Nick Cooke: Rejected Poems
Back they come, limping, licking their wounds,
in need of validation, which they’ll get,
provided I can conjure the right words.
I point to their companions, some of whom
have only made it through after years, even
decades of disappointment, while others lurk
in no man’s land, still with my belief
in them intact, but out there stranded, homeless.
Once in a while I have to draw a line,
when realising there’s no longer hope.
I feel like a football coach telling a youngster
their option won’t be taken up, and have they thought
of taking a course at their local FE college?
But you can’t say that to poems, and even if
you strike them from your files, they linger
silent, reproachful, in the harsh folds of memory.
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L.A. Mereoie: Submission Fatigue
(A Dyspeptic Diatribe)
Down with the lot! The chopped up prose brigade
Who think amorphous gloop will never fade
And puts the work of past years in the shade!
Ban counters out of syllables, not beats,
Plus those who think they have to copy Keats,
French forms fanatics’ tedious repeats!
And bar the parodists, the comic crew,
The misery clan, each stanza pure boo-hoo,
‘Performers’, all non-sequiturs and goo!
Oh for a foolproof barrier to stop
The hordes who furnish fervid formless slop
Or rambling reams of metrical clip-clop!
When will the poetasters’ pixels cease,
The daily drivel-deluges decrease
And let poor slush-pile skimmers rest in peace?
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Barbara Loots: Give It Up, Gertrude
Too many poets on a given day
Invade the internet – the modern way
Of publishing what people call their truth
About an awful childhood or lost youth
Or love gone bad or miserable vay-cay.
Your work deserves a popular display?
A book in print? A Pushcart Prize? Oy veh!
Those literary editors are ruthless
To many poets.
Metre, metaphor, rhyme, witty play
On words? Such old conventions are passé.
Your diction must be casual, uncouth,
And use a lot of f-words – not forsooth!
The canon’s dead. Besides no one will pay
Too many poets.
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Jeff Gallagher: Auden To The Rescue
From the editor – snark remark
on my employment of caesura –
(He meant a stop. Halfway.) – that pest,
that top dog in the Oxford claque,
that dunce, that ponce, that flannelled Fuhrer.
He started it, some witty quip
on dainty dactyls I deployed –
(He meant a foot that’s stressed. Unstressed.
Unstressed.) – he pouts, and thinks he’s hip,
this vain, verbose and vacuous void.
He started it, dismissed in turn
my metre, assonance and rhyme –
(The sounds of words. Their song. Their zest.) –
he said I had too much to learn,
and he to teach too little time.
He started it, this stupid row:
what poetry is, and what it ain’t –
(It’s speech made memorable, says Auden –
the journey to the what and how –
why writers write and artists paint.)
Yes, he started it, by choosing work
deliberately cliquish, clever –
(To read it brings on sleep, or boredom.) –
and signs up every pompous jerk
who wants this trash to last forever.
No argument – just loads of bluffing –
such double-barrelled elitist snobs
cannot be fought – (yet still we laud them,
canting cantos, padding, stuffing) –
but someone’s here to shut their gobs.
“Leave it to me!” (They’ve resurrected
W.H., that gay old cronk, as
mentor, friend and great sword-crosser.)
“I’m back – to keep poetry protected
from weirdos, whizzes, wits, and plonkers.
l finish them – we do not care
for lines in shreds, and thoughts in tatters –
(Trust language – never try to boss her) –
for every poet with thoughts to share,
to rhyme is fine, and rhythm matters!”
Pretentious oafs! They take the piss,
because your scansion neatly fits –
yet praise the dull, illiterate dosser,
hiding their faults with artifice –
who are these condescending twits?”
Instead we have ‘free verse’ – it’s stinking,
unreadable, a pile of turds.
Yes, I’m with Auden – he knew best -
about such ‘poets’ I am thinking:
“A culture is no better than its words.”
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Paul Millan: The Dunning-Kruger Effect
I feel it rise, the fire inside;
I try to douse the flame in vain;
I’m captured by a sense of pride;
it swells and swells inside my brain.
I tell myself that I am great
and destined to be so by fate,
then click an editor’s reply
that says: “Good luck on your next try.”
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Martin Parker: Poet In Tantric Residence
A poet needs a residency. All my friends had said
That if one can be “In Residence” one gains a lot of cred.
So I typed out applications till my brain and fingers bled
But found no vacant Bardic Chair or Residential Bed
On which to lay my under-valued jobless poet’s head.
But then I got a letter signed Miss Whiplash, (Pain and Dread),
From the Tantric Massage Parlour down the road.
Concern rang loud alarm bells and my wife was none too keen.
She said she’d rather not be told about the things I’d seen;
But turning down the offer might seem just a little mean.
So I told her, though it might be hard, I’d try to keep it clean
And do no more than just record the basic massage scene
While ignoring all the girls who did strange things behind a screen
At the Tantric Massage Parlour down the road.
Miss Whiplash reeled me in just like an angler to her net.
She said if I recorded all the strictest tasks she’d set
I could cover her with couplets and a torrid triolet,
While a vicious villanelle might clear my HMRC debt,
And a sequence of sestinas might very well be met
With a latitude of gratitude I’d only ever get
At the Tantric Massage Parlour down the road.
She took me on and very soon my poetry flowed pell-mell.
Now I’ve publishers in dozens who are begging me to tell.
But I’ve been told a gentleman should never kiss and sell.
So I’ll leave you to imagine what they do so very well
At the Tantric Massage Parlour down the road.
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David Bernard: Peering Into Ledbury’s Poetry House
Idly, I strolled along Ledbury’s High Street,
Remembering poetry’s golden elite.
The Poetry House – I didn’t dare stare –
Wondering what on earth happened in there.
A few folk inside; I imagined they spoke
In couplets that rhymed, wearing top hat and cloak:
Alfred, good plumber, do be a dear –
See to the leaking commode over here.
A Victorian lady saw me outside,
She noticed me waver, my hesitant stride . . .
Liz was her name, or that’s what she said,
With a glint in her eye and a flawless rhyme:
We only converse in couplets in bed –
In quatrains we speak the rest of the time.
A pretender poet, I returned with an ode.
I summoned up courage in top hat and cloak.
They politely smiled, and nobody crowed,
Who on earth is this ridiculous bloke?
A moment or so later I spotted my blunder.
They ushered me in and then sat me down:
It’s not costume and guise but insight and wonder
We seek in the poets of this welcoming town.
But of course, none of this was uttered in verse –
We really couldn’t think of anything worse.
