Poetry-next-the-Sea - 2008 Festival

Image from WikipediaThe Poetry-next-the-Sea 2008 will take place on 2nd - 4th May 2008, and includes poetry readings and workshops and an open floor event. Directions to Wells-next-the-Sea from google maps can found HERE.

Contributors to the festival include:

Roger Lloyd Pack and Dame Gillian Beer;
Graham Ashworth;
cellist Eileen Ashmead;
Jack Underwood;
Sam Riviere;
Nathan Hamilton;
Agnes Lehoczky
and many others.

Booking is now open. To book tickets please pick up a brochure from a local library, or contact Susan Marshall on suzy948@btinternet.com

Telephone 01328 711813.

Festival season ticket, for all events except workshops £36 or priced individually.

See Festival Website for more details HERE.

Slam Poetry

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Rundown Britain

Rundown Britain

Lowestoft. Britain’s most easterly town,
The sign boasts as you cross the South border
Just before you see how much it’s run-down.

Police show no signs of keeping order.
With littered streets and rusty park railing,
Graffiti walls the signs of disorder.

Bare shops, local economy ailing,
Screaming for urban regeneration.
Even the charity shops are failing.

Symptoms of flunking administration,
Who hire expensive consultants who claim
They can save us from annihilation
And take the money and run with no shame.
I’m sure the most westerly town’s the same.

– John Nixon 2007.

Rate this Poem @ GotPoetry.com

TANKA

I have enjoyed writing the haiku’s, so I thought I would stretch my self a little more and write a Tanka or two. Here’s the first:

Rejection.

“I love you deeply”,
His tremulous voice withers.
She shrugs, turns and leaves.
Her silhouette melds into
The horizon as she walks.

Rate this Poem @ GotPoetry.com

Daily Haiku for Tuesday

Fiery coloured leaves
Dance to the tune of the wind
In haphazard twists.

Rate this Poem @ GotPoetry.com

Daily Haiku for Monday

Autumn is here, an
Inspiration to poets
Owed to the west wind.

— John Nixon 2007.

Rate this Poem @ GotPoetry.com

Daily Haiku

A haiku is a Japanese lyric form which encapsulates a single impression of a natural object or scene in seventeen syllables arranged in three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables. Writing a haiku every day trains your attention and your ability to capture a moment in a succinct form. So here is the first of my daily haiku:

Seagulls mocking call
Draws you to a pale blue sky.
I smile and wonder …

    — John Nixon 2007.

Sonnet - The Headworth Under fourteen Football Team

I was asked in my creative writing class to write a poem about a childhood memory in sixteen lines or less. The sixteen lines got me thinking of Tony Harrison’s poem ‘Marked with D’ which is a sonnet with sixteen lines rather than the usual fourteen. But then I realised Tony Harrison is a poetical genius and I am a beginner. So I decided to stick with the traditional fourteen lines. Anyway, here is my effort:

The Hedworth, under thirteen football team
Are gathered together near the band stand.
Waiting for the teacher, their Ibrahim,
Certain of guidance to the promised land.
Just like in the league we knew we would win,
Our faith firm. ‘It’s like a bye!’ ‘Too easy!’.
One step nearer to the final in Berlin,
So cocksure it was almost sleazy.
Then, we were told, ‘Our keeper cannot come’.
Like the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima
The words cut like an aweless blasphemer
And in a heartbeat were all stricken dumb.
Down to ten men we didn’t stand a chance.
A real humbling end to our cup romance.

— John Nixon 2007.

Metric Martyrs

In the sweet shops throughout northern England,
Metric Martyr  confectioners renounce.
And say ‘Up Yours’ in their unlawful stand
Selling Imperial mints by the ounce.

– John Nixon, 2007.

Debute Villanelle

I have been reading poetry for some time. However, I have never attempted to write anything down. Until now. I started a creative writing course today and tonight I have dedicated some time to write my first poem.
I decided on a villanelle, because I found the strict form easier to work with for a first attempt. Hopefully, by the end of my creative writing course I will have improved my usage of poetic devices and, I think, it will be nice to compare this poem with poems when I have completed the course. So without further adue, my debut villanelle, ‘Disease of Talentless Celebrity’.

DISEASE OF TALENTLESS CELEBRITY

 

In constant fear of mediocrity,
Nobodies are infected, with desired
Disease of talentless celebrity.
Bright young things loose all sense of faculty.
Watched by more nobodies, being admired
In constant fear of mediocrity.

Focused minds, unsure of reality,
Fuel and stimulate, symptoms of desired
Disease of talentless celebrity.

Can we instil, with a sense of verity,
That to be valid, they should not be mired
In constant fear of mediocrity?

The short sharp shock of actuality
Is the only remedy for desired
Disease of talentless celebrity.

Their belief in your incredulity
serves only to rebel, rant and deride
In constant fear of mediocrity.
Disease of talentless celebrity.

– John Nixon, 2007