Archive for the ‘Poetry’ Category
Posted on February 26, 2013 - by Kate
Seventh Quarry Magazine
Two of my poems, ‘On Mending a Lost Letter’ and ‘Blue Plums’ have just appeared in Seventh Quarry Magazine and it was lovely to get my copy of it in the post and read some of the fantastic writing featured in there. Here’s one of the poems of mine that was published in Issue 17, Winter 2013:
On Mending a Lost Letter
The paper’s yellowed, but the watermark’s
still plain, hand-made, sheer as a stocking.
Some perfume – Blue Waltz maybe – mingles
with ink that has turned grey from time.
He lines the pieces on linoleum,
tallies shred with shred, matches threadbare
ribbons of words, mends a g’s curve
an n’s bend, holds up the whole, reads her
round hand, lays his face against her
old address and hears the paper sing.
Posted on June 25, 2012 - by Kate
The Argument Man in Winter
The Argument Man in Winter
He had to be angry because
it was his schtick. You couldn’t have
a happy-go-lucky
Argument Man.
That was the whole point, the USP.
50 cents for a disagreement
A dollar for a spat.
You paid up
and took what you got. Whichever
side you picked, he picked the other side.
He knew politics, the law,
the constitution.
He was a born debater, never rude
though imposing, standing 6’8″ in socks
wearing his foil cloak with the red
letter K.
One day he didn’t show.
Another day. A week.
You were sad, but you weren’t
surprised.
Drugs, you thought, or looking
on the bright side, maybe he’d found
somewhere to sleep with winter
drawing in.
You asked the Weather Woman if she
knew anything. Sitting in state
by Stoke’s Books with her Big Slurp cup
for coins,
she was robust and red-cheeked
and infinitely wise concerning
windchill factor and upcoming
snow days.
Though she couldn’t have predicted
that blizzard headed our way.
Cold caller, it came for him
silently.
Dead white. Sudden. Some nights in your
dreams, you see him calmly make a salvo,
reason the freezing
world away.
Posted on November 27, 2011 - by Kate
Bliss & Ravenglass Anthologies
I had a great time reading at the Derwent Poetry Festival 2011 and met lots of lovely people. Now I’m happy to see that the Bliss Anthology is available to buy. Like all Templar’s publications this anthology is beautifully printed and produced and has loads of great writing in it. The other collections that were on sale at the festival are also available.
Another collection my poetry has been included in is the Ravenglass Anthology. That’s available from Amazon and includes some work by poets I really admire. I felt very pleased to be included in it.
Here’s a poem I wrote quite recently that was included in Bliss:
Paper Bullets
It arrived when I was heartsick, a chameleon’s tail
of postscript, tucked beneath sincerely in my
morning mail.Just a question: how’s the weather there? How could I know
that scrap of neat print would unfurl into
a haikuabout a bullfrog plummeting into a sleeping pool;
that water’s Diamene would bleed into
a sonnet,blazoning a long-dead lady’s throat? How could I know
the wire hairs growing from her head would curl
into the odeyou sent me, set to the archicembalo, full of night skies
and fevered brows? Or that our temperatures would
rise too high,too fast, wax-sealed aeroplanes thrust at the sun,
crash-landing crumpled in a corner of my room,
paper bullets,bone-folded crisp as origami cranes
leaving me out of humour, ink-stained and
heartsick again.
Posted on November 8, 2011 - by Kate
Derwent Poetry Festival 2011
I’m excited to be reading at the fifth Derwent Poetry Festival in Matlock Bath, Derbyshire, 11th-13th November. My collection ‘Paper Bullets’ was a runner up in the Templar Pamphlet Competition, so some of my poems will be published in Templar’s annual anthology, Bliss. The festival includes both new and more established Templar poets, including guest reader Mimi Khalvati. Here’s one of the poems I’ll be reading:
Peach Orchard
In his leaf-curl hand
he writes root stock numbers
dates and heights of trees,
the gross of summer crops.
Some days he traces ridge-veined drupes
onto the pale lines of his ledger.
they drift between trees
their hair a tangled sweet pea vine,
as if death winnowed them.
He draws their drowned shapes,
dropsical,
notes the colours of their clothes,
the way their shadows
rise some evenings from the roots
and beg for water.
About Me
I'm a writer and artist living in Manchester and I've had poems and stories published in a number of magazines and anthologies, including Storyglossia, Erbacce, Seventh Quarry, Ravenglass, Bliss and the Mammoth Books of Best British Crime. My debut novel is coming out in paperback and eBook in June 2014.
