Poet, Black Bough Poetry nominee - ‘Best of the Net’ and Pushcart Prize. Scottish Centre for Geopolitics, Broken Spine Arts, Sidhe Press, So bored by Trump.
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ALT Government Advice Louise Machen Put the kettle on if you can afford it. Put the world to rights in an unlit room. Talk it out between a candle or two. After you’ve showered in the rain, layer up in clothes ingrained with damp and despair. Say that little prayer. Put the kettle on but invest in a new one, one that boils quicker: economically efficient. Think of the pennies you’ll save ignore the pounds you owe: this, my friend, is Britain – a brew will solve it all. Forget the cost of living, you’ll be lucky to survive but put the kettle on and keep those tea bags piling high.
ALT Sudden Wrong Words and a home is a house, a job is unemployed, a family is forcefully divided into separate locked rooms in a sentence. They are wrong words that have been here decades as correct names, lauded. Words cannot be spoken without consequence. Hard, fought for words now disappear from dictionaries, from histories. Freedom is accepted words.
ALT A recent photograph of golden rays of sun, now tinted prism rainbow, with my latest poem placed upon it: The fictions we tell ourselves Run deep - still waters disguised Underneath even the barest of skin Trust is a love beneath all of that Honesty is the courage within
ALT Clayton West The word Dearne means hidden. Muted it learns. Long linen fibers parallely flat, a sliver, put in a spin, that rollers churn into rovings, spun on the swirl and fast spinning frame of the current passed over by packhorse bridge, road and rail. Coal dust strands interweave, kneels and pickaxes loads river bank, for steam driven onward it demands, enters landscaped grounds of education and culture passed shaped holes and carved items, temporary respite, then into sun less dark, hot, small gap in earth, shook all time, cut and advance, shovel, blast, bore hammer home a soot ingrained face, a coal culture.
ALT Two Together We are sliced cherry tomatoes, salted. you're late dad made for you when you were young. Vintage cheese, with crunchy salt crystals.Toast wafted until cold so butter doesn't melt Marmite on buttered toast. Nothing fried, nothing baked. Peas and mash, cabbage all separated on a plate. I wish we were like mash ups. Things fried and baked. Unsalted. And after twenty years you ask: "I don't know why you're still here?"
ALT On The Edge, Opposite Porthmear Cove, Cornwall Sunning myself, perched on a glaring parapet, ribbons of colour like Alum Bay layers: the stepped-back hues of a cloudless sky, a sweating stretch of empty road, garish citrine sand. An American couple share this view: the Des Moines man, pinned down by a hissing oxygen line, curates his many hidden cancers. Europe, he explains, is a final trip together, as love and pain flow between them in the tiny tides of her gently squeezing hand.