Theatre and book reviews by Janice Dempsey
Open mic nights are a good way to review and test the sound of your poems on an audience. They attract every kind of poet except very serious "page poets" but even they will sometimes read in "floor-spots" at book launches of other authors' work. Here is my irreverent and I hope not too cruel verse about the poetry nights we go to which feature open mic slots. (it's not really Open Mic Month - though we have every other kind of Month, so why not?)
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I enjoyed reading these old funny poems at PoetryJam in the Tea Box cafe in Paradise Road, Richmond, yesterday, to a small friendly crowd...
Here is a poem that's developed into a memory of Lossiemouth, where I lived as a young teenager.
I wrote my poem for today from a photo that a poet friend posted on Facebook. Perhaps the poem will tell you what the photo looked like. Just in case it doesn't, I'll post her photo here as well, when I have her permission.
The beginning of a longer poem today. This may take a week to realise properly. It's about the biography of two ordinary objects, bookcases in my living room: a dialogue has begun between them in the poem and I'll try to develop it later because I don't have time today.
The search for wreckage from MH370, the airliner that vanished over the South China Sea last month, has largely faded from the news, for the moment. For weeks it claimed the attention of most of the world, a mystery, and a human tragedy once it was accepted that the passengers on board were almost certainly lost in the mountains and crevasses of the deepest parts of the Indian Ocean - but still without an explanation of the causes of the incident. The relatives of the survivors have conspiracy theories, fears of hijacking and kidnapping of their loved ones, as the only hope that they may still be alive - a terrible choice of fates for them to visualise as they wait impotently. This is poem is distilled from a complex tragedy that is still not over. It's still in draft form.
This fragment I wrote yesterday. It's a response to the news that the Saharan sand storm (that has made the weather over Britain so uncomfortable for many of us in the last week brings) food and life to a species of plankton in the Mediterranean sea. I also remembered reading about a shower of fish over the south coast of England and other strange showers from the sky.
Here's a poem for today, but written yesterday. It's about a little shop in Jaipur which we visited in January, next to the Royal Palace. There we encountered the most enthusiastic salesmen in India (and that's saying a lot!) Overcome with sensory overload, having been shown almost every piece of fabric in the tiny shop (named as the title of this poem shows) we left with an armful of lovely things and a lighter wallet (but not too much lighter in sterling terms)
Just a short poem today, from the official Napowrimo prompt from yesterday. The prompt was to write a lune, Britain's answer, it seems, to the American Short Poem and the Japanese Haiku. The lune, like them, is a three-line poem that can be strung into a series or left as a single statement. It's supposed have three syllables in the first line, five in the second and three in the third, and I actually managed to keep to the rule with this topical lune:
On Sunday last, I went to Keats House Library in Hampstead to see the Keats House Forum poets and their guest that afternoon, Indigo Williams. Indigo is a wonderful writer and performer and it was a thoroughly enjoyable afternoon. In the open mic I read a poem about life, in the language of a tic-tac man. As today is Grand National Day it seems a good time to post the poem and the video on here, though I wrote it a few days ago... I've provided a glossary of terms for non-tic-tac people...
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