Members' Poems 2011: in every issue of Poetry News, we ask a leading poet for their pick of members' poems on a chosen theme
SPRING 2012
Theme: War
Judge: Bernardine Evaristo
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I chose the theme of war because it is both topical and provocative, and elicits strong opinions and emotions. It prompted a surge of poems from members.
‘ORDINARY BRITONS’ by Alan Clemo (click author's name to launch pdf attachment)conflates two dichotomous narratives in a single poem that demands a new way of reading. ‘Forward Operating Base Robinson’ by Timothy Brewis is explosive in its noisy description of artillery on a battlefield. ‘Muslim Girl’ by Joan Michelson places the brutalisation of women during war centre stage.
Several poems were about a father or grandfather who never spoke about ‘the war’. ‘Prisoner of War’ by D.A. Prince stood alone in its ability to deliver this generational phenomenon in a few, stunning, memorable words. ‘The Art of War’ by Gill Nicholson captures the disposable, disconnected attitude of the consumers of news towards the relayed atrocities; the ‘recycled’ lines of poetry work as underscore. ‘In the Museum’ by A.C. Clarke, with its classical allusions and the correlation it draws between the ancient and modern world (the Assyrians, for example, lived in present-day Iraq), is hugely impressive.
Forward Operating Base Robinson
FOB Rob. 4.30am. Shaken bolt awake
by the bass boom of the perimeter 50s.
Kit shouldered swiftly. Out into the dregs
of a night flickering
blue black / bright white,
strobed with bursts of muzzle flash light
to the stuttering rhythms of the firefight
Faces tense and tight,
the sangar sentries
shout target indications
incantations which hold you rapt.
Then the GPMGs begin to snort,
short bursts at first
easing into the battle,
quickly joined by the rattle
of Minimis and chatter of rifles.
Echoes crash off the Hesco walls
jostling with the calls for
Ammo! More ammo!
RPG!!!
Keep low, keep low!
No sign of slowing. Then a surge of noise
as the mortar boys down in the pit
start laying air burst 81s,
a swaying dance,
bending and twisting away,
bending and twisting away,
bending and sending dust unfurling with
each crump and jump of the tube.
And there is beauty in this moment;
beneath a hissing, tracer sky,
braced together, we are one.
Fear sublimates comradeship
into something more than love,
held in suspension for as long as
a transformation we will not
mention, come sunrise,
silent slumped in the spoil
of spent cases and strewn link,
listening to the tink, tink, tink,
of cooling barrels.
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Muslim Girl
When they had finished with her and with her mother
she climbed a tree and hung herself – a girl
in a red sweater that her mother had knitted.
This is one front page image I remember
from the Srebrenica massacre.
If we could live inside the memory of ‘Once
there was a village that was undisturbed’,
by now she’d be a mother knitting sweaters
for her daughter. I can picture my fingers
unbuckling the belt she slung around a branch
and seeing her slim bare legs swinging down.
Feet on earth again, up she springs and runs.
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Prisoner of War
After the camp he returned,
folding himself,
bringing back nothing, except
this swivelling way of watching
everyone, everywhere.
She waited
while he stripped the chicken carcass,
every sliver, not a scrap wasted,
leaving the bones polished,
scoured of meat;
a gleam on the plate.
It was only over
with the last shred eliminated,
and the silence reshaped around him.
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The Art of War
Dispatched to our recycle bins
the women, children and their plastic bags
to be composted images and bulletins.
A naked napalm victim’s peeling skin,
arse-kicking goose-steps and salutes to flags
dispatched to our recycle bins
with flattened cities, shrapnelled bodies sinking
into mud, the queues of refugees in rags
to be composted images and bulletins.
A hundred severed heads an oligarchy’s whim,
the last remains of sons beneath white slabs
with flower trim, dispatched to our recycle bins
and Armageddon in a backpack, hiding
legs, an eye, death to your daughter or your dad
to be composted images and bulletins.
There’s buzz enough – devising battles we can’t win.
Our super weaponry’s recycled tragic acts
are caught before dispatching to the bins
to be composted images and bulletins.
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In The Museum
Baked into this wall, imperial
guards look out aslant, each pupil
blank, Assyria’s bit of rough.
Here is the hawkhead god
whose hissing spite can just be heard
if you lean close enough,
Rome in her marble regimentals
licensed to kill for Senate and People –
now fighter planes shell out democracy
where client kings obeyed.
The staples of an ancient trade
displayed here as the art of weaponry,
our Trident’s three-pronged spear
– at one touch cities disappear –
no less an ornament of Mars.
How should we not pay mad homage to war
edging ever nearer to super-nova?
In our blood runs the violence of stars.
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WINTER 2011
Theme: Games
Judge: Lorraine Mariner
Cricket and poetry must be connected in some way because cricket came up more than any other game in your poems. Maybe what they share is that they’re both orderly but expansive and perhaps, like cricketers, poets stop for tea?
I was prepared to select more than one poem about cricket but in the end I only selected one: Emma Danes’ (Ely) ‘The Point of Release’, which elegantly describes a son growing up through the metaphor of bowling. The intimate detail, the poet imagining the son’s “fingers each side / of the seam” made me feel that this could only have been written by someone who has held a cricket ball themselves.
I surprised myself by selecting two poems about computer games, a phenomenon I know nothing about, which might be why I like Sarah James’ (Droitwich) ‘Evolved’, about a mother trying to take an interest in her son’s Pokémon game. She fails miserably. I especially liked the humour of the poem and the last line had me looking up exactly who Raichu is on Wikipedia, so I’m now slightly less clueless about Pokémon characters.
The other computer game poem I selected: ‘Games Mistress’ by Doreen Hinchliffe (London), was not about any games mistress I’ve ever encountered. Again, I loved the humour of the poem: “quit game no longer features on her options menu”, and the wonderfully sustained rhyming couplets. I just hope this elderly gamer does exist.
I was also taken with the humour of ‘Good Neighbours’ by Adrian Hogan (Lincoln) about a football that keeps coming over the fence. The masculinity the ball represents invades the narrator’s demure garden: “I’d find that ball / alongside a blushing rose / or a shocked marigold”, but when the kicker of the football finally appears the narrator has a drink in her hand and other, more flirtatious games on her mind.
I was impressed by the economy of language and use of description in the sonnet ‘The Card-Box’ by Kate Noakes’ (Reading) to convey the emotions that certain objects from childhood evoke. Finally, ‘The Rec at Sunset’ by Anthony Watts (Taunton) conveys the beauty of a playing field at sunset when everyone’s gone home and the sun “Disdaining either goal” reminds us that it’s only a game after all.
The Rec at Sunset
...haunted by the ghosts of children’s voices,
calm
as the greening-over of a battlefield.
The soccer starlings have all flown,
leaving the ball
miraculously suspended in the air
midfield. Disdaining either goal,
it claims the horizon for its touchline
and
in a sudden blaze of freedom,
dropkicks itself
over the edge of the world.
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The Point of Release
requires years of practice. My boy,
old enough now to develop
a consistent run up, ball half
polished half scuffed, fingers each side
of the seam. I could learn about
rhythm, balance – his arms coiled, eyes
on the wicket, full drive through then
ease, that gentle angling away.
For now, he returns to me
taller, famished, his hands stained red.
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Games Mistress
She’s here again, white-haired and seventy if a day,
adroitly elbowing hordes of little boys away
and shooting from the hip. She’s razor sharp, she’s slick,
makes use of every martial art to get first pick
of used Play Station games. Those who dare to block
her path are soon vibrating from her dual shock.
Game shops on a Sunday are her default setting,
she’s even been accused of aiding and abetting
three teenagers to steal a four-way multi-tap
so fierce is her desire for a better scrap
in shoot ’em ups like Unreal Tournament and Quake –
she’ll go to any lengths for competition’s sake.
Kids watch her playing demos hour after hour,
marvelling at her knowledge, speed and fire power.
Some queue outside the store to see if they can spot her
she’s more of an attraction now than Harry Potter.
A few approach her with respect, temerity,
to worship her superior dexterity.
She cautions against cheats and walkthroughs from the start
exhorting them to see true gameplay as an art.
Long years she’s studied. She started as a Space Invader,
worked her way through Lara Croft, James Bond, Darth Vader,
then on to Age of Empires, Half-Life, Baldur’s Gate
by way of Silent Hill and Fifa 98.
She’s picked up secrets, unlocked doors and studied maps,
she’s guided Gran Turismo cars round countless laps,
on snowboards, skateboards, skis, she’s raced at every venue,
quit game no longer features on her options menu.
From RPGs to warfare on the field of Flanders
there’s no one finer than this mistress of all genres.
Not for her the sing-songs, old folks’ clubs, day trips,
the meals on wheels or chats about replacement hips,
not for her the tea dance, bingo, talk of bygones –
she is the great iconoclast amongst the icons.
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The Card-Box
It was lead, that was probably pewter,
a coffer for cigarettes: tipped, untipped,
but where my No Smoking parents treasured
bridge cards, painted with Botticelli maidens:
Venus, another, somehow untouched,
even by their friends: no wild shuffling please.
For our whist there were everyday red
and blue packs that spilled from their boxes
in the kitchen drawer, shifting with staples
and crayon stubs, except when Bampa came
with his dice and pipe, and we pontooned
under the sun-shade, betting with Swan Vestas.
For him there was no ‘best’, so he taught me
to order the gilt-edged deck with my thumbs.
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Good Neighbours
He’d kick his football
over the six-foot fence
that bordered our gardens.
I’d find that ball
alongside a blushing rose
or a shocked marigold.
I’d leave it for a few days
then shoot that ball, netball-style,
loop it over the wooden defence
and through the hoop in my head;
then salute the waving flowers
and curtsey to the bushes.
This went on all summer,
kick and shoot, kick and shoot;
then one afternoon on the patio
almost oblivious to the ball
nesting in my bedding plants,
I heard the gate unlatch
and this man appeared.
I knocked back my drink,
a blend of fruit with a punch
of spirit, and looked him up
and down, the vodka kicking in.
He asked me, if my electric was off.
Well, not yours, he said, your house.
No metaphor intended, he said.
I heard a laugh, it was mine.
He looked around my garden,
admiringly, I thought, and then he said,
I see you’ve got your ball back.
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Evolved
Pikathingy’s winning! My son’s hunched shoulders
unclench a smile as he looks up from his game
to high-five his brother. Then back down again.
Pikawotsit’s an electric creature. This much
I’ve gleaned, I think. I’ve asked –
but Pikadespeak’s faster than light-speed.
Least, it is to a Pikaignoramus. They fight, right?
– Yeah, but it’s just fun, Mum, a contest,
like karate. None of them get hurt.
I try to engage with his Pokémon
as an interactive epic or modern fable.
But where’s the moral to relate to?
I start to talk about Aesop’s ‘Wolf and the Kid’.
Huh, Mum? He glances up, then back.
I give up the goat, turn to the ‘Tortoise and Hare’.
He doesn’t even grunt. Clearly, I’m slow at evolving.
But I’ve learned from the Tortoise and Pikadeafness.
I unleash my voice’s Raichu thunder.
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