Friday 27 March 2015

FASHIONING WORD NECKLACES

Recently I was asked why I never enter poetry competitions. I hadn't got an answer, after some thought I replied that this blog acts as a conduit for my work. It is an effective means of reaching people and that, after all, is what its about. So thank you for reading this.

A poem about creation. It is dedicated to the great Oscar Sparrow, a poet of note, of great skill and beauty, that sadly we do not hear enough from at the moment. You can read his blog here.


for Oscar Sparrow

Like us, they speak their words on paper,
it is possible they take longer in the choosing
than these you now read.
Each is carefully selected for sound,
shape, and something only the author is aware of.
Naturally their verse will passport them to the centre.
We are on the outside, beyond the margins,
breathing life into metaphors,
fashioning word necklaces
to decorate our World Tree.
Next a vignette that is half true.


So here I am, sat in this nearly empty pub,
and he's talking about Friday night discos.
How he would come here hoping to bed a foreign student,
to be her brief exotic, erotic interlude.
We've both seen better days, he confides,
but back then this place had class.

I think every poem is composed of the real and the imagined. We draw on life and from inside and fashion these word necklaces.

Here's Oscar reading.
Post Script:
On Tuesday I am pleased to be publishing a guest post by The English Sisters the authors of a series of best selling books that deal with stress management.

2 comments:

  1. Paul - thank you so much for your kind comments. Your poem above is totally out of you. Back then, I guess, we all had more class - but the classes were smaller and the mobility was sociable. Who knows when the best days are - he confides.

    31 March 2015 at 19:20

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  2. The best days Oscar are not known until they have passed. I am glad you like the poem. As you say we now look back on what we took for granted at the time and thought was eternal as, what it was, a golden time. The question we must ask is how did we let them steal the fund that was held in common for all and transmute their base greed into a virtue.

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