{"id":671,"date":"2016-10-06T13:02:28","date_gmt":"2016-10-06T13:02:28","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/?p=671"},"modified":"2016-10-06T13:08:08","modified_gmt":"2016-10-06T13:08:08","slug":"671","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/2016\/10\/06\/671\/","title":{"rendered":"National Poetry Day, 2016"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"14495512_1204340482972165_6070179203250232974_n\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Today is National Poetry Day, and I spoke earlier on BBC Radio Stoke about my poem, \u2018Kith and Kiln\u2019, which his written from the point of view of a pot-bank. Viewing Stoke as an outsider, I am always struck at how uniquely elegant these structures are. They remind me of grand old ladies watching over us, keeping us in check, asking us to mind our manners.\u00a0 Here is the text of the poem and a link<\/a> to the broadcast:<\/p>\n

Kith and Kiln\r\n <\/strong>by Lisa Mansell\r\n \r\n \u201cHome is where somebody notices when you are no longer there. \u201d\r\n    <\/em>\u2015 Aleksandar Hemon.\r\n \r\n \r\n\r\n\r\nAm I still here?\r\n Do you see me\r\n notch the oxide sunset\r\n like an ancient etching?\r\n \r\n I've always hunched here, under rain \r\n or low-scud cloud--\r\n\r\n\u00a0heard distant Hanley goose-honks;\r\n watched unhusked skinheads\r\n in a drunken slump stumble to\r\n their midnight dhansak shank\r\n \r\n and I used to dream of gathering the crazed hem\r\n of my brick-skirt \u00a0(a drey of cindered mesh\r\n that cloisters my nesh<\/em> in winter)\r\n\r\nto waltz at the moon in blousy damask\r\n and tease the bone-ash stars:\r\n to fang their quartzy flux.\r\n \r\n If I could speak\r\n I would talk in round vowels\r\n of wom<\/em> and dome,\r\n\r\nand I'd ask you to stay--\r\n\r\nbut my throat is damp with rain\r\n without the rasp of caulk-smoke\r\n from my clayfire belly.\r\n \r\n If you must leave me, then do it quick\r\n before you see me untruss myself\r\n brick by brick \r\n 'til I am just a spill of sheeded<\/em> powder\r\n whispered on history's lips \r\n like a cipher.\r\n\r\n\r\n Do you see me?\r\n Am I still here?<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong>I also asked colleagues and students to submit their poems today, and these poems show that we are all different; our poems are different are as different as we are. We have poems here that are political, historical, formal, informal, experimental, observational; there is always time for poetry. \u00a0I hope that you enjoy them:<\/p>\n
\"poem\"<\/a>
\nby Kay Deakes \u00a0(Admissions & Enrolments)
\nClick on the poem to view as high-quality image<\/em><\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
\n
EL SALVADOR  (1979)<\/strong>\r\n\r\nby Margaret Leclere (Senior Lecturer in Screenwriting)\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\nOh El Salvador<\/em>\r\nWhat do I know of it?<\/em>\r\nPictures on TV<\/em>\r\nDarker people dying,<\/em>\r\nSuffering and crying.<\/em>\r\nWhat do I see of it?<\/em>\r\nFlesh wounds are a blur<\/em>\r\nA stain of red, a wail of dread<\/em>\r\nGunshots whistle over whose head?<\/em>\r\nWhat do I feel of it,<\/em>\r\nCuddled on this couch?<\/em>\r\nMy cigarette is out,<\/em>\r\nUncomfortable, I shift about.<\/em>\r\n\r\n\r\nA young man tells his tale, sharp-featured,<\/em>\r\nTorture too terrible.<\/em>\r\nThey always suffer, those with dark eyes,<\/em>\r\nThey always have. They hardly feel it.<\/em>\r\nWe\u2019ve seen too much of it.<\/em>\r\nI wish I could get comfortable.<\/em>\r\nWhat does it do to me, El Salvador?<\/em>\r\nThere\u2019s a pain on my poor face,<\/em>\r\nI see no pain on yours:<\/em>\r\nYou\u2019ve seen too many faces crushed by the wheels.<\/em>\r\nYou don\u2019t wring your hands,<\/em>\r\nHands bound by the thumbs or with fingernails pulled off.<\/em>\r\nThose eyes plucked out were bright before,<\/em>\r\nLegs cracked moved swift before,<\/em>\r\nLips so swollen kissed before.<\/em>\r\n\r\n\r\nHow stupid the sad clown, or the happy clown.<\/em>\r\nHow despicable our sentiment.<\/em>\r\nBlubber lips, wet eyes, near tears,<\/em>\r\nHangdog, slouched, insomniac.<\/em>\r\nPoor kleptomaniac, megalomaniac,<\/em>\r\nPoor pre-menstrually tense, agrophobe, claustrophobe.<\/em>\r\nPoor me. Deprived, depressed, oppressed, obsessed.<\/em>\r\nDespised. Long pig.<\/em>\r\n\r\n\r\nEl Salvador.<\/em>\r\nThere would be pleasure in the cry<\/em>\r\nDid it not stick at my throat.<\/em>\r\nI would love<\/em>\r\nTo pad gently through Noddy\u2019s bubble world<\/em>\r\nWhen the giant has made the soft snow fall<\/em>\r\nAnd call, scream, blow it all away<\/em>\r\nWith the cry \u2013 El Salvador.<\/em>\r\nLamposts would fall, engines would stall,<\/em>\r\nPretty lace curtains would crinkle and curl<\/em>\r\nAnd a crack would travel up the wall.<\/em>\r\nThe dome burst, for El Salvador.<\/em><\/pre>\n<\/blockquote>\n
 <\/p>\n
[p.s.\u00a0 Margaret wrote this when she was a student in response to the 1979 events in South America.]<\/p>\n
\"more\"
\n<\/a>by Kate Moore, Level 6 Creative Writing.
\nClick on the poem to view as high-quality image<\/em><\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/strong><\/p>\n
Vogue Brides<\/strong>\r\nby Kerry Jackson\u00a0\u00a0 (Level 4 English and Creative Writing)\r\n\r\n\r\nVogue brides blushing since 1910.\r\nEach dress, each decade just as dramatic.\r\nGirls still scarpering, now and then.\r\nDesigners faultless, flaunting and charismatic.\r\n\r\nRoaring twenties birthed Bara, bobbed brides.\r\nForties gowns were war filled simplicity.\r\nThe Valium lovers of the sixties, veils headlined.\r\nThe naughty women wore bold for publicity.\r\n\r\nBeneath the twenties were unseen rompers.\r\nForties barely seen girdles revolutionary.\r\nMaidenform the sixties liberal enough for an encore.\r\nThe thongs of this decade everyone but he would see.\r\n\r\nNearly virginal, probably pregnant, almost reluctant.\r\nAt least she got to wear a dress so decadent.\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n[Inspired by the title Brides in vogue since 1910<\/em>]<\/pre>\n
 <\/p>\n
Writer and Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing, Paul Houghton offers his thoughts on his favourite poem, \u201cMemories of West Street\u201d by Robert Lowell<\/p>\n
 <\/p>\n
It\u2019s worth it alone for the line \u2018<\/strong>Like the sun she rises in her flame-flamingo infants\u2019 wear.\u2019<\/p>\n
But it\u2019s a great poem about middle age disappointment, crime and hospital incarceration! I love its stories within a story structure and blazing images.<\/p>\n
In 1990, when I was staying in Boston, I met Lowell\u2019s best friend, a wonderful man \u2013 a painter named Frank Parker. He had sad but fascinating stories about Lowell excitedly reciting his poems in the kitchen while he (Frank) and his wife were trying to retire to bed!<\/p>\n
\"lowell\"<\/a><\/p>\n
Memories of West Street and Lepke<\/strong>\r\nRobert Lowell<\/strong><\/a>\r\n\r\nOnly teaching on Tuesdays, book-worming\r\nin pajamas fresh from the washer each morning,\r\nI hog a whole house on Boston\u2019s\r\n\u201chardly passionate Marlborough Street,\"\r\nwhere even the man\r\nscavenging filth in the back alley trash cans,\r\nhas two children, a beach wagon, a helpmate,\r\nand is \u201ca young Republican.\u201d\r\nI have a nine months\u2019 daughter,\r\nyoung enough to be my granddaughter.\r\nLike the sun she rises in her flame-flamingo infants\u2019 wear.\r\n\r\nThese are the tranquilized Fifties<\/em>,\r\nand I am forty.\u00a0 Ought I to regret my seedtime?\r\nI was a fire-breathing Catholic C.O.,\r\nand made my manic statement,\r\ntelling off the state and president, and then\r\nsat waiting sentence in the bull pen\r\nbeside a negro boy with curlicues\r\nof marijuana in his hair.\r\n\r\nGiven a year,\r\nI walked on the roof of the West Street Jail, a short\r\nenclosure like my school soccer court,\r\nand saw the Hudson River once a day\r\nthrough sooty clothesline entanglements\r\nand bleaching khaki tenements.\r\nStrolling, I yammered metaphysics with Abramowitz,\r\na jaundice-yellow (\u201cit\u2019s really tan\u201d)\r\nand fly-weight pacifist,\r\nso vegetarian,\r\nhe wore rope shoes and preferred fallen fruit.\r\nHe tried to convert Bioff and Brown,\r\nthe Hollywood pimps, to his diet.\r\nHairy, muscular, suburban,\r\nwearing chocolate double-breasted suits,\r\nthey blew their tops and beat him black and blue.\r\n\r\nI was so out of things, I\u2019d never heard\r\nof the Jehovah\u2019s Witnesses.\r\n\u201cAre you a C.O.?\u201d I asked a fellow jailbird.\r\n\u201cNo,\" he answered, \u201cI\u2019m a J.W.\u201d\r\nHe taught me the \u201chospital tuck,\"\r\nand pointed out the T-shirted back\r\nof Murder Incorporated\u2019s<\/em> Czar Lepke,\r\nthere piling towels on a rack,\r\nor dawdling off to his little segregated cell full\r\nof things forbidden to the common man:\r\na portable radio, a dresser, two toy American\r\nflags tied together with a ribbon of Easter palm.\r\nFlabby, bald, lobotomized,\r\nhe drifted in a sheepish calm,\r\nwhere no agonizing reappraisal\r\njarred his concentration on the electric chair\r\nhanging like an oasis in his air\r\nof lost connections. . . .<\/pre>\n
From Selected Poems<\/em> by Robert Lowell, published by Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Inc. Copyright \u00a9 1976, 1977 by Robert Lowell. Used by permission.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Today is National Poetry Day, and I spoke earlier on BBC Radio Stoke about my poem, \u2018Kith and Kiln\u2019, which his written from the point of view of a pot-bank. Viewing Stoke as an outsider, I am always struck at … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":313,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3710],"tags":[4273,40447,168293,171047,171049,171050,40427,171048,171051,171044,40431,171052,40433,5862,16075],"class_list":["post-671","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-events","tag-bbc","tag-creative-writing","tag-english-and-creative-writing","tag-kate-moore","tag-kay-deakes","tag-kerry-jackson","tag-lisa-mansell","tag-margaret-leclere","tag-national-poetry-day","tag-nationalpoetryday","tag-paul-houghton","tag-poet","tag-poetry","tag-radio-stoke","tag-staffordshire-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/313"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":684,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671\/revisions\/684"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.staffs.ac.uk\/ecw\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}