Andrea Misse

Andrea Misse: Tango Star

Andrea Misse, tango star, died tragically at the beginning of this year. This posts my obituary for her, and one of her last fantastic performances.

Grey Suit: Poem Stream

This is a new page on Facebook for poems chosen by myself, Kerry-Lee Powell and Pamela Stewart.

Grey Suit: Poem Stream

The page is just for poems, which may attract occasional comments. So it is a stream which may easily be recycled by poems previously shown being copied and pasted back in. The stream is a wheel, like the Milky Way – an expanding wheel of verse.

CATHAR COUNTRY

They are here like us at Queribus
And at Peyrepertuse, fiddling with their
Camera batteries, dragging their red setters
Up congested spirals onto views.
When they meet each other unexpectedly
Hyperbolic protests of astonishment
Lose their fizz in about five seconds flat.
And we are here like them, in fact
We are them; indicating unworriedly near
The lightning conductor above some absolute
Drop. And so we gaze down on ourselves
Moving as remorselessly as ants on some gateau
Across the esplanade of a donjon
Belted by curtains of stone. But as we go down,
We fade also from our own recollection,
Even our images leaving these high places
In the grip of those wizened bushes
With the odours we half-recognised.
No transmigration helps nor any afterlife.
It is not for tomorrow’s wraiths to haunt antiquities
Since the ticket-office is closed to their memories
And the cornices frequented only by the birds
Whose names they were never too sure of.

First published in ‘Dancers in Daylight’ – Anvil Press Poetry 2003

As in a dream!

Father and Daughter

Immoralism

This is the text upon which I based lectures in art schools and galleries in the 90′s.

Immoralism

Lovely late nocturne by Chopin

Nocturne

BATRACHIANS

A wary nod suffices on the cycle track.
It follows an extensive reach where breezes
Dint the idling river. Clustered round
A sewer’s lid, cow parsley thrives, as muddied
Clouds abet the treacherous stillness of
This prelude to the weir where nothing shows
How such a lazy seeming stretch accelerates
Before the chute. Slowly the clouds go over
The edge of it onto that wide white slide,
While spinning eddies make a sudden rush
Between protective bars, and concrete ducts
Convey these churning waters into culverts
Open to the gaze below some grills. This
Is where toddlers and teenagers too have been
Seized by the vortex, dragged, as by the hair,
Down to a mesh the surface masks. At trestle
Tables, here, the weir’s enthusiasts
May brood, one to a bench, while boys with caps
Turned back glide by, darting glances at
Girls with distant hair, sat on the bank,
Their bikes leant together against a trunk.
But now the loosened water rattles on
Under thickly pelted trees where mallows
With their bloodshot leaves shield the ditch:
In which, stupefaction slows the pace,
But once a fellow seizes on his miss,
He’ll stick to his post, in ecstatic state,
Even should his hind legs get cut off.

(from ‘Dancers in Daylight’ – published by Anvil Press Poetry in 2003)