Month: July 2019

Broken Waters

~ oxfordbrookesuni


Most people drown
            without making
a noise or splashing. See me


here Baby, watch
            me lying
out plank, below the surface,


all that stillness, all that
            peace, see
how long I can breathe


down here alone. You must
            trust me,
I am your mother after all,


don’t think about the firefighter
            who lies
to the woman on the phone inside


the burning building, says he’s on his
            way up
to save her, then hands her brother


back the phone, tell her you
            love her,
knowing all his tears


won’t be enough to quiet the
            flames, I am
your mother after all, I am made


to do this. When the mother harp seal
            leaves its cub,
nobody calls it a mistake,


I have been at this much longer than
            twelve days –
just let me float here a while, Baby


you will still remember my face.
            It will be
the same one you wear every time


live cuts in such a way – the serration
            drags the exact
formation of ripples upon its shape.


by Amelia Loulli

We’re delighted to say that the Poetry Centre’s ignitionpress has just launched its three newest pamphlets by Joanna Ingham, Jennifer Lee Tsai, and Sarah Shapiro. You can read more about them and buy copies here.

Our International Poetry Competition is still open for entries until 2 September with two categories: Open and English as an Additional Language. Our judge is Jackie Kay, and you could win £1000! Find out more and enter here.

This week’s poet, Amelia Loulli, is one of the three poets to appear in the latest volume of Primers, a mentoring and publishing scheme which showcases the work of emerging poets (see more about the scheme below). This year’s scheme is open now until 10 September, and you can find out how to enter it on the Nine Arches website.

Amelia Loulli lives in Cumbria with her three children and an undisclosed, but significantly large, number of books. Her poetry was shortlisted for the Bridport Prize in 2016 and 2017, and last year she was shortlisted for Primers Volume Three. You can follow her work on Twitter.

In 2018, The Poetry School and Nine Arches Press launched their nationwide Primers scheme for a fourth time, in search of exciting and emerging talent in contemporary poetry, with Kim Moore and Jane Commane as selecting editors. After reading through hundreds of anonymous entries, and narrowing down the choices from longlist to shortlist, three poets emerged as clear choices: Lewis Buxton, Amelia Loulli and Victoria Richards. Primers: Volume Three now collects together a showcase from each of the three poets. It is an irresistible invitation to step out of ourselves and our bodies and drop your expectations on the dancefloor, to take the plunge on the rollercoaster-ride of grief, motherhood and new life, and to meet desire in all its outrageous, dazzling and joyous forms. Secrets, disclosures, changed names and brilliant disguises make a vivid, adventurous and often deeply moving selection of new work from some of poetry’s most talented emerging voices.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.

Doing the heart in Lower Five

~ oxfordbrookesuni


We try not to think of the cows, the empty churches
of their chests. Their hearts are grey now, filmed
and tubed, bigger than two fists and the air smells
like we’ve swallowed money, like we’ve licked
the edge of a knife. My partner retreats to the sickroom
so I probe alone, fingers where the blood should be, 
aorta a handless glove. The valves are bell tents
like Christian Union camp in the RE teacher’s garden,
each ventricle a mouth that opens again and again
when I squeeze it, the preacher from St Matthew’s
telling us he can help us speak in tongues. It’s heavy,
this meat, this site of love we haven’t felt yet
and I wonder if the cow did, if the beating quickened
for the bull, for the wet slicked nose of its calf.
The notes in my drawing are neat – mitral, tricuspid,
inferior venal cava – as if I’m striking a bargain
with knowledge, like the words will keep me safe.
Then it’s break and we can wash our hands, drop
our hearts in a bucket like the babies in the abortion
video they made us watch, let the portacabin,
its swollen walls, pump us out into the light.

by Joanna Ingham

You can hear Joanna read the poem here (scroll down).  

The Poetry Centre’s ignitionpress is very pleased to share with you a poem from the final one of its three new pamphlets to be published imminently! After we featured ‘Love Token’ from Jennifer Lee Tsai’s Kismet, and Sarah Shapiro’s poem ‘When I Turn Thirty, I Have an Epiphany’ from her pamphlet The Bullshit Cosmos, this week we feature work by Joanna Ingham that is included in her pamphlet Naming Bones. All three pamphlets will be available on Monday from the Brookes Shop and will be launched in London on 22 July and in Oxford on 23 July. Please join us for those by signing up here!

And don’t forget that we have launched our International Poetry Competition for 2019! This year we are delighted to say that our judge is the internationally-acclaimed writer Jackie Kay! There are two categories: Open and English as an Additional Language, and the winners in each category receive £1000. The competition is open until 2 September, and full details can be found here.

‘Doing the heart in Lower Five’ is copyright © Joanna Ingham, 2019. It is reprinted from Naming Bones by permission of ignitionpress. 

Joanna Ingham grew up in Suffolk and now lives in Hertfordshire. Her work has been published in Ambit, Brittle Star, Envoi, The Fenland Reed, Iota, Lighthouse, Magma, Mslexia, The North and Under the Radar. Her poems have also appeared in the anthology The Best British Poetry 2012 (Salt) and in ‘Poet’s Corner’ in The Sunday Times. She won second prize in BBC Wildlife magazine’s Wildlife Poet of the Year Competition 2008. She studied creative writing at Birkbeck College and was awarded the Michael Donaghy Prize for Poetry on graduating. In 2017 she was a poet-in-residence at London Open Garden Squares Weekend. 

Joanna also writes fiction and is represented by Thérèse Coen of Hardman & Swainson. She has facilitated creative writing workshops in a wide variety of settings including schools, day-centres for older people, prisons, drop-in centres for homeless and vulnerable adults, and with young and adult carers.

In Naming Bones, her engrossing debut pamphlet, Joanna Ingham writes of the things it is difficult to say – about bodies, love, motherhood, the past. Drawing on nature, and a tangible sense of place, she explores the relationships and moments that make us what we are. These are poems of the tongue and the heart, of finding voice and speaking revealingly about what we think we shouldn’t feel.

ignitionpress is a poetry pamphlet press from Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre with an international outlook which publishes original, arresting poetry from emerging poets, and established poets working on interim or special projects. Our latest pamphlets are by Joanna Ingham, Jennifer Lee Tsai, and Sarah Shapiro, and they will be published in July 2019. The first five pamphlets to be published by ignitionpress: There’s No Such Thing by Lily Blacksell, A Hurry of English by Mary Jean Chan (Poetry Book Society Summer Pamphlet Choice, 2018), Glean by Patrick James Errington, Shadow Dogs by Natalie Whittaker and Small Inheritances by Belinda Zhawi, are available from our online Shop. Each pamphlet costs £5, and you can buy three for £12. You can find out more about the poets and their work on our dedicated page.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.

When I Turn Thirty, I Have an Epiphany 

~ oxfordbrookesuni


*

I will forever be in second grade    acutely aware my classmates’ gold star
reading comprehension    voices sliding over words like snakes slither grass
great at self-flagellation    no one can hurt me like me    I deserve my
teachers’ neglect    my classmates’ sneers and taunts    I am not good enough
pretty enough    smart enough    to learn to read    each day my failure
reteaches me    the depths of my inabilities    my (dys)abilities
                                                                 

**

When I turn thirty, I still stumble aloud, mind ever split
between recognizing letters and

processing meaning, in tandem. What’s wrong
with me? stings the old shame.

I continue to try and out-chess my falterlurch,
my vocal careen, but I also lift

my chin and push my pawn
two daring spaces forward:

I ask myself how
do I think,

how do I get the
answer.

  

***

 

This year, I question friends on their hows of reading
and understanding. My classroom curse word 

reading comprehension is examined,
thought through, discussed.

Epiphany lands casually
one Tuesday afternoon:

reading out loud,
with ease and grace,
has nothing to do
with understanding.

  

****

 

It took me all these years to divine this    travel outside my own head
shame and into others’ vocality    others’ processors and understandings   

so I write this to remind myself to smile    when others read smoothly
and smile when I falter for you here and now    because
when I read    I comprehend    

  

by Sarah Shapiro

You can hear Sarah read the poem here.

The Poetry Centre’s ignitionpress is excited to share with you a poem from another one of its new pamphlets. After we featured ‘Love Token’ from Jennifer Lee Tsai’s Kismet last week, this week’s offering is from Sarah Shapiro’s pamphlet The Bullshit Cosmos. The pamphlet will be available later this month and will be launched in London on 22 July and in Oxford on 23 July. Please join us to celebrate the launch of Sarah’s pamphlet and the pamphlets by Joanna Ingham and Jennifer Lee Tsai. Sign up here  for the launches. 

Don’t forget that we recently launched our International Poetry Competition for 2019! This year we are delighted to say that our judge is the internationally-acclaimed writer Jackie Kay! There are two categories: Open and English as an Additional Language, and the winners in each category receive £1000. The competition is open until 2 September, and full details can be found here .

Sarah Shapiro was born in Chicago and lives in Somerville, MA. She is a poetry MFA candidate at University of Massachusetts Boston. Sarah also holds an MA in Place, Environment, and Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London, and a BA in Environmental Studies from Mount Holyoke College. Sarah’s academic career was not a guarantee; she grew up with learning (dys)abilities and did not begin to read until the age of eight. Now, her poems for this project explore the gap between those who read with ease and those who struggle to read.

Sarah believes that as many people as possible should have access to reading and writing poetry. She teaches university analysis and writing at Suffolk County Correctional Facility in Boston, undergraduate writing and the environment at UMass Boston, and an itinerant writing workshop at the Osher Longlife Institute for adult education at UMass Boston. She has completed a residency with Cove Park, and had an audio-text poem published in TIMBER. Her poems have also appeared in glitterMOB, SheGrrrowls, Bunbury, and Poetica Magazine.

The Bullshit Cosmos is a highly distinctive pamphlet that celebrates triumph over adversity, defiance against the system, success over predicted failure. The poems explore the gap between those who read with ease and those who struggle to read. Honestly written, they provide a starkly refreshing approach to our language in a poetry that is provocative and challenging, compassionate and engaging.

ignitionpress is a poetry pamphlet press from Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre with an international outlook which publishes original, arresting poetry from emerging poets, and established poets working on interim or special projects.

Our latest pamphlets are by Joanna Ingham, Jennifer Lee Tsai, and Sarah Shapiro, and they will be published in July 2019. The first five pamphlets to be published by ignitionpress: There’sNo Such Thing by Lily Blacksell, AHurry of English by Mary Jean Chan (Poetry Book Society Summer Pamphlet Choice, 2018), Glean by Patrick James Errington, Shadow Dogs by Natalie Whittaker and Small Inheritances by Belinda Zhawi, are available from our online Shop. Each pamphlet costs £5, and you can buy three for £12. You can find out more about the poets and their work on our dedicated page.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.

Love Token

~ oxfordbrookesuni

after Andrés Cerpa

If anything, I’m a witchy vagrant locked inside an
endless hall of mirrors, patterns and repetitions,
wandering. I’ve often been in the wrong place at the
wrong time, my wasted youth traded for a ghostly
ride in a fairground, crazy merry-go-round music
haunting my memories. Family, friends, ancestors and
spirits: light a candle when I’m gone, so the pretty
moths can come closer to the flame but not be burnt.
I don’t want to go, just yet. The moon is so elegant
tonight. All week long shit storms and hailstones
raged. Thank you for the damned and wild beauty
you have given me here, though most days I couldn’t
find the words to tell you, the way a Chopin
nocturne plays inside my head every time I think of
you. It remains unknown. I smash through the glass.
I leave you the key.

by Jennifer Lee Tsai

You can hear Jennifer read the poem here.

The Poetry Centre’s ignitionpress is delighted to share with you a poem from one of its new pamphlets, Kismet by Jennifer Lee Tsai. The pamphlet will be available later this month and will be launched in London on 22 July and in Oxford on 23 July. Please join us to celebrate the launch of Jennifer’s pamphlet and pamphlets by Joanna Ingham and Sarah Shapiro, whose poems will feature in the next two Weekly Poems. Sign up here for the launches.

Don’t forget that we recently launched our International Poetry Competition for 2019! This year we are delighted to say that our judge is the internationally-acclaimed writer Jackie Kay! There are two categories: Open and English as an Additional Language, and the winners in each category receive £1000. The competition is open until 2 September, and full details can be found here.

Jennifer Lee Tsai is a poet, editor and critic. She was born in Bebington and grew up in Liverpool. An alumna of St Andrews and Liverpool Universities, she holds an MA in Creative Writing with Distinction from the University of Manchester. Jennifer is a fellow of The Complete Works III and a Ledbury Poetry Critic.

Her poems are featured in Ten: Poets of the New Generation (Bloodaxe, 2017) and have been published in Oxford Poetry, The Rialto, SMOKE, Soundings, Ambit, Wild Court and elsewhere. Her poetry reviews are published by The Poetry School, the Poetry Book Society Bulletin, Modern Poetry in Translation, Ambit and Poetry Review. Jennifer is an Associate Editor for SMOKE magazine and a Contributing Editor to Ambit. She was a runner-up in Poetry in the 2018 Bi’an Writing Awards. Follow Jennifer on Twitter here.

Kismet opens with the poet as ‘the only Oriental at a primary school in Birkenhead’, a state of isolation – and rupturing of identity – intensified by the unfolding of both personal and ancestral traumas. But this is ultimately a work of hope and renewal. Jennifer Lee Tsai shows us how taking control of our own stories can create a profound sense of connection to life that transcends individual suffering.

ignitionpress is a poetry pamphlet press from Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre with an international outlook which publishes original, arresting poetry from emerging poets, and established poets working on interim or special projects.

Our latest pamphlets are by Joanna Ingham, Jennifer Lee Tsai, and Sarah Shapiro, and they will be published in July 2019. The first five pamphlets to be published by ignitionpress: There’s No Such Thing by Lily Blacksell, A Hurry of English by Mary Jean Chan (Poetry Book Society Summer Pamphlet Choice, 2018), Glean by Patrick James Errington, Shadow Dogs by Natalie Whittaker and Small Inheritances by Belinda Zhawi, are available from our online Shop. Each pamphlet costs £5, and you can buy three for £12. You can find out more about the poets and their work on our dedicated page.

Copyright information: please note that the copyrights of all the poems displayed on the website and sent out on the mailing list are held by the respective authors, translators or estates, and no work should be reproduced without first gaining permission from the individual publishers.