Tag Archives: Jerome Betts

Limericks: Jerome Betts, ‘Jingle Tills, Jingle Tills’

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With the annual arrival of Yule,
The world becomes all slop and drool.
    Like that song with the sleigh
    They incessantly play
The points I award it are nul.

Turkey-slaughter is callous and cruel
While the weather turns vile as a rule.
     It is cold, wet, and grey,
     Life becomes pay-pay-pay,
And the thought makes me blanch, puke and mewl.

Who requires the great brain of George Boole
To find lands needing no winter fuel
    And spend Christmas away
    Where the sun shines all day
Sipping drinks beneath palms by a pool?

*****

Jerome Betts writes: “I suppose it’s not the festival itself itself at the darkest point of the northern hemisphere year that provokes a jaundiced reaction but the ever-lengthening relentless commercial run- up to it, almost merging with over-hyped Halloween.”

‘Jingle Tills, Jingle Tills’ was first published in Better Than Starbucks.

Jerome Betts edits Lighten Up Online in Devon, England. His verse appears in Amsterdam Quarterly, Light, The Asses of Parnassus, The New Verse News, The Hypertexts, Snakeskin, and various anthologies.

Photo: “Jingle Bell Bokeh” by aronalison is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Jerome Betts, ‘Lines On A Lady In Bronze’

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(The statue of Boadicea and her Daughters by Thomas Thornycroft was erected in 1902 near Westminster Bridge London.)

Set up, the civic skyline Shardless,
A proxy late Victoria then,
She charges, rein-free, grim, regardless,
Towards the Gothic giant, Big Ben.

Just what is known about this fiery
And long ago wronged ruler’s life?
Such fields for scholarly enquiry
Are now churned up by toxic strife.

For some, her Roman power rejection
Makes for a memory well kept green,
While others mock as myth-confection
Their proto-Brexit British queen.

Remainers, Leavers, play Have at you!
That chariot and rearing pair
Of  horses make a super statue.
Whoever wins, she’ll still be there.

*****

Jerome Betts writes: “I find statues fascinating with their largely unchanging nature as the people and scenes around them change and they make an obvious target for revolutionaries, rowdies and rhymers. Boadicea, unveiled without ceremony in 1902 because of Edward the 7th’s appendicitis, strikes me as a splendid piece of slightly unhistorical sculpture and useful landmark for visitors. Amusement at her lack of reins and apparent charge towards the Palace of Westminster blended with the Brexit debate when the piece was published in Better Than Starbucks. Whether this dooms the last two stanzas to the archives remains to be seen.”

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, where he edits the quarterly Lighten Up Online. Pushcart-nominated twice, his verse has appeared in a wide variety of UK publications and in anthologies such as Love Affairs At The Villa Nelle, Limerick Nation, The Potcake Chapbooks 1, 2 and 12, and Beth Houston’s three Extreme collections. British, European, and North American web venues include Amsterdam Quarterly, Better Than Starbucks,  Light, The Asses of Parnassus, The Hypertexts, The New Verse News, and Snakeskin.

Photo: “Boadicea Statuary Group” by Rafesmar is licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0.

Using form: Quatrains with refrain: Jerome Betts, ‘Plus ça change. . .’

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If, as a child, he had a spreading rash,
The squitters, then, far worse, was constipated,
Or boasted big blue bruise and graze and gash,
A doctor murmured, “Yes, it’s age-related.”

When, in mid-life, and seeking novel thrills,
He got a dose of something best not stated
So had to suffer jabs and bitter pills,
A doctor murmured, “Yes, it’s age-related.”

Come his declining years, which tax most brains,
His wits would wander, now grown antiquated,
And while he rambled down his memory’s lanes
A doctor murmured, “Yes, it’s age-related.”

Until, one day of flowers and muffled peals,
Cause of demise at last certificated,
As up the aisle he rolled, worm-food on wheels,
A doctor murmured, “Yes, it’s age-related.”

*****

Jerome Betts writes: “Hearing a phrase new to you can start some process in the brain leading toa piece of verse. Here it was my GP saying of some minor ailment It’s age-related. It stuck in my mind, and I think triggered a recollection of a Thomas Hood poem, The Doctor, its seven stanzas all ending with the refrain Yes, yes, said the Doctor, / I meant it for that!, the dodgy physician’s unvarying response to reports of the disastrous effects, even death, of his prescriptions. Not long after, the sight of a hearse on wheels rather than on bearers’ shoulders entering a Devon church provided the idea for the last stanza of this essay in black humour which appeared in Snakeskin.“

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, where he edits the quarterly Lighten Up Online. Pushcart-nominated twice, his verse has appeared in a wide variety of UK publications and in anthologies such as Love Affairs At The Villa Nelle, Limerick Nation, The Potcake Chapbooks 1, 2 and 12, and Beth Houston’s three Extreme collections. British, European, and North American web venues include Amsterdam Quarterly, Better Than Starbucks,  Light, The Asses of Parnassus, The Hypertexts, The New Verse News, and  Snakeskin.

Illustration: “Great Grandfather and Child” by Melissa Flores is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Using form: Jerome Betts, ‘Villanelle For Darcy’

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Darcy the diabetic cat has died
His fans were told by email recently,
A life remembered with no little pride.

The Fiat-driver now feels mortified
To think because he simply failed to see
Darcy, the diabetic cat has died.

Was this the fatal ninth and last he’d tried?
Whichever, it will surely prove to be
A life remembered with no little pride.

His poor squashed frame has been discreetly fried
With all involved expressing sympathy;
Darcy the diabetic cat has died.

The people in his road could not abide
The flattening of such fine felinity,
A life remembered with no little pride.

So, some of them sent cards, and others cried
And stuck a sign upon his favourite tree:
Darcy the diabetic cat has died,
A life remembered with no little pride.

*****

Jerome Betts writes: “It’s always interesting when a line you read sparks off a quite unexpected result. In this case the line was in a friend’s email from Cambridge which mentioned in passing, as an item of local news, that Jasper the diabetic cat has died. Further details followed about one of those neighbourhood favourites known to many more people than its owners. Eventually, with Darcy substituted for Jasper (partly to secure a run of Ds and partly as I was at odds with a garden-molester of that name at the time) a villanelle took shape which was published in Snakeskin and subsequently in the anthology Love Affairs At The Villa Nelle (Kelsay Books, 2018) edited by Marilyn L. Taylor and James P. Roberts.”

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, where he edits the quarterly Lighten Up Online. Pushcart-nominated twice, his verse has appeared in a wide variety of UK publications and in anthologies such as Love Affairs At The Villa Nelle, Limerick Nation, The Potcake Chapbooks 1, 2 and 12, and Beth Houston’s three Extreme collections. British, European, and North American web venues include Amsterdam Quarterly, Better Than Starbucks,  Light, The Asses of Parnassus, The Hypertexts, The New Verse News, and Snakeskin.

Photo: “Dead Cat” by Denty One is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0.

Jerome Betts, ‘Overexposure On A Station Bookstall’

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I

Magazines courting raised circulation
    Decked with models they think most appealing
Merely generate mild irritation
    When it’s clear what it is they’re revealing.

Whether languorous, muscular, ditzy,
     Strong and silent, demure, sentimental,
Or suggestive, i.e. bum ‘n’ titsy,
     They display far too much that is dental.

Why this boom in bared teeth, all Macleany?
     Why the photo-shopped grins that afflict us?
Why must faces, both time-touched and teeny,
      Get reduced to a glistening rictus?

Can it be that the image-controllers
     Assume none of us buy printed paper
Without first seeing canines and molars
     Being flashed by some gloss-coated gaper?

On a panel the world flocks to honour,
     Who charms with her tight-lipped composure?
Yes, it’s L. da V.’s Louvre-hung donna −
     Those cover-mouths too deserve closure.

*****

Jerome Betts writes: “I can’t remember whether anything particular sparked off this slowly evolving piece apart from my becoming increasingly aware of the displays of dazzling female dentition on consumer magazine covers, sometimes a dozen or so different titles in a row to bizarre effect. My impression was that the apparently mandatory flashing smile became the focus, drawing the attention away from the rest of the face.”

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, where he edits the quarterly Lighten Up Online. Pushcart-nominated twice, his verse has appeared in a wide variety of UK publications and in anthologies such as Love Affairs At The Villa Nelle, Limerick Nation, The Potcake Chapbooks 1, 2 and 12, and Beth Houston’s three Extreme collections. British, European, and North American web venues include Amsterdam Quarterly, Better Than Starbucks, Light, The Asses of Parnassus, The Hypertexts, The New Verse News, and  Snakeskin (where this poem was first published).

Photo: “Big Beautiful Smile 4” by Smiles7676 is marked with CC0 1.0.

Jerome Betts, ‘Ballade of Inevitable Extinction’

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Where are the flushed and frantic teens,
The hormones’ fevered ebbs and flows?
(Fire buckets, water, verbal screens.)
The girls –good grief! – that parents chose
And others – how the mind’s eye glows! −
Who floated inches off the floor?
(Flout censor’s ruling – fish-net hose.)
With dodo, great auk, dinosaur.

Where are the doubtful magazines?
The female form from head to toes
(Dim lights. Spill simulated beans.)
In postures aimed to half-disclose
Behinds, aboves, and down belows,
With clefts and crevices galore?
(Check pressure here, in case it blows.)
With dodo, great auk, dinosaur.

Where are the eyeball-popping queens
Of X-films like the great Bardot’s?
(Props: G-string, well-packed blouse and jeans.)
Brigitte – with so much to expose
Far finer than the best French prose –
Removing most, and, sometimes, more . . .?
(Cue key-change, envoi, Villon, ‘snows’.)
With dodo, great auk, dinosaur.

Envoi
Prince, not again! The whole world knows
Time’s answer must be, as before,
(Stand by the curtain ! Down it goes!)
With dodo, great auk, dinosaur.

*****

Jerome Betts writes: “Ballade of Inevitable Extinction started off in callow youth as a sort of Finnegan’s Wake verbally mashed-up extravaganza sparked off by a news item about Brigitte Bardot. Then years later it became a rather clunky Spectator competition entry and even more years later evolved into something accepted by Kate Benedict for Tilt-A-Whirl and more recently by Beth Houston for her ‘Extreme Formal Poems‘ anthology.
Not only is the rhyme-scheme in English  a challenge but also getting some sort of development or progression into the three main stanzas (or even a coherent narrative as Joan Butler managed in her Ballade of the Ugly Sister in Lighten Up Online Issue 12 December 2010).
In this case, the suggestion of a three act play with stage directions and epilogue seemed a possible solution.”

Jerome Betts lives in Devon, England, where he edits the quarterly Lighten Up Online. Pushcart-nominated twice, his verse has appeared in a wide variety of UK publications and in anthologies such as Love Affairs At The Villa Nelle, Limerick Nation, The Potcake Chapbooks 1, 2 and 12, and Beth Houston’s three Extreme collections. British, European, and North American web venues include Amsterdam Quarterly, Better Than Starbucks, Light, The Asses of Parnassus, The Hypertexts, The New Verse News, and  Snakeskin.

Photo: “Faded Beauty – Beauté fanée” by monteregina is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Jerome Betts, ‘Grim Harvester’

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Two walkers once, who left the path
With fleeting union in mind,
Were reaped – oh, tragic aftermath! –
And permanently here combined.

*****

Jerome Betts is the Featured Poet in the current issue of Light. I was glad to provide an introduction to the man and his poetry in that magazine’s Spotlight – the short poem I’ve quoted above is a personal favourite: it is a tight, well-structured play on the ‘grim reaper’ and the ‘combine harvester’.

He lives in Devon, England, where he edits the quarterly Lighten Up Online. Pushcart-nominated twice, his verse has appeared in a wide variety of UK publications and in anthologies such as Love Affairs At The Villa Nelle, Limerick Nation, The Potcake Chapbooks 1, 2 and 12, and Beth Houston’s three Extreme collections. British, European, and North American web venues include Amsterdam Quarterly, Better Than Starbucks, Light, The Asses of Parnassus, The Hypertexts, The New Verse News, and  Snakeskin.

Photo: “Combine Harvester (Deutz-Faher TopLiner 4090 HTS) – at work at Moyvalley, Co. Kildare, Ireland. September 1st 2011” by Peter Mooney is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.

Launch: Potcake Chapbook 12, ‘City! Oh City!’

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City! Oh City! – poems on the light and dark of urban life. Thirteen of the best contemporary English-language poets present their wildly differing takes on the glamour and squalor, the joy and heartbreak, the varied people and the hidden wildlife of our modern cities.

Five of the poets are new to the Potcake Chapbook series, and I’m delighted to be adding Kate Bingham of England, Francis O’Hare of Northern Ireland, Pino Coluccio of Canada, and Quincy R. Lehr and J.D. Smith of the US. They join eight returning poets. Amit Majmudar and Maryann Corbett deserve special mention for their brilliant use of form to capture contradictory situations: Majmudar’s static street scene which suddenly changes pace to a hectic chase, Corbett’s interwoven Baroque chamber ensemble and homeless encampment with their separate realities in a shared evening in Saint Paul, Minnesota. In addition: Michael R. Burch, Jerome Betts, Terese Coe, Marcus Bales, Martin Elster and myself; everyone contributes to this memorable capture of the complexity of the modern city.

Bios, photos and links to read more of their work can all be found on the Sampson Low site’s Potcake Poets page, while all the chapbooks in the series, showing which poets are in which, are here. Each of the 12 chapbooks is profusely illustrated (of course) by Alban Low, and can be yours (or sent as an intriguing gift) for the price of a coffee.

Value the city – citification is civilisation!

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Jerome Betts, ‘Morning Calls’

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Though buds, light-headed, arrow to the sun,
Wood-pigeons cautiously descend to drink
As through the roof the first faint cheepings run
From half-fledged nestlings in some straw-warm chink,
While welling far and near − to float and sink
Like spidery fibre silvered on the lawn −
Mercurial lark song trails out link by link,
Rocking serrated-throated crows have drawn
Their broad indelible raw weals across the dawn.

Jerome Betts writes: “Have only tried the intricate patterning of the ‘Spenserian stanza‘ a couple of times. On the first occasion it seemed to suit a comment on the design of a 4th century Roman mosaic floor and on the second, in ‘Morning Calls’, appearing in Snakeskin, a memory of the rich dawn chorus in rural Herefordshire many years ago. The point of particular interest for me is the phrase ‘rocking serrated-throated crows’ in Line 8, unchanged from one jotted at the time. The words fitted a rocking or bobbing movement, but why ‘serrated-throated’?  This is appropriate for ravens with their ‘shaggy throat feathers’  (RSPB Handbook 2014) but not, I thought, crows. The words resisted attempts at tweaking and the stanza stalled. Some weeks later I saw a crow standing on top of a Devon street light rhythmically calling and rocking . . . and as it did so its neck feathers briefly parted on the upstroke of the movement. The line had preserved an exact observation made when young and then forgotten.”

Jerome Betts edits the quarterly verse webzine Lighten Up Online in Devon. His work has appeared in Amsterdam Quarterly, Angle, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Pennine Platform, Light, The Rotary Dial, and Snakeskin, other American, British and Canadian publications and two Iron Press anthologies.
www.lightenup-online.co.uk

Photo: “A Crow calling – gardenDSCN9711” by ianpreston is marked with CC BY 2.0.

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Jerome Betts, ‘In Northampton Museum’

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Among the hide-and-canvas lace-ups made
For some poor elephant’s giant tender feet
And leathery minutiae of trade
     In boots, dissected or complete,

Mint Army-issue, every shade of bruise,
With Tudor scraps from trenches workmen dig,
You find a case containing John Clare’s shoes,
    Asylum-worn, and very big.

Jerome Betts writes: ”In Northampton Museum, published in Angle and The Hypertexts, is for me one of those pieces in which some lines just seem to arrive fully formed. In 1969-70 I lived for eighteen months in Northampton and sometimes visited its Shoe Museum whose displays reflected the traditional local industry. The town also still had the former Northampton County Asylum (now a private psychiatric hospital) where John Clare spent his last years. Somehow, the military  footwear, the curious elephant boots and Clare’s shoes all seemed to come together. Oddly enough, nearly  two years ago  I received a Lighten Up Online contribution about elephants from someone in the USA who, it turned out, knew another contributor who knew the American leader of the expedition in 1950, testing some theory about Hannibal’s’ crossing of the Alps, for which the elephant boots had been made.”

Jerome Betts was born and brought up on the Welsh border, but now lives in South Devon, where he edits the quarterly Lighten Up Online. In addition to articles and verse in consumer and specialist magazines his work has appeared in Pennine Platform, Staple and The Guardian, as well as anthologies like The Iron Book of New Humorous Verse, Limerick Nation, Love Affairs At The Villa Nelle,  Extreme Sonnets, Extreme Formal Poems and The Potcake Chapbooks 1 & 2, and online at Amsterdam Quarterly, Angle, The Asses of Parnassus, Autumn Sky Poetry Daily, Better Than Starbucks,  The Hypertexts, Light, The New Verse News, Parody, The Rotary Dial, Snakeskin, and other sites.

https://www.lightenup-online.co.uk/