Dear readers, apologies for taking so long to update, I’ve been flat out between work (1 x 16-hour day < fun) and other engagements.
Speakers Corner, part of the Emerging Writer’s Festival was an amazing amount of fun. I described it to one person as “Big Day Out for poetry”. Five stages, screaming poetry over the noise of passing trams on one stage, doing the next set sounding like Tom Waits, getting to see a bunch of my favorite local poets perform one after the other, it was a big big pile of fun. Hats off to the curators (amongst whom, Sean M. Whelan and Zöe Barron’s names are listed) and thanks to them for inviting me and making it such an awesome gig.
I really wish I had made it to the other gigs but I seem to be surrounded and buried in busy right now. Partially work and family doing it’s thing, other projects and my own writing get squished in there wherever I can fit it too.
In the mean time, here’s something I’ve actually been working on. It’s a response to an Ian McBryde poem called “Reports From The Palace“. McBryde fans out there will be aware he has several poems by that name, this is in response to the one in his book “Equatorial“.
(after Ian McBryde’s Reports From The Palace)
We are what remains after
attrition has come and gone.
Standing at the palace gates
fuelled by inertia, leaderless.
Behind us a trail of ash and cinders,
our last known command, ‘only forward’
It is not known how long this will last.
Faces in the palace windows
bearing the same look in their eyes
as we see in each other’s.
Waiting patiently,
with one last breath.
A wolf waiting to blow down a house.
Reading: This fortnight’s London Review Of Books
Listening: Billy Bragg podcast ep. 14
Hey Tim, just re-read this for the first time in ages, and had a fine laugh, lovely tongue-in-Hamliton-cheek! Let me know you’re out there old chum . . .
Be polite, but trust no-one,
Love McBryde
Still out here, working deep in the IT mines at the moment, you know how fun that is. Lovely to read you again, hope you’re doing well!
-TSH