Well, in fact a friend of mine called Aryamati (she is an ordained Buddhist!), is on a committee at the Museum, and had been asked to organise an arts event, so came up with the idea of a poetry session at the Museum Cafe, Cafe Muse on Oxford Road, Manchester.

I have not ventured out to live poetry readings/events for some time now, for a variety of reasons, but when I was invited to read some poems at this session, I was more than happy to support it – not only by reading my poems, but also by taking some pics and doing a kind of mini review here on my poetry blog, which I thought would make a nice change from just posting my own poems!

Apologies to begin with, that I did not write down any names as I was taking the photos – so if you appear, why not comment to say who you are!! Also, although I read my poems, being the one with the camera, I do not have any photos of myself! Maybe next time!

Anyway, after Aryamati’s intro, and my set, this serious looking orator drove the nearby chap in the audience to drink!

The poets soon got into their stride and kept the audience on the edge of their seats with word wizardry:

Members of a poetry group read from their works:

This poet made himself – and the audience – smile!

This veteran of many performances at the Town Hall, gave another fine display of woven words!

All in all this was a very pleasant evening of poetry and conversation which will hopefully be repeated soon. Thanks to all involved – and if you have any more to add – please leave a comment

Anyway, realised I’ve been neglecting the blog lately (circumstances are hard, but that’s no excuse) – so even while I may be going through a dry period writing-wise, I do have many poems that I feel deserve to be read. So here goes with a poem from a period that was very creative for me, back in the late 90′s/early 2000′s! The weather had been very hot, and I had been drinking a good deal – when suddenly the weather broke, thunder began to rumble, and the heavens opened, and I couldn’t resist just going out in the yard to let the water flow down and experience it fully – after which I wrote Downpour.

Downpour

Furnace of rain
On roof, hoofbeats
At window, tongue
Of storm drooling:
Just glass and brick
To keep me from the thrum
Of automatic gunfire.

It is this white chaos,
Tracer of rain in night,
Makes me stand outside
And taste the flak
Of clouds, dumdum
Bullets smacking
At the heart of land.

It will not stop.
It will not stop like
My hand that spars
With words in the flurry
Of the pen and page.
It will not stop;
But my flashing hand
Assigns a state of pause:
There, words like rain
Going out to sea,
Falling away like a lover,
Bequeathing a dry silence.

Alcohol

Deeper than a lover’s kiss,
Fire-belly dragon breathing backwards,
Spreads its galaxy of warmth
Through twists of veins
To starburst eyes.

Lights up the void,
Sprouts craters on the moon of mind,
Licks at wounds
The day leaves like sparkles
Scattered on a sea of skin.

Quilts guilt like cloud on sky,
Letting memories go like birds,
Oils the gabbling tongue
In dry-iced, cocktail-hour
Hiatus of thought.

Burns at heart like coal,
Now black, now red, and beating
Its SOS: signalling
Blood-sack filled with fumes
And the clot of knowing.

This is
The crucifixion in amber,
The kamikaze into darkfall,
The abused and abuser,
The wasp-in-a-jamjar desperation.

And over and over and over again,
Rising into spikes of light,
The cat-got-your-tongue-and-killed-it,
Flailing, threshing, fretful,
Never-again morning.

For too long I let the “powers” that be, ie the editors of poetry magazines, dictate their terms and basically bury my poetry under a morass of criticism, vituperation, personal attacks and rejection. That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy some level of success. I got paid for my first poem when I was 18, had quite a few published, and gave numerous performances. I waited for that breakthrough, that elusive moment which stands clear in the mind – “I’ve made it!” It never came, and as the rejections outweighed the acceptances and the criticism dulled the positive edge of the encouragement, I began to feel under pressure as circumstances vied with my beliefs and sent me on a strange path, to be sure. Full time work destroyed my creativity, and what little I had left wasn’t willing to stand up to the constant pile of rejections telling me, in essence, that I was not a poet, that I was not even a good writer, that I basically had no idea how to write a good poem. There were voices, friendly voices, that spoke otherwise, but they were muted by the thousand slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. To borrow a phrase…

But now I’m back, having been through a mill of sorts. I’ve worked out a way of making a living that will give me time to write – and I’m going to self publish through the Internet medium of the blog. Thanks to the internet, I don’t have to bow to the whims and outrageous prejudice of a few poetry magazines editors, whose only aim, as far as I could see, was to destroy the inspiration and kill the spirit of a genuine poet (and human that I am I took their criticisms and attacks personally!). I will publish my poetry here on this blog, and as an experiment I’m also going to see if I can make some money out of the blog – yes, unashamedly, I’m going to make my poetry pay (or cry trying!)

Soit! As the French might say.