Launch event pics...

The 'Did I Tell You?' Launch Event...

was a magical evening full of amazing poetry. Over 130 people came along, including over 50 contributors, and we were treated to some wonderful readings, which really brought the poems alive. The readers were:

• Dorothy Fryd: Dusky
• Gary Studley: Mine
• Alison McNaught: Elephant
• Wendy French: From We Have a Little Sister and She Hath No Breasts (Song of Solomon)
• Michael Curtis: Christmas Concert
• Megan Watkins: Sharing a Shell
• Vanessa Gebbie: Her on the Corner
• Mark Holihan: It’s Rose
• Victoria-Anne Bulley: The Photograph
• Vicky Wilson: Migration
• Abegail Morley: Make Me Love You
• Nicky Gould: The Spoils of War
• Daphne Gloag: The Children’s Charity Concert: Matter and Antimatter
• Sue Rose: The Labour Room
• Patricia Debney: Half Shell for Molly
• Lorraine Kashdan-Lougher: My Daughter Taught Me Gravity
• Harriet Proudfoot: Bone Vibrations, Harvest
• Lyn White: Robert’s Blossom
• Jeremy Page: Seeing Cats
• Jo Field: Mirror Moons
• David Herd: And Some Might Call It Singing

'Did I Tell You?' in action!

Myra Schneider and Janice Fixter read their poems from Did I Tell You? at the Poets Anonymous Festival in October. Myra Schneider

Janice Fixter

Black Swan by Roger James

Black Swan

You took your time coming. It’s 44 degrees
in the Blue Mountains, Eucalyptus explodes
as you struggle up and down your mum’s stomach,
banging on her heart , one thumb in the mouth,
ignoring ultrasounds and alarmed academics,
irresponsibly kicking the placenta to one side,
enlarging the liquor-dome till she can’t walk,
cannoning hormones, borrowing her oxygen.

And we were up on the snowy side of the planet
waiting for the sun’s penumbra to shift to Spring,
until that morning we saw a black swan on the lake
and I knew you’d come out yawning and calling,
the exception that would not be put off, one of
those things you rely on when the world seems stuck.
You’d opened your eyes. Another explosion.

Roger James

The Builder by John Lyons

The Builder
1
He observed men building houses:
how they cleared ground
for digging to bed-rock.

He watched them balancing,
with the body’s knowledge,
pillatrees on steep slopes.

He marvelled at the way
things came together with intimacy
of halving joints, mortise and tenon,
constructing a logic men live by.

For a long time he stood beneath immortelles
in awe with corn birds weaving hanging nests;
he knew then it would take a life-time
of ingenuity to build the house
he wished to grow wise in.

2
It was hard work digging a pit of clay,
dancing in the straw with bare feet,
pugging mortar to shape rooms to his desire.

As he danced, he dreamed of moulding
a room around silence, a place in which to foetal-curl,
suspend thoughts of how to survive;
another, without corners,
walls smoothed to a mirror
with the friction of love.

He danced dreaming
of the one where he would store
the things he had given power to:
an owl’s mummified wing,
his navel string, never planted,
withered like a dead yam vine;
the cosmic pebble, like a bull’s black eye
that almost struck his father down.

The last room was for his mother.
She died when he was nine.

John Lyons

Fittings by Frances Knight

Fittings

A pink striped sailors suit,
gingham dirndl, a dogtooth coat –
even once, a denim bikini.

So many outfits there’ve been
my progress mapped and measured
in cool, smooth tailor's chalk,

until the day I stood fidgeting
in paisley needlecord, all shades of red
my mother pinning me at the hemline:
stay still, stay still why don’t you

Realising that although the dress was perfect,
I no longer fit.

Frances Knight

Thanet launch event

Maggie Harris is organising an event for us on Friday 3 December 7pm - 9pm at Hilderstone Adult Education Centre, Broadstairs.