Shameless plug

A plug, earlier today, and on the other side of the Atlantic

A while ago, Rosemary (my wife), Nash (internet-based friend) and I edited together a poetry collection from work contributed by members of the Poet's Graves Poetry Forum.  Ben (another internet-based friend) acted as publisher...

Skip forward three years or so and three of the above mentioned individuals meet up, quite by chance (and nearly a year's careful planning by Suzanne; another internet-based friend) with another seven or so members of the same forum, in the upstairs room of a central London pub.

Here we planned our inevitable takeover of Planet Earth.  Much eating, drinking, and poetry reading ensued.  And I also volunteered to plug the book.

Making Contact (Amazon)

There are great poems from twenty-five fascinating poets in there, including four from myself.  Just to prove the quality, peruse the following sample.

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Bottom Dead Centre


Intake

Ice-path uncles, sliding, come
to top-up stockings, sip sherry,
be knocked unconscious by the Queen.
The old year has been dripping
through the cracks in December,
now only one festival remains.


Compression

Fewer and smaller,
the uncles left for us to visit
dribbling in their rest-homes.
What troupe remains to get festive?
To turn up, unexpected? To decorate the tree
and give you socks?


Combustion

I give you socks
to wear outside your boots
wending from the crematorium
with the path caked in icing, decoration
a drain-pipe dribbled through its crack.
We spontaneously scatter Uncle Clive.


Exhaust

All the uncles scattered once,
when you aced and raced the new sled
of younger years. Now the pagan tree
is baubed with tears, as you tear the ribbon-paper.
Another pair of socks—useful. At our age
the ritual differs. The engine hesitates,
one year unsafely dead, and drawing-in
one drawn-out breath we wait
to long-live the new.