‘Good Within’ , by Mandy Pannett

I am not a silent poet

(Apologies to Alexander Pope)

(In which our narrator considers a politician’s remark that voluntary support
given to a food bank shows a nation’s compassion and is ‘rather uplifting’).

 

Now elegant in polished shoes you speak
And praise all acts of kindness in the meek.
Through charity may man buff up his soul
Use beans and tea bags to achieve this goal,
For now that good may triumph over bad
Our haloes polish up with brillo pads.
Star-high we join the company of nymphs
And treat the undeserving poor as wimps.
Let them all work, you cry, employment’s best,
A perfect way to feather one’s own nest.
Man up, you Scroungers, leave your easy beds,
The likes of you might just as well be dead.
Our thanks to you, O rigid, strait-laced one
You banish fog and show us shiny sun.
Wasters and Idlers, to your gutters go,
Perchance from…

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Thank you, Dr Ford, by Clair Heaviside

I am not a silent poet

Because she spoke too softly
Because she spoke too loud
Because she spoke too soon/ too late
Because she made us proud
Because no-one would believe her
Because they’ll say it was her fault
Because they asked so many questions
But couldn’t say the word ‘assault’
Because she can’t remember
We know she remembers every day
Because she is a woman
And women know things go this way
Because she said that she was sorry
For the things she didn’t do
Because she spoke for all of us
Because she stood there for #metoo
Because power means more than people
Because such cruelty must run so deep
Because she says that she heard laughing
These are just the secrets we should keep
Because, please do not upset him
Because his life cannot be destroyed
Because a man is just a man
“A boy is just a boy”
Because we know…

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The Cutting Season, by Karen Barton

I am not a silent poet

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Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Deborah Alma

The Wombwell Rainbow

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following writers local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.
The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Deborah Alma

According to Amazon “Deborah Alma was born in North London, has lived on the Welsh/ Shropshire borders for the last 25 years where she brought up her 2 sons and she lives with the poet James Sheard. She teaches creative writing, works with people with dementia and at the end of their lives and is the Emergency Poet in her 1970 s ambulance. She edited The Emergency…

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Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Antony Owen

The Wombwell Rainbow

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following poets, local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.
The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Antony Owen

Antony Owen is an award winning poet from Coventry and the author of five collections of poetry. His latest collection The Nagasaki Elder by V.Press was shortlisted for the coveted Ted Hughes Award for new work in poetry. His poems have been published worldwide and translated in several languages with regular teaching of his work in Hiroshima, Japan and UK schools in CND Peace Education resource. He…

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Adequate Food, by Judi Sutherland

I am not a silent poet

In the heatwave summer that the Jetstream brings
the women lay down on the supermarket floor
pressed their foreheads on the tiles and silently asked;
What in the name of every sacred thing
we care about – what are we doing
this for?

They lay quite still because their hearts were troubled,
considering, seriously, in the World Foods aisle
while all good things were slipping from their grasp
how to shore up against the rubble
fill up pantries and storecupboards,
stockpile.

What is the flavour of sovereignty?
Is it hard and brassy like a falling pound?
Will we squander everything we built to last
to get our country back? Be sure the powers that be
don’t give a monkey’s about you and me.
Lie down.

Lie down among the debris of your squandered lives
among the ashes of suburban dreams
among the spilled coffee and the broken glass
It’s always…

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Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Jamie Dedes

The Wombwell Rainbow

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following poets, local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.
The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Jamie Dedes

describes herself as “Poet and writer, I was once columnist and associate editor of a regional employment publication. Currently I run this site, The Poet by Day, an information hub for poets and writers. I am the managing editor of The BeZine published by The Bardo Group Beguines (originally The Bardo Group), a virtual arts collective I founded.  I am a weekly contributor to Beguine Again, a…

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Wombwell Rainbow Interviews: Jane Burn

The Wombwell Rainbow

Wombwell Rainbow Interviews

I am honoured and privileged that the following poets, local, national and international have agreed to be interviewed by me. I gave the writers two options: an emailed list of questions or a more fluid interview via messenger.
The usual ground is covered about motivation, daily routines and work ethic, but some surprises too. Some of these poets you may know, others may be new to you. I hope you enjoy the experience as much as I do.

Jane Burn

Jane Burn is a writer and artist who is originally from South Yorkshire. She currently lives with her family in the North East of England. She spends eight months of the year at their 1920’s eco-friendly, off-grid wooden cottage in Northumberland, which she and her husband have spent the last three years restoring with almost entirely reclaimed or recycled materials. She has a keen interest in gardening…

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a brief reflection on the disease known as Brexit, by Martin Hayes

I am not a silent poet

28 cows in a field
in which 1 of the cows has contracted
multiple cell dysfunction order.

Like what can happen in a failed experiment.

Like what can happen to anything
caught on the sticky peripheries
of a spider web.

Like what can happen in a disconnected blender
that comes alive while your fingers are still inside
trying to clean away the unwanted pulp
from its rotors.

Or when you run your finger hard
over a cracked mirror
above an old milk bottle;
the hordes of bacteria having gathered
at the summit of the congealed shoulder-blade-shape of what’s left
charging, blood-stained now
up and down the shallows of the host’s spinal fluid,
the network of significant afterthoughts
and hindsights,
confused as a rat in an upturned bucket.

The signs of this cellular dysfunction are:
a little blood appearing at the nostrils
on a warm August evening
while watching paint dry,

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some time we are heroes – endorsements

I’m very proud of the endorsements of my new book, I’ve realised that it is rather difficult for you to read them in the photo so I’ve included them here-

“Reuben Woolley’s some time we are heroes traces the frayed relationship between two people in terms of a despairing yet lyrical crisis. Images of water, dancing, drinking and singing run through the book in poems whose lines shift nervously to produce a kind of sharp-edged jazz that touches both nerve and heart.”

George Szirtes

 

“John and Mary, whose trials began in children’s post-war picture books, are pitched into existential tribulations in a dystopian universe, akin to Popa’s. These poems occupy the worlds of both myth and physics with flashes of folk-surrealism. Woolley’s language is spare, his syntax and word-choice paint an off-kilter logic. His use of white space allows the poems, and their imaginative journeys, to perform themselves on the page.”

Helen Ivory

 

“In a line with our most ambitious striving for a new poetry and poetics, Woolley’s poems are both innovative in their means and open to the ruptures & struggles of our time that have broken apart the stories & myths that once held our world together – or that purported to do so. The results here are unique to his own special view of history & masterfully compelling.”

Jerome Rothenberg

My most sincere thanks to Jerome, Helen, and George.