BRISTOL POETRY ANTHOLOGY 2018
Edited by Anjum Nahar, Alexia Kirov and Gemma Waldron. With thanks to Dr William Wootten, the Department of English, and the Bristol Poetry Institute. Cover art by Rosa Stevens.
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Welcome to the Bristol Poetry Anthology 2018 Thank you to all this year’s contributors. We received many high-quality submissions but sadly could not print them all. It was wonderful to see so many students engaging with verse, especially during the demanding summer exam period, and we are pleased to showcase their writing in this anthology. We are delighted with ‘the desk’, generously contributed by Bristol Poetry Institute’s Writer in Residence, David Briggs. David received an Eric Gregory Award from the Society of Authors in 2002. His first collection, The Method Men, was shortlisted for the London Festival Poetry Prize, and his second, Rain Rider, was nominated in the Poetry Book Society’s Winter Selection. David has kindly presented poems from the workshops he ran last spring, including brilliant contributions from his postgraduate students. We are very grateful to the Department of English for their support, without which we would not have been able to create this anthology. Finally, our deepest appreciation goes to Bristol’s very own Dr William Wootten, whose guidance and enthusiasm underpins the anthology. The editors would like to extend personal thanks to Dr Wootten for teaching enlightening and often amusing seminars, some of the fruits of which can be found in this collection.
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Contents pp. 6-7
David Briggs (Bristol Poetry Institute Writer in Residence) the desk
p. 8
Sam Anghelides Jack and Jill
pp. 9-10
Amy Cavender Daughter Dance
pp. 11-12 Sarah Chidgey The Vow Search Engine p. 13
Milo Clenshaw Plum Trees and Houses
pp. 14-15 Maddie Culver Nowhere in Particular Killing Time pp. 16-17 Billie Gavurin Solstice Uffington p. 18
Jessica Ginting Farmer’s Sonnet
p. 19
Hannah Green The Merchant of Venice
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p. 20
Pearl Jackson-Payen DELIRIUM ROSE 1
p. 21
Cian Kinsella I’ll come on from the toilets whilst you guys are on stage
p. 22
Alexia Kirov 238 Miles
p. 23
Lydia Melville Haiku Watering Can
p. 24
Anjum Nahar T
p. 25
Tom Nutting Episode of delirium on chronic cognitive impairment
pp. 26-31 Matt Prout Tokyo Silent Spring p. 32
Rosa Stevens Modesty Girls
p. 33
Luiza Walaszczyk Images
p. 34
Gemma Waldron MalmĂś
p. 35
Harry Webber Ask Google...
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the desk he’d spend hours just sitting at it whole mornings not thinking not really of anything wet afternoons watching wind through the windowshutters in its waltz with the trees in next door’s garden he’d positioned his writerly bottles Tarot pack Hanuman each had its place walls of the room in which bookroom red chair
talismen
ink paperweight
and the booklined the desk sat were his milk-white Eames
perfectly square to the typewriter on the desk sometimes he’d rise for a moment to make delicate adjustments to the rug or the books on the shelves but then he’d return to the desk and when the house of which the room around the desk was a part attention of one kind or another it everyday the street house partially comprised room housing the desk hum away
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required he begrudged of
the
on which stood the bookroom-red would
at its enticing routine the siren-voiced city itself to lure him back life but he knew his station to get along without him was
in vain might threaten into the undesky they’d have what he had to do
keep turning up keep watch at the desk any day now he’d say any day now and having kept watch so faithfully so long he wasn’t about to miss a shift for how he reasoned would he ever forgive himself if one truant lapse the moment that appeared his long-desired Truth in her platform heels for a few dancing seconds desk
happened
to
coincide
burlesque
with She girl
and black silk corset on the
David Briggs
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Jack Without Jill The bucketed water Must cascade down unattended. But next to me, dumped, vacated, broken me. We pushed the rocks up – over and over. The water stopped. The rocks then dropped. So daft of me, to chase the stones:“No! Stop the Rocks!” For as the chase occurred, the rocks returned to the bottom of the mount. And that’s where my crown broke. You weren’t there by me. Or the rocks. Not anymore.
Sam Anghlides
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Daughter Dance
A Face Of Worry. My body leans To wards the silent Sea. Cardigan scratches My chest, it’s itching. Arm outstretched and now I can feel sandy sea foam On my skirt, it hugs my hips. Fin gers shiver in salty air. My skirt softly swishes in the wind; The pinstripe parade shimmies Back and forth, side to side, like Dancing legs bent at the knees One For One Back Shi Shoes sand-filled
leg wards leg wards ning and socks.
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Sea Looks Nice. It is very Cold. My Tummy
is
Chilly in
the
Wind. I want
to
Be like Mummy. I Like our matching stripy skirts that go swishy swish. One
For One Back
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leg wards leg wards
Amy Cavender
The Vow ‘I do’, she stuttered And then there was a scream The silver, flickering, candles The spotless scalpel gleaming
Sarah Chidgey
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Search Engine Characters glow before me, visions on screens, Ellipses and widows suspended in cyber-formalin, Word doodles archived in perpetuity, interrogated By descendants unseen and present-day schemers, Uncovering broken-hearted ripostes and frozen emotions, With the glazed look of the late-night unfriended. Ignite the synapses of the patient! Blow over the grey, fossilised, carbon! Knowledge is the new economy, Value shifts each time it’s detected Eureka! Someone, somewhere unearths a photo, Neurons scintillate.
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Sarah Chidgey
Plum Trees and Houses In the garden there is a plum tree With more fruit than she can hold;
For weeks a year she fills my plate with Plum tart, plum jam, plum crumble And still
There are crates of them outside
Stolen by squirrels and the fat pigeon That can’t reach the bird feeder.
She says the sun always shines on her plum tree But there’s a patch of shade underneath
And you can sit below, hear the soft thud Of purple tennis balls on the grass. Already there is frost in the air When the last fruit falls;
It rolls away unnoticed, like every year, Rots quietly into numbing earth.
A few steps from here inside the house Where plum trees do not grow, She sits beside a bed
With the man who used to pick the plums (For all her jam and crumble)
And who held them gentle as a bird Who’s hand lies still in hers.
Milo Clenshaw
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Nowhere in Particular One footstep after another takes us further and further to nowhere in particular. Along the way, glimpses of pink gold and blue beckoning softly from blossoming meadows, and a few scattered dewdrops biding their time – quicksilver under the late summer sun. We’re almost done, and weary of walking our thoughts turn to drink, the gin we’ll brew with bitter fruit plucked ripe from the hedgerow. There’s a pub, we think not too far ahead; our journey’s best part, and the means to an end.
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Maddie Culver
Killing Time It was the fattest slug I’d ever seen I knew the salt would kill it. What I didn’t know, was how slowly it would melt on the doorstep Disgusted, I stood and watched it
Maddie Culver
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Solstice It was the longest evening of the year and even hours after the sun had dipped between the hills, to melt into the sea a fringe of muted colour played along the dark horizon: a blurred bruise of light staining the blackness. I sat till two watching that dim glow rest upon the waves and felt I understood something of life – something essential, not to be renounced or ever unremembered. Then I slept. It’s lost to me now, the gift of that night when twilight melded into twilight and the truth of things came close to me. I feel an edge of it sometimes, like the faint glow I saw upon the water. But the rest has gone beyond me, into something else I cannot call by name or summon back through photograph or memory. I know too
well,
such
moments
can’t
be
held
–
they
out into deeper swells of unknowing.
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Billie Gavurin
swim
Uffington Strangely beaked creature, knock-kneed and dog-tailed, stretching your crooked limbs across the hill; my mother, as a child, once made the climb up the steep footpath to your monstrous head to picnic on the roundel of your eye. Now, from the fly-flecked window of my train, distant and pallid, over rain-washed fields I see you like a ghost upon the land. I’m hot, and tired, and hurrying somewhere, the taint of town still on me – but the shock of your white shadow brings a sudden pang for the forgotten purpose and the care of those who cut you once, a metre deep, into the tender flank of Oxfordshire.
Billie Gavurin
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Farmer’s Sonnet I rake the pumpkin garden in my sleep: roots grapple me coiling round my feet mechanized visions of android farmers in leafy shells of crusted forest armor tough bark snails on ivy a flowing coat of dense greens rafflesias in their eyes. They load up the plump fruits on boats to be shipped away they wave goodbye sailing off into misty waters they watch as I rake the sterile soil fruitless and dry still asleep dreaming of when I’ll touch my ripened fruits watered from my eyes my goods my labour my love—all mine.
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Jessica Ginting
The Merchant of Venice (Delilah Acworth as Portia) Backstage they pray: Hail Muse, imbue us with Your light, and like a birth, blink twice it’s done, Lost Portia slides into Delilah’s eyes. Heroic lines slip from her burnished tongue, Hands spread like doves and thus say more than speech; Words are her gift made cold with hate as she Spits ‘jew’ from lips that stoop to kiss her love And now these words ring soft and full of grace, She moves us as we sit beyond her sight, So held and rapt though well we know the end Where love and hate and words combine to prove That we once weak may show our skill to save When it is love that drives salvation’s tongue Though hollow joy it is to see the damned So wracked with loss when we stand much the same.
Hannah Green
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DELIRIUM ROSE 1 That night I dreamt about climbing into thick magnolia flowers with petals like flesh, petals that breathed open and close and sucked me further into dizzying pink with every breath. I rubbed myself with yellow pollen. So many flowers who smile in the suns wake. I open my smiles and peel back several petals. Underneath something pulsates – something within pulsates. I hold the ruby red movements in my past. Fractural rainbow light wiggling ecstatic lines break the barriers of my skin raw ruby shining wounds turning into gateways and I open under the water.
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Pearl Jackson-Payen
I’ll come on from the toilets while you guys are on stage You need to introduce me first, I’m going to put my outfit on. My stomach is gone and I have to hurry on the toilet while the band starts …Shirt tucked; belt buckled; flies forgotten; whiskey watered – could you take this bag with my normal clothes back to my mum? Thanks cowboy hat just about sitting on my head. I’ll walk past the mirror without looking, leap on stage, and so will an American accent: Howdy Manches-Bristol! Y’all look beautiful tonight! Our friends will laugh and we’ll begin playing the first song. They love the look, they love the voice, they love the songs – but most of all they love the act.
Cian Kinsella
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238 miles I remember passing Heathrow and signs for Slough, then BBC London buzzing and fading. I remember towed caravans and Eddie Stobarts. I remember service stations with Premier Inns, petrol pumps and Burger Kings. I remember The Velvet Underground and Nico playing on an iPod Nano. I remember fox guts glistening by a central reservation, now and then, a National Express to Cardiff via Portishead. I remember lines and lines of traffic cones, an oil spill rainbow on the hard shoulder. I remember yellow fields and barriers bearded by weeds. I remember Little Chefs, horseboxes and ‘Mum, are we there yet?’ I remember a car in flames spinning like an escaped fairground teacup across three lanes of traffic and a ballooning clot of smoke. I remember your scream and then the road ahead.
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Alexia Kirov
Haiku A lotus flower grows and blossoms through the mud surviving its past
Watering Can A watering can is designed to cry. Its tears nurture and heal. You remind me of a watering can. Heavy in my hands. Filled with life. Ready to just pour out.
Lydia Melville
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T Is warm and brown in my old mug we’re hooked son of a bag (P.G. origins, mind) may need bashing, small spoon used now
— be kind
make pale and pleasing using English milk brownness bleached boldness weakened a symbol of crossroads mundane pillar of life I ask myself If supply ends will we miss his flavour?
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Anjum Nahar
Episode of delirium on chronic cognitive impairment Turning away with nonchalance to hide the fear and shame delirium brings, you fooled yourself. I quizzed you sad, beside your bed until – half understanding – you sang, then cried and called for mum. I didn’t explain your ACE or the SVD on your CT, because you’d soon forget. Seeing your atrophied brain and furrowed face, I did all I could: scrawled memantine, my desperate epithet.
Two weeks pass. You smile with me, almost in recognition. ‘Biscuits!’ you shout as you dunk them in the tea, with which you toast me. I ask about home and your cheer peters out. ‘Yes, that’ll be good’, I say. So now, again, two smiles collude, as I fool myself I’ve fixed you.
Tom Nutting
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Tokyo I In times of fire carpenters flourish. Ends meet. This model operates every 15 minutes. – They could not deprive the people of their obsession with beauty. Of wanting ponds, nicely arranged. II In Tokyo I am very tall and very sad. The days are bright. The metros sing. Happiness abounds on the surface of things. At dusk commuters fizzle. The lights’ premature glow suggests a good time I’m not having. Just like in the movies.
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III The man whose face is creased with a life of smiling serves me tongue and is, it turns out, racist. IIII You haven’t slept until you’ve slept in a black leather chair in the museum lobby. You haven’t scribbled until you’ve scribbled in Japan.
Matt Prout
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Strange Spring In the land of exhausted octopuses - not octopi boredom is redemptive. And vice-versa. Sex is an escape from sex. As Spring’s been at pains to remind us: the way out is out. That’s the easy part. The difficult part is realising we’ve been out all along, ruining our eyes looking in. In strange Spring snow lands on blossom, getting us all nostalgic and horny. The first dream is the dream itself, the second contains the interpretation. The wind blows through mid-morning, like I blew through the last three years of your life. Enthusiasm for potent contradictions is nearly back to pre-binge levels. Tell Tchaikovsky the news.
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The only escape from a sexualised culture, the poem might suggest, is to be found in reclaiming the erotic for the non-transactional sphere. Read another way, it is just happy to see you. Roland Barthes wrote: ‘Woman [not man?] is desexualized the moment she is stripped naked’. In this sense desire is killed – but not satisfied – at the moment of satiation. Consider also: criticism as the death of poetry, knowledge as the death of thought. The first poem is the poem itself, the second contains the interpretation. The writer, as a result of professional dissatisfaction, is residing in Korea. Sannakji is live octopus that has been cut into small pieces and served with its arms still squirming. Octopi, the supposed plural of octopus, is a favourite among quirky word enthusiasts, but it has no etymological basis. The form was created out of a mistaken belief that octopus is latin.
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‘April is the cruelest month breeding / lilacs out of the dead land, mixing / memory and desire stirring / dull roots with spring rain’ is the opening of T.S. Eliot’s wildly famous poem. A reference to Chaucer’s ‘Whan that Aprill whith his shoures soote...’ Eliot’s line is an ironic inversion of, and a lasting contribution to, the idea of the poet’s infatuation with spring. Spring and All was William Carlos Williams’ laconic take. Roll Over Beethoven is a 1956 hit single written by Chuck Berry, who died during the writing of the poem. The lyric ‘Roll over Beethoven and tell Tchaikovsky the news’ implies that Classical composers would roll
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over in their graves upon learning that their music had given way to rock n’ roll. ‘A person caught in a philosophical confusion’, Ludwig Wittgenstein is said to have said, ‘is like a man in a room who wants to get out but doesn’t know how. He tries the window but it is too high. He tries the chimney but it is too narrow. And if he would only turn around, he would see that the door has been open all the time!’
Matt Prout
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Modesty, Girls Before then we wanted to be older. Twelve year-olds in push up bras and heels, Disguising our fear behind foundation. Scavenging for some self-respect. Pleasing boys, yearning to catch up. “I’m not a feminist.” My school taught me more about rape culture than taxes. More about female oppression than politics. We didn’t learn with pencils and paper. We were taught, through two little words: “Modesty, girls.” Because my skin, my knees, my thoughts are scandalous. Because the boys in my class won’t be able to concentrate if I don’t cover up. Because my legs might cost them their education.
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Rosa Stevens
Images I She uses collagen creams now and there is some grey showing through nÂş 7.09 beige blonde But she still smells the same she still wears my little elephant necklace
II The night was killed by a thousand LED bulbs and mechanical humming I touched my chest – it was sticky from all the electrodes
Luiza Walaszczyk
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Malmö Fika stole the afternoon. Inky coffee spilled in my saucer under ceramic stained matte with halfmoon Pomegranate kisses that should have been ours. Gulls shrieked accusations at our gloved fingers stiffly fused grey-blue, grey-blue, jealously imitating the Øresund – a row of dominoes. Our bodies like young cities either side.
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Gemma Waldron
Ask Google.... i want to be alone do i have anxiety did the titanic sink how can i be sure i feel like giving up i have to go away is it right to go to war what would a nuke do do we have a problem has the world gone mad
Harry Webber
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Bristol Poetry Institute
Department of English: University of Bristol