Poem by Sara Impey

Sara Impey’s poetry collection, The Stitching Woman was published in 2023. It’s available from the Wivenhoe Bookshop, Red Lion Books, Colchester or by emailing Tom Fenton on tjhfenton@gmail.com.  Price £12, including p&p if ordering by email.

A poem from the collection is featured below.

Birch Airfield Composting Centre

We were drawn to its other-worldliness,
this field, back in the seventies.
My brother shot a spoof Cold War film

in the empty fen-flat bleakness,
with the runways arrowing into mist
and history sealed in its concrete slabs.

Now, in the featureless winter wheat
a planetscape has landed, whole,
an out-of-scale model of sci-fi scenery.

Un-Essex hills steam with Martian miasmas,
a microbial brew of prunings, uprootings,
clippings and trimmings,

the maceration of trees:
a season’s leftovers slow-casseroled
into peaks of tilth.

Dinosaur diggers bite into the mounds
or roller-skate robotically
round a rink of brown rime.

Hi-vis Lego men, tiny humanoids,
dwarfed by mountains of mangled greenery,
comb the foothills for plastic shreds.

Dodging past potholes of composted soup,
our trailer bumps up the ramp to be weighed.
‘Half a ton of your best, sir,’ you say,

stuffing a tenner in the cashbox’s mouth.
The digger roars broadside, blocking the sky.
An invisible god in his towering cab

sends a black cloudburst thundering down,
part missing his target, but nobody cares.
We shovel the spills for the hungry garden.

This was always a place of transit and change.
We rumble back on the crumbling strip
where pilots once took off to a real war.

Our next meeting – 21st February 2024

Our next meeting is Wednesday 21st Feb, 7pm for a 7.30pm start at Greyfriars Hotel, Colchester.

Parking is free – either in the hotel carpark or by presenting your ticket for validation from the public carpark just outside its gates. There will be no charge for the session but you are asked to purchase some refreshment from the hotel in order to secure our room.

Poem by Pam Job

In 2023, Pam had poems published in the online magazine London Grip, Twelve Rivers, Artemesia International Poetry Competition Anthology (Judge, Roger McGough) and in the Crabbe Poetry Competition Anthology (Judge, Tammy Yoseloff). The latter was a commended poem, written in response to Rachel Howard’s work of the same title in the Big Women exhibition, First Site, Colchester.

Some of the poems published in London Grip can be read at the following links –

• https://londongrip.co.uk/2023/03/london-grip-new-poetry-spring-2023/#job
• https://londongrip.co.uk/2023/11/london-grip-new-poetry-winter-2023/#job
• https://londongrip.co.uk/2023/09/london-grip-new-poetry-autumn-2023/#job

Clodia hears of the death of Catullus, published by London Grip, is reproduced below and was a Mosaic generated poem –

Clodia hears of the death of Catullus 

Oh, my youth, you’re gone! Your enigmatic odes
roamed every part of me, your punning modes
broke all the rules – and so did we. Obsession’s
not my bag, I like to keep things light. Passion’s
fleet of foot, so’s lust. Young studs, knocking my door 
day and night – or so you thought! Lesbia, whore.
You wrote me off as such but your last bequest
sent your sparrow-words to flutter in my breast. 
Now my heart’s flayed, my body aches, each day’s sky
fades into its night like a bruise since you died. 

The Roman poet Catullus (c. 87 B.C.E. – 57 A.D.) addressed many poems in hendecasyllabic metre to his older married lover, Clodia Metelli, calling her Lesbia.

Poem by Ed Alport

Last year, Ed had poems published by/selected for Wildfire, Littoral, Visual Verse, Stimulus:Respond, Acumen, Amethyst Review and Dreamcatcher. A few can be read online. See –

• https://amethystmagazine.org/2023/10/03/the-darkness-a-poem-by-edward-alport/
• https://foxglovejournal.wordpress.com/2023/07/09/a-valediction-edward-alport/
• https://www.stimulusrespond.com/

Ed’s poem, The Darkness, was published by Amethyst Review –

The Darkness

 
Darkness has never been my enemy.
Whatever the night could bring, the dark
Was solid, sure and safe. Four o’clock light
Is a deception, and four o’clock dusk
A temporary blip. We get it right,
The balance, only twice a year, if that.
 
These days, at nightfall, I welcome in the dark,
Wrap its sure and silent fabric round me, let it
Billow out behind me, my dark cape.
I stroke its velvet, finger its folds, take comfort
From its blanketing embrace. I feel no loss
When light fades its dimmer into twilight, and clicks off.
 
I have faith in darkness, in knowing that I don’t know
What I don’t know. What is there is all that light can show.

Poetry which travels… our next meeting

Our first meeting of 2024 will be at GreyFriars Hotel in Colchester (Wednesday 17th January 7pm for a 7.30pm start).

Sheena will be leading a workshop session on Poetry which Travels. A Word document has been circulated to the group with poems we will be reading and commenting on. Please either print this off or bring it on a portable screen to refer to during the session. There will also be the opportunity for some personal writing on this theme so please bring a notebook and writing tools. If you’re interested to join the group, please contact us.

There will be no charge for the session but you are asked to purchase some refreshment from the hotel in order to secure our room.

Parking is free- either in the hotel carpark or by presenting your ticket for validation from the public carpark just outside its gates.

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Poem by Stewart Francis

Over the next few weeks, we’ll be posting some of our members’ poems, starting with Stewart Francis.

Last year, two of Stewart’s poems were long-listed for the Vole competition/feature in a Vole anthology and a limerick commended in the Katrina Ellis Memorial Prize Limerick Anthology.

His poem, Chat Show, reproduced below, was selected for the ezine April foolery and mirthful May and can also be read here https://wildfire-words.com/afmm-poetry/#Stewart-Francis

Chat Show

‘Hi! It’s Chay’ (says Stess) ‘and Stess’ (says Chay).
‘Our guest? Jolly ROGER!’ Cheers from the Background
Boys. Roger claps those clapping him. Sound
is on max. Sits on his tucked-up leg, in that way.

Stess and Chay sit too close together.
(Must fit snugly into the telly screen.)
First they have to chat waggishly with Shireen.
‘Shireen, any good news about the weather?’

They’re all contracted to generate LAUGHS.
So Shireen tells us of one of her jokes:
that one about some famously far-out hoax.
The Background Boys explode, though the joke is crass.

‘Rog – going forward, what’s your new gig?’
(Stess knows already, but it’s part of the show’s con.)
‘We’re playing the Palladium next week, and on
Tues – HIS MAJ IS DUE!!!’ (Does a mock bow and jig.)

‘WOW!!!’ from Chay. And so the show proceeds:
plenty of name-dropping and in-yer-face gags,
music, clips, fibs, surprises – in case it all lags –
feed its ratings, image-craving and instant needs.

Workshop on Finding Freedom by Martin Bewick

Our meeting this month – Wednesday 18^th October, 7pm for a 7.30pm start – will be a workshop led by Martin Bewick,

The theme of the workshop is ‘Finding freedom’ – How adding experimentation and lightness of touch in our writing methods can help us discover authenticity and presence in our poetry.

We have reserved the Rose Room at Greyfriars Hotel which has small circular tables. However, if The Salon private dining room is still available when we turn up that evening, we will use that room instead. Greyfriars are not charging us for room hire, on the condition that we each buy a drink at the bar. The car park is free for customers.

September 2023 meeting at Greyfriars Hotel

This month we will be meeting for the first time at Greyfriars Hotel in the Venetian Lounge on Wednesday 20th September for a 7.30pm start.

Please arrive between 7:00- 7:15pm, if possible, so that drinks can be bought. You will need something to lean on such as a clip board as although there are comfy chairs the tables are low. Depending upon how many of us there are, we may ask you for £5 to cover costs.

Parking is free for customers, the gates into the private carpark are on the right as you enter the paying carpark. If the gates are shut then speak into the intercom explaining you are attending a meeting booked in the Venetian lounge and they will be opened.

The focus of the evening will be critiquing, please email poems to the Google group email by Monday 18th September in order for Karen to compile them into one document. You may wish to post a poem on the theme of refuge, but poems on any theme are welcome. Please bring a copy of the compiled poems as either a hard copy or on a tablet or phone.

Visions of Delight – workshop Thursday 22nd June

This month’s meeting at Firstsite has been moved to Thursday 22nd June (usual time 7.15pm for a 7.30pm start).

The workshop will be led by Anita Debska and is on the theme ‘Visions of delight’.

VISIONS OF DELIGHT

I would like to introduce you to 4 short examples of Polish poetry, in translation, ranging in date from the early 17th c. to the end of the 20th c.  They are written in widely contrasting styles, but are all concerned with vision and different ways of seeing persons we admire or love.  Two of the texts focus on the image of the eye, the actual eyes of a particular person; two are concerned with the beholder’s own way of seeing and the idea of ‘love at first sight’.  Before you encounter each text I shall invite you to co-operate in a brief playful pre-reading activity, intended to be entertaining but also, I hope, thought-provoking. Anita Debska

Meeting in May – feedback session

Our meeting 17th May 7.30pm at Firstsite is a critiquing session. Please send copies of poems for circulation by Monday evening and Karen will compile and circulate one document. Please remember to bring this document either printed out or on a portable device such as an iPad, as copies will not be provided. If you’re not a member and interested to join, please contact us https://mosaicpoetry.wordpress.com/contacts/