind.
The child retrieves the ball, runs back to the pitch, flings herself
Prostrate into its centre. ‘Man down, man down!’ cries her father.
We make few concessions for her age but often neither does she,
Just envy her extra stamina and realise we are the noisiest family
At Clumber Park today, but one having the most fun in breaking
Rules and making it up as we go; that’s life, the beautiful game.
Copyright Susan Flower 2015
We scatter the last crumbs of home-made quiche
And iced cake for bird fodder as we shake our picnic remains
Onto Clumber Park’s grass – still verdant green patches
Thrive despite an August drought and a high summer wind
Makes the heat more tolerable as it snakes amongst tree-tops.
Three thousand eight hundred acres, once the country estate
Of the Dukes of Newcastle. Open heath, woodland, rolling farmland,
Swan-dotted lake, a ‘cathedral in miniature’ chapel, playgrounds
For children and adults, the ubiquitous National Trust merchandise
Of Orla Keirly woven red and blue picnic rugs, wine-goblets, flasks.
The air smells summer- green and herby, we rise from our blankets,
A racing-green painted seat, grab Evie’s ball won at Sheffield’s
Lucky Duck race and fan out in a roughly circular layout,
Clout a hand-ball, kick a high one, and flick an overhead pass.
It is fast, furious fun; the wind as light now as our thoughts.
Evie-May runs deftly as fast as her daddy-long legs
Can carry the full weight of her five and a half years,
Dribbling the ball a specialty, her aim and sense of direction
Charming in its youthful inaccuracy. Her father plucks her up,
Swings her legs at the ball time and again; we are all dizzy
With laughter as the ball escapes to the lake-edge
Nested with swans and humans clustering its reeded banks.
Evie in hot pursuit, whooping at full-pelt, a red-headed whirl-wind.
The child retrieves the ball, runs back to the pitch, flings herself
Prostrate into its centre. ‘Man down, man down!’ cries her father.
We make few concessions for her age but often neither does she,
Just envy her extra stamina and realise we are the noisiest family
At Clumber Park today, but one having the most fun in breaking
Rules and making it up as we go; that’s life, the beautiful game.
Copyright Susan Flower 2015
Tuesday, August 18, 2015
Two pieces of work by Shirley Bell.
My daughter says that when I'm dead she'll show her kids this picture
and they'll know me.
I'm encased in ivory faille, high necked, long sleeved, severe.
It's a kind of armour to protect me from the fear of falling, failing,
or of you failing to appear. I thought it would be less than this.
Dried flowers, witnesses pulled in from their everydays to ours,
a registrar, looking at his watch. Unfortunately your mum wants
more. Late born, her twinned afterthought, she has standards
for you, but my dad's dead and it's we who foot this bill.
We're ruthless and we cull the relatives: cheerfully eliminating
aunties, cousins, children under three, which went down
well. I hire the dress; that's cheap. I dress my bridesmaids up
in nighties. (Long, quite pretty, sprigged with flowers on navy blue
and I don't think that they knew). Practical, you always are, you
wear an ordinary suit. For everyday. The gale has flung my veil
across my face, daffodils are lurching, the dress and I are hurtling
to the porch. The choir is singing just for us. Later I learn your mum
has spent the journey down spotting crematoria and graveyards.
Over chicken, your dad gives me the gift of how much
he had disliked me when we met, but now I am OK. I'm not that
grateful. In this photograph I'm back in normal clothes again.
I'm looking at you with a minxy grin. We’re off to Paris. Hah! Later
I photoshop my auntie out and my son says that it is rather Stalinist.
Eavesdropping at the Almeida for Tina
I've started raiding people's lives for inspiration;
it's a shameless way of building up a poem.
You like the way I write my overheards but wish
they could be lighter. The hospital would be dark,
of course, but even in the library the talk was of
a funeral after which 'she can move on', which
I doubt. Now I'm eavesdropping at the Almeida,
hoping for some light-hearted piece of chatter,
polished to an anecdote. It's my daughter's birthday.
We've come to see James's Turn of the Screw
and have already upset someone at the bar by
queue jumping by mistake. ‘Perhaps next time
you'll serve your customers in order’. We run away
with wine in plastic cups and prop them on the balcony.
It takes an age for us to see the steward in the stalls
is telling us to move them in case they fall and we feel
a bit embarrassed. While we wait for the first act
Im talks about her year in France. I used to go to stay
and she'd come to Lille to see me off. ‘Did I ever tell you
how a guy came up to me after you left? He asked me
to go back to his to make a sex film with him? I said
in French I don't understand because I can't speak French,
and 'Mais....' he said. 'But.... '’ We laugh a lot at this
and I think I'll write this down for Tina as it's still a kind of
exploitation, no? The play's had bad reviews, all the
nuances are gone. But it doesn't matter; obediently I jump
on cue at every scare. Though I do suspect
the audience should not be laughing quite as much as this.
Copyright Shirley Bell
and they'll know me.
I'm encased in ivory faille, high necked, long sleeved, severe.
It's a kind of armour to protect me from the fear of falling, failing,
or of you failing to appear. I thought it would be less than this.
Dried flowers, witnesses pulled in from their everydays to ours,
a registrar, looking at his watch. Unfortunately your mum wants
more. Late born, her twinned afterthought, she has standards
for you, but my dad's dead and it's we who foot this bill.
We're ruthless and we cull the relatives: cheerfully eliminating
aunties, cousins, children under three, which went down
well. I hire the dress; that's cheap. I dress my bridesmaids up
in nighties. (Long, quite pretty, sprigged with flowers on navy blue
and I don't think that they knew). Practical, you always are, you
wear an ordinary suit. For everyday. The gale has flung my veil
across my face, daffodils are lurching, the dress and I are hurtling
to the porch. The choir is singing just for us. Later I learn your mum
has spent the journey down spotting crematoria and graveyards.
Over chicken, your dad gives me the gift of how much
he had disliked me when we met, but now I am OK. I'm not that
grateful. In this photograph I'm back in normal clothes again.
I'm looking at you with a minxy grin. We’re off to Paris. Hah! Later
I photoshop my auntie out and my son says that it is rather Stalinist.
Eavesdropping at the Almeida for Tina
I've started raiding people's lives for inspiration;
it's a shameless way of building up a poem.
You like the way I write my overheards but wish
they could be lighter. The hospital would be dark,
of course, but even in the library the talk was of
a funeral after which 'she can move on', which
I doubt. Now I'm eavesdropping at the Almeida,
hoping for some light-hearted piece of chatter,
polished to an anecdote. It's my daughter's birthday.
We've come to see James's Turn of the Screw
and have already upset someone at the bar by
queue jumping by mistake. ‘Perhaps next time
you'll serve your customers in order’. We run away
with wine in plastic cups and prop them on the balcony.
It takes an age for us to see the steward in the stalls
is telling us to move them in case they fall and we feel
a bit embarrassed. While we wait for the first act
Im talks about her year in France. I used to go to stay
and she'd come to Lille to see me off. ‘Did I ever tell you
how a guy came up to me after you left? He asked me
to go back to his to make a sex film with him? I said
in French I don't understand because I can't speak French,
and 'Mais....' he said. 'But.... '’ We laugh a lot at this
and I think I'll write this down for Tina as it's still a kind of
exploitation, no? The play's had bad reviews, all the
nuances are gone. But it doesn't matter; obediently I jump
on cue at every scare. Though I do suspect
the audience should not be laughing quite as much as this.
Copyright Shirley Bell
Skating with Father by Celia McCulloch
Skating with Father
Winter mist against the window glass,
the kitchen smells of oil-stove heat and cedar wax
and we're wearing thick wool socks that scratch
our legs. First we laid the pasty wax, my father and I,
and now his dark, tall figure begins to glide
across the floor. I try to follow but just can't slide
across the sticky goo until I put my feet in his smooth tracks
and then he swirls and loops as skaters do, over and back.
He hums his monotone of Skaters' Waltz. He spells words in wax
for me to guess. He whirls, hands held high, ballerina-style.
I do the same. Then I stand on his size 12 feet and we run across the tiles.
I follow every crazy move till we end up a giggling pile
as my mother comes through the door
stamping snow from her feet. She frowns and we feel poor
excuses for workers, ashamed somehow. I simply asked you to polish the floor,
she says. Must you always make a game of work!
Copyright Celia McCulloch
Winter mist against the window glass,
the kitchen smells of oil-stove heat and cedar wax
and we're wearing thick wool socks that scratch
our legs. First we laid the pasty wax, my father and I,
and now his dark, tall figure begins to glide
across the floor. I try to follow but just can't slide
across the sticky goo until I put my feet in his smooth tracks
and then he swirls and loops as skaters do, over and back.
He hums his monotone of Skaters' Waltz. He spells words in wax
for me to guess. He whirls, hands held high, ballerina-style.
I do the same. Then I stand on his size 12 feet and we run across the tiles.
I follow every crazy move till we end up a giggling pile
as my mother comes through the door
stamping snow from her feet. She frowns and we feel poor
excuses for workers, ashamed somehow. I simply asked you to polish the floor,
she says. Must you always make a game of work!
Copyright Celia McCulloch
In the Memory and Cognition Room by Celia McCulloch
In the Memory and Cognition Room
Sparks of tinsel light up cobnuts and stub-ends
and Aunt Lizzie, big and dozy in her chair,
a knit/purl night-nurse slumped before the fire,
while you play with her ashtray. Press the button—
Zap—it opens, shows its black-ash heart.
Click. It shuts, and Lizzie almost stirs.
Tree lights dazzle behind their angel-hair.
In the next room, a parabola of laughter
in the yellow light where Uncle’s talking cock-
and-bull (and Father tells him so). The yips
of Scottie circle round the table begging scraps.
Your mother giggles, Granny fills her cup.
You know that you could join their paradise,
but see, for you, for them, it’d break the mood.
They’d ask, “Oh, has no one put the child to bed?”
You see it whole: the theys, the yous, the Is.
Like a squirrel you gather to yourself this nut,
and it feels something like forbidden fruit.
Copyright Celia McCulloch
Sparks of tinsel light up cobnuts and stub-ends
and Aunt Lizzie, big and dozy in her chair,
a knit/purl night-nurse slumped before the fire,
while you play with her ashtray. Press the button—
Zap—it opens, shows its black-ash heart.
Click. It shuts, and Lizzie almost stirs.
Tree lights dazzle behind their angel-hair.
In the next room, a parabola of laughter
in the yellow light where Uncle’s talking cock-
and-bull (and Father tells him so). The yips
of Scottie circle round the table begging scraps.
Your mother giggles, Granny fills her cup.
You know that you could join their paradise,
but see, for you, for them, it’d break the mood.
They’d ask, “Oh, has no one put the child to bed?”
You see it whole: the theys, the yous, the Is.
Like a squirrel you gather to yourself this nut,
and it feels something like forbidden fruit.
Copyright Celia McCulloch
Kindergarten of the Heart Celia McCulloch
Kindergarten of the Heart
What do you call this mint-green winter?
The one fine snow lies thin as lint on the landscape
and roses still bud and bloom—a tender, tentative
wintergreen season, holding autumn and spring
in equal measure, a dying and a generation.
Our hair echoes by eye the frosted grasses.
Our hearts that long ago found causes not to love
now struggle as an infant strains to speak.
Shy, we do not touch, walking our trackless hinterland,
tied with some new, invisible cincture…
Dippers bob in the cold stream-water, totally at home.
Copyright Celia McCulloch
What do you call this mint-green winter?
The one fine snow lies thin as lint on the landscape
and roses still bud and bloom—a tender, tentative
wintergreen season, holding autumn and spring
in equal measure, a dying and a generation.
Our hair echoes by eye the frosted grasses.
Our hearts that long ago found causes not to love
now struggle as an infant strains to speak.
Shy, we do not touch, walking our trackless hinterland,
tied with some new, invisible cincture…
Dippers bob in the cold stream-water, totally at home.
Copyright Celia McCulloch
Monday, August 17, 2015
New poetry: Ron Booth: 2015.
Here I am alone at midnight,
sitting looking up at the moonlight
shining through the clouds.
A glass of whiskey in my hand,
wondering what's become of me
and my dreams, my passions!
What have I done with my life?
sitting looking up at the moonlight
shining through the clouds.
A glass of whiskey in my hand,
wondering what's become of me
and my dreams, my passions!
What have I done with my life?
A nursery ryhme runs through my head...
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.
Life is but a dream...
Life is but a dream...
My dreams are slipping away,
Fading into oblivion.
Dying in the dark recesses of my mind.
My dreams are slipping away.
Fading into oblivion.
Dying in the dark recesses of my mind.
My dreams are slipping away.
I take a long sip of whiskey from my glass, and love the feeling it gives me as it goes straight to my head.
I hear a distant rumble as storm clouds gather. I feel at ease as rain begins to fall
and pitter patters on the conservatory roof, and a streak of lightning flashes in the night sky. It's at times like this I play some moody jazz, you know, something like in those old black and white gangster movies, it's always raining in new york, streets glistening with the reflection of city lights.
I hear a distant rumble as storm clouds gather. I feel at ease as rain begins to fall
and pitter patters on the conservatory roof, and a streak of lightning flashes in the night sky. It's at times like this I play some moody jazz, you know, something like in those old black and white gangster movies, it's always raining in new york, streets glistening with the reflection of city lights.
I hear that ryhme again...
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.
Life is but a dream...
Life is but a dream...
My dreams are slipping away.
Fading into oblivion.
Dying in the dark recesses of my mind.
My dreams are slipping away.
Fading into oblivion.
Dying in the dark recesses of my mind.
My dreams are slipping away.
I'm at peace sitting here as the rain falls harder, comfortable in my chair as smooth tones of a saxaphone, accompanied by the tinkling sounds of a piano, filter through the air.
Dreaming of some lazy hazy days in the sun... I sigh! remembering happy summer days, laughing and playing, telling stories and dirty jokes about adult things.
Playing games in the heat of the sun,
Ohhhh! what fun we had,
Where did the summers go?
Where has time gone?
Have all those dreams gone too?
Doesn't seem right.
Dreaming of some lazy hazy days in the sun... I sigh! remembering happy summer days, laughing and playing, telling stories and dirty jokes about adult things.
Playing games in the heat of the sun,
Ohhhh! what fun we had,
Where did the summers go?
Where has time gone?
Have all those dreams gone too?
Doesn't seem right.
I can't get the ryhme out of my head...
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.
Life is but a dream...
Life is but a dream...
My dreams are slipping away,
Fading into oblivion.
Dying in the dark recesses of my mind.
My dreams are slipping away.
Fading into oblivion.
Dying in the dark recesses of my mind.
My dreams are slipping away.
I remember hot summer nights
walking through the city, everything was alive! with people leaving bars and clubs.
Laughing, having a good time.
Lovers holding hands, making eyes at each other, then kissing on the lips.
I envied them. Why am I hear?
I should go home, but I'm drawn to this night life. I see women in short skirts.
I wonder what it would be like to have a night of passion, in the heat of passion we want those things dreams are made of.
Then I saw you smiling, as you walked towards me; the city lights held your body in the spotlight. Angel of my dreams.
You sang a ryhme...
walking through the city, everything was alive! with people leaving bars and clubs.
Laughing, having a good time.
Lovers holding hands, making eyes at each other, then kissing on the lips.
I envied them. Why am I hear?
I should go home, but I'm drawn to this night life. I see women in short skirts.
I wonder what it would be like to have a night of passion, in the heat of passion we want those things dreams are made of.
Then I saw you smiling, as you walked towards me; the city lights held your body in the spotlight. Angel of my dreams.
You sang a ryhme...
Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily.
Life is but a dream.
Life is but a dream.
My dreams came true when I met you.
Giving me inspiration.
Creativity shone bright inside my head.
What dreams may come
When we dare to dream.
Love is the reason for such dreams.
Giving me inspiration.
Creativity shone bright inside my head.
What dreams may come
When we dare to dream.
Love is the reason for such dreams.
Ron Booth
Copyright ©
Copyright ©
1.7.2015
Monday, August 10, 2015
SHRIEK Vernon Goddard
Shriek.
It’s the middle of August,
Dry year behind.
Think.
Reach ahead for words with legs,
Something to move this along.
Link.
Well, August can be the driest of months.
Parched and arid.
Trace, instead, the sea of seaside,
The ebb and flow,
Ebb and flow:
Lift of dew
Fall of rain.
Silver sliver of pond,
River rock and roll,
Laden leaves, dripping mist.
Waterfall waves
Headlong
Heady
Heading.
Dizzy
Drizzling
Dropping
DownPour
Like inked words
To mark the paper.
Outside my window
A wild sky
Shrieks.
Clears the dust
From a dry heart.
Vernon Goddard.
1st Draft 9th August, 2015
Thursday, August 6, 2015
A recent poem by Paul Mein………Hartland Quay ±1.
Hartland Quay #1
Heave of swell-sea bellows
forge without fire, restless shaper
ceaseless hammer
on the anvil of the coast.
The bay is full -
a cold cauldron
of relentless rollers
rushing house-high
to spend on the boulder beach,
grope dark openings
of caves at the foot
of high cliffs, layers
twisted to vertical
by an uneasy torsion aeons ago,
or hurl bursting against
jagged guardians of rock,
cataract to foaming, roiling
unforgiving boiling at their base,
merge with others
in aweful curling spume, careless fling.
A gull glides in vigil on the wind's whim,
clouds drift away, letting
sky and water clear from dull iron
to an iceberg's chill-blue depth.
A boy looks from the quay,
arms outstretched in welcome
to an ocean's power
he wishes were his.
© Paul Mein 22/7/15
Sunday, July 19, 2015
Sunday, July 12, 2015
Maureen Sutton: Poet Laureate of Lincolnshire - 2015.
Maureen receiving her award and cheque from the Lord Mayor in 2015.
Photograph by coutesy of Nic Lance.
Wednesday, June 24, 2015
Maureen Sutton: The Lincolnshire Poet Laureate Award for 2015.
Recently, one of our leading members has gained the Lincolnshire Poet Laureate award. Her winning entry is below.
Congratulations to Maureen Sutton:
Shaped by Sound
The sod beneath my feet has absorbed
the plough-man’s tread; boots softened
by creak and bend, one leg always higher.
His clicking tongue called commands:
‘Whoa, turn’, furrows run deep in fenlands.
The weight of horses’ shoes indented clay.
Harrow and plough have cut through earth
sparked limestone. Ridge and furrow
have written their own psalms.
Bird-song: crow, cuckoo, peewit, sky-lark,
each composed a chorus for sunrise
ceaselessly calling through changing seasons.
Invisible winds, breezes, storms, howling gales
lifted and shifted top-soil, sculptured willow,
hawthorn, hedges, oak, and ash to a sacred grove
defining enclosure, boundaries, ‘right of way.’
Ancient towers and steeples have absorbed
the prayers of my ancestors. I hear them in my
mind’s ear, clear as village church bells.
Dykes and ditches diverted water-courses, pushed
back the sea, reclaimed the land where green
mists still rise. All flow with their own rhythm
like migrant geese leaving and returning.
This is my county. This is Lincolnshire.
Maureen Sutton
March 2015
Congratulations to Maureen Sutton:
Shaped by Sound
The sod beneath my feet has absorbed
the plough-man’s tread; boots softened
by creak and bend, one leg always higher.
His clicking tongue called commands:
‘Whoa, turn’, furrows run deep in fenlands.
The weight of horses’ shoes indented clay.
Harrow and plough have cut through earth
sparked limestone. Ridge and furrow
have written their own psalms.
Bird-song: crow, cuckoo, peewit, sky-lark,
each composed a chorus for sunrise
ceaselessly calling through changing seasons.
Invisible winds, breezes, storms, howling gales
lifted and shifted top-soil, sculptured willow,
hawthorn, hedges, oak, and ash to a sacred grove
defining enclosure, boundaries, ‘right of way.’
Ancient towers and steeples have absorbed
the prayers of my ancestors. I hear them in my
mind’s ear, clear as village church bells.
Dykes and ditches diverted water-courses, pushed
back the sea, reclaimed the land where green
mists still rise. All flow with their own rhythm
like migrant geese leaving and returning.
This is my county. This is Lincolnshire.
Maureen Sutton
March 2015
Sunday, June 21, 2015
Pimento Poets: Next Meeting.
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| English: Allspice or pimento (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Cheers, Vernon
Sunday, June 14, 2015
Pimento Poets : Magna Carta - An Extract…………by Nic Lance.
 |
| King John of England signing Magna Carta on June 15, 1215, at Runnymede; coloured wood engraving, 19th century. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
MAGNA CARTA - MEGA CHARTER
Bad King John was a dastardly king. But how do you stop a tyrant?
That is the question.
By Nic Lance
---------------------------------------------------------------------
At first but few, But then they grew
Twenty-five barons under the yew
An oath they swore, an oath they swore
At Ankerwycke, in times of yore
Bold plans they had
To stop King John (he was qu-i-te bad)
In open air
In weather fair
Terms agreed, the scene was set
For a hob nob and a tête à tête
At Runnymede, at Runnymede
In a meadow at Runnymede
Peacemaker, sconemaker(!) go between, diplomat,
Archbishop Langton sat patiently with the king (what a rat)
Immersed in negotiation
Speaking for a nation
They parleyed well into the night
Among the bats by candlelight
The Archbishop’s chaplain prayed out loud
Until King John was truly cowed
Normally, bad King John would rather steal
Than do a deal & set his seal
To a big charter
“Call that a charter!”
But that bright day in June
He changed his tune -
Bad King John sealed the charter, drank some wine
kissed his barons – all was fine
Magna Carta
What a charter!
At Runnymede, at Runnymede
They sowed such seed at Runnymede
Our freedoms to uphold
No one above the law, no law to be sold
No person to be judged, except by their peers
All hunky dory, no more tears
From tyranny to liberty
What brilliant diplomacy!
At Runnymede at Runnymede
They sowed such seed at Runnymede
....
....
© Nic Lance June 2015 Lincoln
(800 years after the sealing of Magna Carta)
With a grateful nod to Rudyard Kipling.
Postscript to Magana Carta
One of the 4 surviving copies of the 1215 Magna Carta can be seen at Lincoln Castle which has recently had a £22 million revamp, together with the Charter of the Forest (1217) which did much more to relieve the plight of the ‘common’ man and woman living near royal forests.
Revised versions of Magna Carta were subsequently re-issued in 1216, 1217 and 1225 in the reign of Henry III and several times thereafter.
Archbishop Stephen Langton (born in Langton by Wragby, in Lincolnshire) was a key figure in thrashing out the terms of Magna Carta. He was a negotiator, mediator, peace maker, deal maker but not, as far as I know, a scone maker. This is just the Bake Off effect!
The yew tree at Ankerwycke is estimated to be 2000 years old and was named as one of Britain’s 50 great trees in 2002 to mark the Queen’s Golden Jubilee. Although the king and the barons would have sworn an oath before dictating and sealing the terms of Magna Carta, the swearing of an oath under the Ankerwycke Yew is speculation on my part. However the manor of Ankerwycke, on the bank of the River Thames opposite Runnymede , belonged to Richard de Montfichet - one of the 25 barons who witnessed the sealing of Magna Carta - so there is a strong connection.
Saturday, May 23, 2015
Margaret Atwood and the Future Library…….
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| English: Margaret Atwood - Munich 19.10.2009 Deutsch: Margaret Atwood - Literaturhaus München - Lesung am 19.10.2009 (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
“As a child, I was one of those who buried treasures in jars, with the idea that someone, some day, might come along and dig them up....That is what the Future Library is like, in part: it will contain fragments of lives that were once lived, and that are now the past. But all writing is a method of preserving and transmitting the human voice.”
In Daily News, Margaret Atwood will be the first of one hundred writers to contribute a manuscript to the Future Library, which will collect one hundred stories that will not be revealed or read until 2114.
The challenges of performing verse…….
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| William Butler Yeats (1865 – 1939), Irish poet and dramatist (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
The Nobel Prize laureate WB Yeats was born 150 years ago this June. Poet Nick Laird analyses his unique reading style and describes the challenges of performing verse.
I once read in Dublin with a poet who turned up with what looked like a small wooden suitcase. It turned out to be a sort of buttonless accordion, which, as she read each poem, she slowly opened out to 90 degrees, playing a constant low atonal wheezing throughout. I was surprised – though not as surprised as at a poetry festival in Herefordshire when another contemporary burst into a passionate folk song after she’d read her first piece, a sequence she repeated for the rest of her set. The entire audience – all four of them – went mad for it, though I did subsequently find they comprised her immediate family.
Poets read their poems in all kinds of styles: those who are hunched and intense or relaxed and conversational, or those who hector or lecture their audience, or over-explain or apologise, or crack gags to puncture the slightly tense silence that descends in each poem’s wake. What is now rare is the kind of quavery shamanic intoning – as if summoning demons – practised by WB Yeats, who was born 150 years ago this June.
English poet William Morris rejected the notion of reading his poems as if it were prose
The Irish poet made a series of radio broadcasts for the BBC in the 1930s. He seemed to know even then that his reading manner was going out of style. “I am going to read my poems with great emphasis upon their rhythm, and that may seem strange if you are not used to it,” warned Yeats when introducing the Lake Isle of Innisfree in a 1931 recording. “I remember the great English poet, William Morris, coming in a rage out of some lecture hall where somebody had recited a passage out of his Sigurd the Volsung. ‘It gave me a devil of a lot of trouble,’ said Morris, ‘to get that thing into verse.’ It gave me the devil of a lot of trouble to get into verse the poems that I am going to read, and that is why I will not read them as if they were prose.”
Although all poets – at least all good ones – write in a relationship to rhythm (if not in strict iambs or dactyls or anapaests), techniques now are much more lightly demonstrated. Yeats, though, straddled many periods. He was born in the middle of Victoria’s reign, and his own work began the Celtic Twilight, those soft-focused, eerie lyrics of faeries and gods of the 1880s, but ended with a distinctly clean and modern tone and sensibility with the Last Poems of 1939.
He wrote the Lake Isle of Innisfree in 1888, when he was 23. He was on the Strand in London, he explains, when he heard “a little tinkle of water”, and stopped outside a shop where a ball was balanced on a jet of water – an advertisement for “cooling drinks” – and it set him to thinking of Sligo and lake water.
Just after Yeats was tramping down the Strand, Robert Browning and Alfred, Lord Tennyson made two of the earliest audio recordings of poetry. Tennyson’s, made on a wax cylinder in 1890, has him thundering through the Charge of the Light Brigade. The poem’s short stressed dactylic lines echo the galloping horses, and at some point someone – presumably Tennyson – becomes his own Foley artist and starts a weird knocking sound, trying to imitate the noise of the hooves. Even Tennyson, it seems, was a bit worried that the words weren’t quite enough.
Robert Browning made one of the earliest audio recordings of poetry
Robert Browning’s recording shows a similar fear of dead air, as radio producers now call it. It’s also a classic example of buckling under pressure. In 1889 he was at a dinner party thrown by his friend Rudolf Lehmann, the German artist. A sales manager for Thomas Edison’s Talking Machine, Colonel Gouraud, was also there and had brought along a phonograph. Browning agreed to recite his poem How They Brought The Good News from Ghent to Aix. Again, this is a poem about horses, and his recital has something of the jaunty, excitable tone of a Grand National commentator: “I sprang to the saddle, and Joris, and he; I galloped, Dirck galloped, we galloped all three… ” Then he forgets the lines and does something I think all poets should do if they find themselves in a similar fix: he recites his own name twice, very loudly, and then shouts out: “Hip hip hooray, hip hip hooray, hip hip hooray!”.
For crying out loud
Though both Tennyson and Browning recite their poetry with regard to the rhythm, neither have the singular incantatory oddness of Yeats, of what Heaney has called his “elevated chanting”. We might note that Yeats came to poetry through an oral tradition. He wrote, in the 1906 essay Literature and the Living Voice, that “Irish poetry and Irish stories were made to be spoken or sung, while English literature has all but completely shaped itself in the printing press.” The oral culture in Irish poetry was strong – it is strong – and there is a sense still that the poem should not just be memorable but able to be memorised.
Yeats came from the bardic tradition, in which bards were a professional caste of scholarly, highly trained craftsmen. They attended special colleges for up to seven years to master the technical requirements of syllabic verse that used assonance and half-rhyme and alliteration. The bardic poems were oral history and songs of praise, designed to propel the names of famous kings and the details of their other-worldly deeds down through the ages. The men – and they were all men – were tasked with passing on the accumulated lore of Irish history and legend, and Yeats’s speaking style has something of that eldritch gloom about it: it’s a voice intoning through a banquet hall in candlelight. He wrote, in The Coat, “I made my song a coat, / covered with embroideries / out of old mythologies…”
Although Yeats constantly remade his style throughout his writing life, trimming off the finery of Victoriana, its frills and archaic reversals, to a modern, hard-edged style – what he called “passionate, normal speech” – his formal reading manner remained in the broadcasts he made a few years before his death. And yet it’s true to say that his engagement with the medium was profound. He was at the very beginning of radio culture: the idea of audience for early Yeats was limited to either reciting to a room of faces or communing in silence with a single reader on the page. When he wrote about his radio talks, it’s clear that for Yeats the very technology brought about a new sense of intimacy.
He had previously held off reading more personal poetry. On his American tours, for example, when asked for love poetry, he would respond that he refused to read “any poem of mine which any of you can by any possible chance think an expression of my personal feelings, and certainly I will not read you love poems”. But the radio made possible for Yeats a new kind of conceptual space for reading his more private writing aloud and in public, and in the snug of the studio he was happy to whisper into the ear, as it were, of the audience. “You would all be listening singly or in twos and threes; above all that I myself would be alone, speaking to something that looks like a visiting card on a pole… it would be no worse than publishing love poems in a book.”
Thursday, May 21, 2015
Next Meeting of Pimento Poets: 8th June, 2015
Just a reminder that the next Pimento Poets get-together will be on Monday…..8th June at the Pimento tearooms starting at 10.30 a.m.
Cheers Vernon
Saturday, May 16, 2015
Pimento Poets: VE poems by Shirley Bell.
In conjunction with the Poetry at Teatime readings on the 31st May, 2015.
VE Poetry by Shirley Bell
Dancing in the Forties
And here you are, walking away from the war you always said
had stolen your youth. Cowering in the pantry cellar
while bombs lit up the gasometer in a giant candle and houses
turned to dust and spars of wood like spillikins.
You talked about the soldier that you dumped
and that his mother said how cruel "you girls" could be.
It's hard to picture you, soldering parts of planes, and flirting
with my dad who wasn't sent away to fight, like Tony, in the sand.
And seventy years have leaked away, like them.
Today VE Day commemorations flood the television,
with memories and my sister and I are waiting for yours
to pour out too. But you remember nothing.
The past has all been painted out with the pastel wash
of the walls in your nursing home. Yet you loved to dance
I see you amongst the crowds, all twirling in circles and
throwing their sorrows in the air like military caps.
And somewhere perhaps a band's still playing in your head,
And somewhere you're still dancing.
Thinking about VE Day in a bluebell wood in May
This, it's said, is the County's finest bluebell wood.
Their blue smoke fills the spaces in the trees and rises
up, through the broken litter of the coppicing that cycles
every fourteen years. Blue on blue on blue.
And the ghostly girls are gathering the flowers that are
dying in their arms. They droop their sorrowful heads
and garland their white brows for the ones who won't come
back. They died as they were plucked. Blue on blue on blue.
The celebrations are happening somewhere else. People
are cheering and kicking up their heels. They lie in fountains
and perch on lampposts like ungainly birds. While blue
on blue on blue, those girls are gathering the bouquets of the dead.
Copyright by Shirley Bell
VE Poetry by Shirley Bell
Dancing in the Forties
And here you are, walking away from the war you always said
had stolen your youth. Cowering in the pantry cellar
while bombs lit up the gasometer in a giant candle and houses
turned to dust and spars of wood like spillikins.
You talked about the soldier that you dumped
and that his mother said how cruel "you girls" could be.
It's hard to picture you, soldering parts of planes, and flirting
with my dad who wasn't sent away to fight, like Tony, in the sand.
And seventy years have leaked away, like them.
Today VE Day commemorations flood the television,
with memories and my sister and I are waiting for yours
to pour out too. But you remember nothing.
The past has all been painted out with the pastel wash
of the walls in your nursing home. Yet you loved to dance
I see you amongst the crowds, all twirling in circles and
throwing their sorrows in the air like military caps.
And somewhere perhaps a band's still playing in your head,
And somewhere you're still dancing.
 |
| English: Bluebell wood (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
Thinking about VE Day in a bluebell wood in May
This, it's said, is the County's finest bluebell wood.
Their blue smoke fills the spaces in the trees and rises
up, through the broken litter of the coppicing that cycles
every fourteen years. Blue on blue on blue.
And the ghostly girls are gathering the flowers that are
dying in their arms. They droop their sorrowful heads
and garland their white brows for the ones who won't come
back. They died as they were plucked. Blue on blue on blue.
The celebrations are happening somewhere else. People
are cheering and kicking up their heels. They lie in fountains
and perch on lampposts like ungainly birds. While blue
on blue on blue, those girls are gathering the bouquets of the dead.
Copyright by Shirley Bell
Friday, May 8, 2015
A Norfolk April by Paul Mein.
A Norfolk April
We struggle to keep upright,
walking along the sea wall, inches
above angry, bran waves, racing hard,
fast before the cruel-cold of a north-easter;
they break, dirty-white and dangerous,
against the stone wanderers,
imported to defend the coast,
or slap, relentless, against
stoic, thick-planked groynes
stretched between their metal supports,
spotted like an old man's arms
rusted by too much sun.
In the troughs
innocent marbling
gentle froth forming
dissolving swiftly
taking on the power
of racing crests.
Further out, taller end-posts drown quietly,
Gormley figures resigned to their fate.
Still further, the horizon's razor-cut;
deep-sea indigo spills into the sky beyond sight.
Man's work in digging, the sea's in rising -
a blurring of boundaries, a landscape at mercy,
where tides make uneasy those who live where they touch,
eyes casting constantly to combinations
of seasons, the moon, the winds,
creating a rushing, spilling, tree-salting force
which turns fresh water brackish, soaks doubt into hamlets
abandoned to sea-swallow and planners' priorities.
Across column-ploughed fields,
crisp-bordered by hedging,
we see the clear-edged certainty
of flint and stone towers,
churched to the heavens,
pointing to salvation for lost congregations.
© Paul Mein 1/5/15
We struggle to keep upright,
walking along the sea wall, inches
above angry, bran waves, racing hard,
fast before the cruel-cold of a north-easter;
they break, dirty-white and dangerous,
against the stone wanderers,
imported to defend the coast,
or slap, relentless, against
stoic, thick-planked groynes
stretched between their metal supports,
spotted like an old man's arms
rusted by too much sun.
In the troughs
innocent marbling
gentle froth forming
dissolving swiftly
taking on the power
of racing crests.
Further out, taller end-posts drown quietly,
Gormley figures resigned to their fate.
Still further, the horizon's razor-cut;
deep-sea indigo spills into the sky beyond sight.
Man's work in digging, the sea's in rising -
a blurring of boundaries, a landscape at mercy,
where tides make uneasy those who live where they touch,
eyes casting constantly to combinations
of seasons, the moon, the winds,
creating a rushing, spilling, tree-salting force
which turns fresh water brackish, soaks doubt into hamlets
abandoned to sea-swallow and planners' priorities.
Across column-ploughed fields,
crisp-bordered by hedging,
we see the clear-edged certainty
of flint and stone towers,
churched to the heavens,
pointing to salvation for lost congregations.
© Paul Mein 1/5/15
Thursday, April 30, 2015
Le Tour in Yorkshire 2014 and 2015: Some related articles…...
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| Tour de France 1903. (Photo credit: Wikipedia) |
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