I'm now in my early 50s. I started writing again as a way of exploring the world, and feel that over the last 2 years I have really grown as a writer. By day I work with children and young people with mental health difficulties. I juggle my own two children, my work, my writing practice, generally managing to keep all the balls up in the air.
My body is talking again. My lungs are whispering secrets. My heart says “what? what? what?” but my lungs have each other. They keep on whispering. My feet want to tell the story of the day. They are always working, they grumble. My thighs just roll their eyes. They know. My stomach is quiet, he’s listening. Sometimes he grumbles like a toddler, sometimes he snores like an old man, but tonight he’s quiet. All the long, slithery length of guts is neatly packed away, sleeping like a drawer of underwear, and my lungs keep whispering. My bones know something, they feel it, but they don’t say anything, they can’t quite name it. They keep straight backs, stiff upper lips. They keep their gaze ahead, but my lungs, ah, my lungs keep whispering their secrets.
I’m yearning to sit in a golden square in the late afternoon light, in that warm silence that comes out of love and needs no words. I’m longing for a sip of yellow wine, cold, with condensation forming on the curving glass.
It’s Monday, it’s quadrille night at dVerse, and Linda has given us the word “wine” to play with.
I’m yearning to sit in a golden square in the late afternoon light, in that warm silence that comes out of love and needs no words. I’m longing for a sip of yellow wine, cold, with condensation forming on the curving glass.
How could you think of Easter without eggs?Shiny, foil-wrapped, hidden around the garden,small girls in nighties with their sturdy legsand boys in jammies, seeking, ardent?And boiled eggs, with their brightly painted shellswaiting for you to crack them. Inside, white and gold,like spring itself – blossom and daffodils.Winter is suddenly something we can holdand crack wide open.…
I’m really pleased to have Paul Brookes here. He’s a lovely poet – his poemOurSpired Unicorn was one of my favourite advent calendar poems. He’s also immensely generous to other poets – he regularly opens his blog for ekphrastic challenge months and for themed days, and supports other poets on Twitter.
Paul is a shop assistant, who lives in a cat house full of teddy bears. His first play was performed at The Gulbenkian Theatre, Hull. His chapbooks include The Fabulous Invention Of Barnsley, (Dearne Community Arts, 1993). The Headpoke and Firewedding (Alien Buddha Press, 2017), A World Where and She Needs That Edge (Nixes Mate Press, 2017, 2018) The Spermbot Blues (OpPRESS, 2017), Port Of Souls (Alien Buddha Press, 2018), Please Take Change (Cyberwit.net, 2018), Stubborn Sod, with Marcel Herms (artist) (Alien Buddha Press, 2019), As Folk Over Yonder ( Afterworld Books, 2019). Forthcoming Khoshhali with Hiva Moazed (artist), Our Ghost’s Holiday (Final book of threesome “A Pagan’s Year”) . He is a contributing writer of Literati Magazine and Editor of Wombwell Rainbow Interviews. Had work broadcast on BBC Radio 3 The Verb and videos of his Self Isolation sonnet sequence featured by Barnsley Museums and Hear My Voice Barnsley. He also does photography commissions and his family history articles have appeared in The Liverpool Family History magazine.
Here he is, talking about his craft:
I was really excited to see your Alice poems – I love the way you approached them. How did they come about?
I am not a Martian. Their poetry is too much like Anglo-Saxon riddles. In my collection ‘A World Where” the reader knows from the title what is being turned upside down. They are not riddles. I wanted the same for my Alice poems. When choosing classic texts I am always surprised what I find when I alter the titles: “The Wonderland In Alice” immediately had the narrative shape of young woman finding herself. I have no problems with accepting absurdity in my writing, or in life, increasingly so as I get older. Absurdity is a different way of looking at the world, but it must have some relation to everyday life. Too often, when absurdity shifts into riddles and puzzles it becomes too clever for its own good. That stuff puts me off, Big time
And what are you working on at the moment?
A pamphlet of sonnets
Have my pamphlet of serious whimsy, to be called “A Wonderland In Alice”, or “A Bag Of Mashings” published
Finishing my detective novella whose styles vary from gritty realism to wildly surrealistic.
Completing my life and laughter confirming companion pamphlet to “Port Of Souls”
Assembling poems and artworks for a pamphlet about my late mam and dad and family history.
Completing the story of my ancestor Captain Charles Teft Laurence, each chapter deals with a ship in which he was a nineteenth century Merchant Mariner.
Assembling an exhibition of my photos.
And a few things in preparation I can’t talk about now.
You are very active and generous to other poets on social media. How did your “theme days” come about? What has been your favourite so far?
It is an idea that arrived in my head as a carrying on of the campaigning work of the late Jamie Dedes and Reuben Woolley. I have no favourites. I am lit up by theIr imagination and creativity of others that I love to enflame. All writers should be encouraged and supported in as many ways as possible.
You’ve been writing for a long time. What does poetry mean to you? If you had to define a poem, how would you define it?
I have a Youtube site called “Poetry Is My Bag For Life”. While other sensible school children played football, I sat on the side with a big green book of empty pages and filled them with pale imitations of William Blake and Dylan Thomas. My dad made sure I imbibed the Burton version of Under Milk Wood from an early age.
Kate Clanchy describes writing poetry as being part of a conversation with other poets. Are there particular poets you feel you respond to?
All poets I correspond with are part of my conversation with poetry. Each provides something new and refreshing.
If you could only read 3 poets for the rest of your life, who would you choose?
William Blake, Dylan Thomas and the sadly missed Peter Reading
Do you have a writing routine?
No. I wake up and go to sleep with a constant stream of voices in my head asking to be heard.
What about editing? How do you go about it?
I call it “mulling”. It happens subconsciously, most of the time. After writing for so many years your brain kicks into editing abd proof reading mode. Mistakes glare out at you like mirror stains.
What sort of response do you hope for from your readers?
I hope to engage their imaginations so they have confidence to write themselves.
How do you find your inspiration?
In all and everything. Walking helps me mull over stuff. Working in a supermarket introduces me to the stories folk tell. Engages me in confrontations and makes me a witness to the life of the High Street.
Do you think you have particular themes that recur?
My adoration for the rude and ribald. My delight in Yorkshire dialect. My love of fantasy, science fiction and thrillerish gritty realism. My abhorrence for inhumanity.
Do you ever feel blocked? How do you deal with it?
To coin a phrase I have a poem about that:
Attention
Nothing to write down, I wake up, pay attention to life around me.
How is she dressed? Why is she here? How does she move? Where is she going?
This fly, this ant, this cat, this woman with a child.
Who should I interview next? And why?
Tough question. Ankh Spice, Tim Fellows, Laura Potts, or choose any of those I have interviewed over the years.
Here’s a poem from Paul:
In World
without corners the curve becomes an edge. Go so far over the roundness and you will fall. Nothing is sharp, just rough, aged. There are no thorns, nothing to catch, cut through.
No scissors or other ways to open. The world seems padded, coddled. Comfortable. If something breaks, examine the broken bit to find roundness like a fresh bubble.
All windows are spherical. No pins, needles. Bowls, cups and plates have rounded rims. You can’t impale anyone, anything. There are no nails, no staples. This grounded
world is to us a well kept taxi, all soft sounds, clunks and clicks, bouncy, a soft ball.
He’s a lovely reader of poems. And he’s doing an ekphrastic challenge for NaPoWriMo – starting tomorrow, on his wordpress site. There’s still time to sign up.
The tree in the top corner is always the first to blossom. Its blossoms are the palest of all – the faintest wash of pink. It’s badly placed, battling with alder and birch to find light. Everything around it is brown. Buds are starting to swell, but the other trees are holding back, contemplating things. There may yet be frost, the nights are cold, we are still teetering on the edge of spring. While they hesitate, the wild cherry leaps in, joyfully, its blossoms a valiant, defiant banner of hope.
first blossom are these snowflakes or petals?
A haibun for Frank at dVerse, on the classic subject of cherry blossom.
I would have been gentler with your knots and tangles if I had known how soon you would be curling, straightening, colouring – I would have left them to form wild nests and strange brambles, I would have let birds sing there, let flowers bloom.
Mish is hosting at dVerse tonight, and our quadrilles are based on the word “knot”. .
4am and I’m filled with it the taste in my mouth like I’m stuffed with coins each finger filled with it no 4am and it’s here in the room with me I’ve been swallowed by cancer I’m a nodule floating in a sea of cancer I breathe it in I float in it I’m drowning
6am and it’s getting light time to pack it away time to squash it down into my lungs my bones time to swallow it down
it’s in me don’t let me scream
I started blogging at fantasticmetastaticme.wordpress.com. I write poems at fmmewritespoems.wordpress.com. You can follow either, or both – or neither, obviously! – depending on your interest.
