Category Archives: my own favourites

Weekend read and listen: RHL, 3 audio + text poems

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“iamb – poetry seen and heard” is the creation of Mark Antony Owen, showcasing poets with their readings of three of their poems. Begun in 2021, Mark describes his project as “part library of poets, part quarterly journal, iamb is where established and emerging talents are showcased side by side. Not just their words, but their readings of them. Expect new poems, every three months, free to your device of choice.”

Accompanied by an out-of-date photograph, three of my poems are available here. They are not among my most recent work, but they are favourites and I chose them for their very different moods, themes, and forms: ‘Camelot at Dusk’, ‘Old Sailors’, and ‘This Ape I Am’. And their use of form sets them apart from all the other poems in this 21st ‘wave’ of iamb. I can’t decide if I am stuck in the past, or write in the style of the only verse that has a chance of being remembered in 100 years. But maybe that’s not an either/or – maybe only verse that is rooted in the historical rhythms of the language will last. So I suspect.

​Auditions will reopen in September for next year’s waves.

Short poem: RHL, ‘I Started Out Alone’

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I started out alone,
No numbers and no words.
The people gave me food and clothes.
I loved the sun and birds.

And when I reach the end
Numbers and words all done,
Have to be fed and dressed again,
I’ll love the birds and sun.

*****

This is one of my favourite poems, for several reasons:
First, it extols the combination of curiosity, enjoyment and acceptance that I believe is appropriate for this thing called life.
Second, it is simple in expression: simple words, simple rhythm, in iambics with simple full and slant rhymes.
And third (and perhaps most importantly) it is easy to memorise: it has lodged itself in my brain without any effort or even intent on my part and, as this blog frequently claims, that is the essence of poetry.

‘I Started Out Alone’ was originally published in Bewildering Stories in 2019. More recently it was included in a batch of my poems that Michael R. Burch spotlighted in The Hypertexts for August 2024.

Photo: “Baby face” by matsuyuki is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

My own favourites: ‘No No Nse Nse’

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No
No
Nse
Nse
And things like that
May look like nonsense
But there is
No
No
Nse
Nse

*****

I know, I know… it’s not formal verse, but it’s one of my favourite pieces.

“Ecstatic Posture” by Dreaming in the deep south is licensed under CC BY 2.0.

My own favourites: ‘To Myself In 50 Years Time’

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Old fool! You really think yourself the same
As I who write to you, aged 22?
Ha! All we’ve got in common is my name:
I’ll wear it out, throw it away,
You’ll pick it up some other day….
But who are you?

My life’s before me; can you say the same?
I choose its how and why and when and who.
I’ll choose the rules by which we play the game;
I may choose wrong, it’s not denied,
But by my choice you must abide….
What choice have you?

If, bored, I think one day to see the world
I pack that day and fly out on the next.
My choice to wander, or to sit home-curled;
Each place has friends, good fun, good food,
But you sit toothless, silent, rude….
And undersexed!

Cares and regrets of loss can go to hell:
You sort them out with Reason’s time-worn tool.
Today’s superb; tomorrow looks as well:
The word “tomorrow” is a thrill,
I’ll make of mine just what I will….
What’s yours, old fool?

This poem, first published in Snakeskin No. 147, September 2008 and recently reprinted in the Extreme Formal Poems Contemporary Poets anthology edited by Beth Houston, is symptomatic of my constant concern with mortality. It was also a way to be provocative: under the guise of insulting myself, I got to insult all older generations. And it was also an exercise in poetic structure: each stanza presents an aspect of the superiority of present youth over future age. (Premise and conclusion aren’t necessarily made as statements, many times rhetorical questions are used instead.) The structure of each stanza is to begin with pentameters for a sense of reasonableness in the first three lines, pick up the pace for the next two lines, and end with a short punchline. Aggressive and effective.

Yes, I wrote it when I was 22. I don’t know if I will be able to concoct a suitably terse and dismissive answer when I’m 72. But it’s a favourite poem of mine, and I owe it a response.

Photo: “Day 005: The child is father to the man.” by JesseMenn is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0