Just to say that I have a new blog where I’ll be posting my poetry from now on. New poems that I publish in the Morning Star will now only be available at their site here.
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Lines taken from the Morning Star, 17 January 2012 a Romanian medical official phrasemongering about a new form of capitalism gave a perfect demonstration of the Stanislavsky system of comfortable truths and worsening conditions it was not all doom and gloom campaigners welcomed the shame-based approach to the clarinet and the alto sax slogging through the rice paddies would be much better than stoking the fires of conflict it is not perfect.
Paul Taylor
Paul Taylor is a poet and professional musician, and is the inventor and sole purveyor of trombone poetry. This poem is a foundling and is formed of lines taken from the Morning Star on January 17 this year.
Poem at the Morning Star
The Gun Public House, Docklands Such galvanising in those ceiling-hung cups — decor to smooth over tough love struck between suspenders, mutilated beams, scorched smears, the ends and offcuts of bakes, barrels left out in the mud. How does the swerve feel now at the secret staircase’s upper reaches? The lower are Thames: thick surfaces, chambers more collection than room, more cutlass than scuttling, but no mere flash in a mirror’s fish pan. In the middle of a disembodied wharf, history is handcart driven, all the better for its bowels, previous sorrows and suspect tales. Across the way, the ever-advertising dome, that project/folly: land kneed perfectly in the ribsides to make folk live up to nothing, from something. But in here they rebreathe fire and stoke the kitchen’s capsized engine. Let it burn.
Nia Davies
Nia Davies grew up in Sheffield and studied at the University of Sussex. She writes poetry and novels. Her poems have appeared in Poetry Wales, the Salt Book of Younger Poets and Birdbook 1 (from Sidekick books). Her pamphlet of poems, Then Spree, will be published by Salt in autumn 2012. She works for Literature Across Frontiers.
Poem at the Morning Star
Socialist Banner c1890s William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow On the stretched silk, a painted Bible scene of Adam and Eve working together. She's spinning wool as he tills the garden. Sewn underneath are lines of poetry in simple rhyme so the meaning is clear: from equality comes joy of labour. On the red background, in letters of gold Socialism Fellowship Brotherhood and at the bottom, a symbolic sun, a golden future for the working man. The makers of this work of art are gone. The message on the banner carries on. The current ills are coming to an end. What we had before, we will have again.
Paul McGrane
McGrane’s poems have been published in Aesthetica, The Delinquent, and South Bank Poetry as well as in the anthologies city lighthouse (published by tall-lightouse), Split Screen (Red Squirrel Press), The Robin Hood book (Caparison) and the upcoming 2012 Templar Poetry Anthology, Octopus. McGrane also runs Forest Poets, a writing group which has 18 new poems on display at the William Morris Gallery, Walthamstow, until September 16. All poems, including Socialist Banner, are inspired by the life and work of William Morris and are displayed throughout the gallery. For more information visit: www.wmgallery.org.uk
Poem at the Morning Star
Graffiti, River Track, Inner City Maybe you walk this river track by shallow Connswater, snagged by aerials, steering wheel, toilet seat, below a pylons’ torque of metal tearing the sky, and a brick wall weeping tar. Here I first meet you Roy, with Marcus, Paul and Rab, misshapen and slapdash, graffiti’s hands, squeezed between Alison and Beth. You draw breath below circling pigeons, aircraft shooting orange flares, homing in on Sydenham. Across the track we meet again on a gable wall, underlined, next to a satirist’s ‘Dump Here’, where a Pepsi can is stranded on a Pampers nappy and the Indian Delight has shuttered eyes to Roy’s indelible hand daubing Geddis’ pawn shop; stout boots jostle with gimcracks, clocks, radios. Above, in a murky sea, the shish-shish of helicopters Roy coils round a drainpipe on Lord Street, past gardens blinkered with refuse and murals. Once more the river joins us, and here we might sit, watch a living river leave a meandering track behind, as glinting mallard and mute swan dream of open sea.
Ray Givans
Ray Givans was born and reared in the village of Castlecaulfield, County Tyrone. He has published four pamphlet-length poetry collections, and he was included in Artwords, an anthology of emerging or newly emerged artists and poets from Ulster. His work has been awarded prizes in Britain, the US and Australia, and he was the first recipient of the Jack Clemo Memorial prize for poetry.
Poem at the Morning Star
All It Needs Is Some Grease After working 32 years in machine shops I find myself wishing men were like worm screws and only needed 9 or 10 squirts of clear lube grease out of a grease gun squirted on them to work smoothly in machine shops suddenly out of nowhere I have seen men throw 100-pound vises punches I have seen them suddenly start screaming and spit on the man at the machine next to them if only men could be like machines and be calibrated to repeat their movements day after day and year after year to within one ten thousandth of an inch perfection if only we could call in our maintenance man and he could fix men with taps of his hammer turns of his wrench squirts from his red long-necked oil can if only men didn’t go slowly mad because the man on the machine next to them has been whistling “Georgy Girl” off-key into their ears for 10 years if only a new gear belt or wire or set of ball bearings or adjustment with crowbar and screwdriver could set them humming smoothly again like the head of a Bridgeport milling machine a machine doesn’t read religious tracts or set burning crosses on front lawns or worry because the man on the radial drill wears a pink shirt and might be gay a machine doesn’t sit on a steel stool in the corner of the shop and start crying because it can’t bear machining one more doorknob a machine doesn’t need to bet on horses or kneel down in church pews or knock out a man’s teeth because he stepped on its toe or chase its wife’s lover down a sidewalk with a baseball bat all it needs is some grease and some oil and a concrete floor to be happy as a clam or a red rose or Venus shining in a pink morning sky.
Fred Voss
Fred Voss has been a machinist for 30 years, picking up the pen and the wrench to chronicle what goes on between tin walls. He has published three books of poems with Bloodaxe, Goodstone (1991), Carnegie Hall with Tin Walls (1998) and Hammers and Hearts of the Gods (2009). His work has been featured prominently by the magazines Bete Noire in Britain and the Wormwood Review in the US. He also won the 1988 Wormwood Award. Love Birds, a collaboration with his poet wife Joan Jobe Smith, won the 1996 Chiron Prize. He lives in Long Beach, California, and works in a nearby factory.
Poem at the Morning Star
I want to be a Penguin Modern European Poet I want to be a Penguin Modern European Poet. I will wear a communist suit with dissident spectacles. I will write in a language that looks suitably attractive and undecipherable: my name will be genuinely difficult to pronounce, instead of being just easy to pronounce wrong. On my slim volume, impeccably modernist, tightly bound and violently designed, the negative of my face, double exposed in acid colours that shine like a day-glo star. I want to be discovered, bright and ageless, in the dusty back-room of a bookshop. I want to be read late at night, a few lines at a time, by one who hasn’t properly realised yet that cigarettes really are bad for you and coffee is best kept for mornings. I will write dangerous ideas and They (and everybody else) will think it’s just about tractors.
James McKay
James McKay started writing and performing poetry in his late 20s. He is part of the New Popular Reciter project, which involves giving epic readings of major poetic texts such as the book of Job, Walt Whitman’s ‘Song of Myself’, and Byron’s ‘Don Juan’. His first collection, Quiet Circus, is published by Vintage Poison.
Poem at the Morning Star
