The Urban Poetry Challenge thread

[ViolentPanda]

It would be a mistake to set form as well as subject imo, youre going to be pushed enough to get people to contribute anything as it is.

Have to agree. Writing to form may be a great "academic exercise", but for me it sort of takes over from the theme as you try to fit to the form.

Maybe I'm just crap at writing poetry, though.
Actually, no "maybe" about it. The best I usually do is western haiku, barely-metered blank verse or limerick.

 

[ViolentPanda]

I would love to join in....but I just writing what I loosely call poetry. Any subject is fine...but I would have no idea what a sonnet is, nor do I care what a sonnet is. If I did I would have stayed on in the sixth form, back in the day, if they had allowed me to, which they never...So you'll have to count me out I'm afraid, I just liked the idea of sharing what I pretend passes for poetry...

Poetry is poetry. Whether it conforms to what "the academy" expects of poetry is totally irrelevant. It's about writing what's in your heart and mind poetically, and "poetically" doesn't necessarily mean writing in rhyme, in meter, or even for an audience.

 

[ViolentPanda]

It's sad when people don't even want to learn.

You can't live without learning. If you try to, you're not living, just existing.

 

[ViolentPanda]

"IMHO there is nothing working class about being proud of ignorance or subliteracy; to do so plays into the hands of those with more money and/or more power."

Who said I'm proud of ignorance or subliteracy? Though to be fair I'll let you know once I've looked up 'subliteracy' in the dictionary! ;-)

And I resent being accused of being proud to be ignorant, becausse that's just bloody offensive! The only thing I'm proud of is being working class.

All I did was state a fact that vocabulary is more limited that most poets, simply because a lot of poets are middle class, and an unusally large number whose books I read are university educated &/or work in academic fields, as teachers, or higher. Me? I left school at 16, and English Language is my one 'O' Level. Pardon me for holding my hand up and admitting I don't know as many 'fancy' words as others who might have been more educated than me.

TBF you kind of implied that you have a limited vocabulary because you're working class.
I too am working class and left school at 16, with an English language 'O' level, and a Maths CSE. Neither acted to limit my vocabulary.
As for poets you read, a lot of published poets are uni-educated. That's kind of a hold-over of poetry being seen as an academic form of writing by critics and commentators. Nowadays, though, there are plenty of published poets who aren't uni-educated. In fact most of my favourite poets aren't. I hate to imagine what William Blake would have written if he'd have been to uni, and as for Attila or Benjamin Zephaniah...

 

[sojourner]

Sorry, I was referring to published, as in actual books, not those in magazines, though I'm not knocking that as a lesser achievement, merely meant my comment referred to books on shelves.

I meant books, mags, chapbooks, and online

 

[Dulwich Mishi]

I meant books, mags, chapbooks, and online

And that's something I'd never heard of, before I started using the Poetry Library: 'chapbooks'???
Surely a book's a book?
It prompted this one from me....

"Books for Chaps"
So tell me
What are you?
Surely a book
Is a book
Is a book?
But not you.
You are a special book.
For chaps.
But what type of chap are you for?
The ones who are rather posh
Who go 'Jolly good old bean'
And ask me to 'be a good chap'.
Or perhaps a bit more
Rough and ready.
The sort of chap
Who wears Burberry
Goes to football
And says: 'Do you want some?'
So come on
What sort of chap
Are you?
Me?
I'm just a poet.
Not a chap.

 

[bandagedbrain]

Picking of time
dont care if its fine

A form to fill out
To ask what you're about
Ordering the date, don't be late
Spelling your fate

back in synch, link by link
mantras measured, convulsions severed
while time is tethered
A race case, someone elses pace
flagging in front, leading at back
whos time track, not mine.

 

[Greebo]

And that's something I'd never heard of, before I started using the Poetry Library: 'chapbooks'???
Surely a book's a book? <snip>

Er, no. Before paperbacks were around, there were large expensive books with durable (often leather) covers; far too expensive for a lot of people, and not very portable either.

If you wanted something smaller and cheaper, you bought it off the chapman - a sort of walking poundshop. Among the other assorted cheap and cheerful bits, these chapmen often sold pamphlets and booklets (aka chapbooks) printed in short runs, on the cheap (often no cover and with maybe 32 pages at most) which sometimes ripped off other people's material.

 

[Dulwich Mishi]

Er, no. Before paperbacks were around, there were large expensive books with durable (often leather) covers; far too expensive for a lot of people, and not very portable either.

If you wanted something smaller and cheaper, you bought it off the chapman - a sort of walking poundshop. Among the other assorted cheap and cheerful bits, these chapmen often sold pamphlets and booklets (aka chapbooks) printed in short runs, on the cheap (often no cover and with maybe 32 pages at most) which sometimes ripped off other people's material.

Thank you...always nice to learn something! ;-)

 

[Greebo]

Thank you...always nice to learn something! ;-)

BTW these were a handy way of spreading all sorts of juicy bits of gossip and scandal, what with being so easy to quickly tuck inside your clothes without making a telltale bulge.

 

[DotCommunist]

O come lucky April, I’m damp but not enough
Socks and mouth are dry.
Night draws slower through temporal trickery
Greenwich don’t mean time.

Fortunate fickle April, your greyslate skies
broken by lunchtime solar reminders
of what summer might be

The overcoat April? The summer jacket
filled with last years return bus tickets,
forgotten fag dowts?

Is it spring Miss April?

Can I wear the shorts and vest?

She doesn’t answer.

Cruellest month, my April

 

[DotCommunist]

BTW these were a handy way of spreading all sorts of juicy bits of gossip and scandal, what with being so easy to quickly tuck inside your clothes without making a telltale bulge.

chapbooks and quarterlies/almanacs/etc kept many a victorian jobbing writer in funds! Old Dickens was published so initially ennit

 

[Johnny Canuck3]

In the background, behind Youtube Bach
Fugue for lute is the rhythmic sound
Of the lustist's intake of breath
Audible between the spare rhythm
Of Baroque meter.
Mirrored by the breath of the listener
Regarding the screen
Alive to the rhythm
Putting in time
Alive to the final call of oblivion

 

[sojourner]

Rebellious Senescence

The cell awakens,
kindling skin.
Ignites to multiply, accommodate,
proliferate, then slows,
begins to slough;
falls
to
dust.

Becomes vacuumed,
brushed,
drowned in suds;
inhaled,
swept through global lobes,
500 million alveoli times the population;
consumed
in wholly communion.
Taken in on cosmic tongues,
we taste each others lives without consent.

Pelt that smiled, wept, worked and slept,
made love, made hate, contained
all the jewels of existence;
freckled flakes that danced,
clapped, birthed and bruised,
were wrinkled, inked, and sea-salted.
Melatonic particles within without collective mouths:
we carry friends and enemies,
painters, poets, scientists,
killers, kings and commoners,
of every hue and class.

We taste this day our daily flesh
for it rebels, refuses death;
loosens to accommodate,
to multiply,
proliferate,
to slough, to float,
to fall to dust,
to be consumed;
to resurrect.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Real poetry tears
a wound in a beating heart.
Blood-wash over the ink.

 

[sojourner]

Ooo I like 'blood-wash'

 

[DotCommunist]

I saw shadows on the moon
selene watches (from the wall)

rankled confused,
perturbed
Discombobulated

The shadow fell across a tranquil sea

When liquid silver etches darklit moments
so stark
delineates your thinking
you worry that she's shadowed

as if some constant became change
as if words in your mouth grew old
akin to the coin in hand
when gold is worthless.

in every shop worn year I see it rise
I see eclipse

 

[Cheesypoof]

people write their poems on here then.

 

[Dillinger4]

grey skies after blue
cherry blossom rain
today: autumn in spring

 

[May Kasahara]

Cuddling;
flesh of my flesh
the good, the best
their rounded limbs fill me
wildly, as if they can ever
roll over and around
those weeping holes in my armoury,
be my bandages,
best my memory,

be enough to paper over
the cracks, what was given
with one hand
never to give back

Fiercely
I hold them
to me, knowing too much,
too little of their fate,
trapped in the love of their bones,
their breaths, their laughs,
knowing honestly
it's late
it's not too late.

 

[Dillinger4]

 

[sojourner]

Fantastic poem May So dark but still shining with light. There IS a fierceness (not gonna say ferocity, that's wrong somehow) there. Love it.

 

[May Kasahara]

Thank you, from you that means so much (especially as your contribution to this thread is one of the most beautiful poems I've ever read and really touched me). It is also special because that's the first poem I've written in years, after totally losing my confidence, and instead of worrying it to death like I usually do, I wrote it in five minutes and uploaded without editing. I could feel myself wavering on the edge of a perfectionist/procrastinatory edit, so I told myself to stfu and just slap it up there.

 

[sojourner]

It's an amazing poem. I'm so glad you wrote it - and I hope this means you will write more. Sometimes, they do fall out like that - it's a mad rush of words that sometimes don't even feel like they came from you. But they did

And thank you - I really enjoyed writing that one. Gonna learn it to perform soon

 

[May Kasahara]

So, any thoughts for next month's theme?

 

[Steel Icarus]

 

[DotCommunist]

So, any thoughts for next month's theme?

I've been thinking about debt. It means more than money-debt. The debt you owe, the debt you could or couldn't meet, the concept of what is due to those worthy of repayment.

So debt.

perfectly fine if someone else has a theme but I have been obsessed with blood debt for the last three months. The idea that even should you hate someone, if you have blood debt with them and your society and personal honour demand it- blood calls for blood. Debts follow you. Sometimes capital follows more keenly than a blood debt.

But if if you owe in blood there is nowhere to hide, even in jail or on some island fishing community or lost in the scrub somewhere. If they don't come for you, blood debt will come for yourself. Forgiveness etc, thats never there.



anyway, choose yourselves but I vote for debt

 

[DotCommunist]

Dazed by the airstream, the passage ruffles
such wind! Such breath-sucked width of passage
fast, quick, silverfish cunning. To gasp.

Names of wind as names of god
Sirocco
Coriolis
Dervish

Is my breath my own?

 

[Cheesypoof]

I think most people are crap at poetry (me included).

 

[Cheesypoof]

having fun is fine