Salt Creatures

August 2, 2021March 22, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

We try at first to still the rush, the roar, but
as the swell reaches our chins we reconsider.
We will be sanded down, polished like seaglass
—the current rips and foams around us,

capricious. We boast burns shaped like open mouths,
blood-bright anemones on our necks, breasts; fingers swim.
I will drift with you over the ocean’s edge
—our shoulders gleam, dolphin backs silver

and leaping. Held in an exhaled breath, small mercy,
our closeness carves a grotto between us, shivering with thunder.
You are a salt creature, let your spine dissolve
—we curl up in a periwinkle.

It dawns. You ebb and unravel, leave me clutching at
cloudy handfuls of sand, that curdle in the air as I retrieve them.
You will hear my breath in every murex shell
—the sea cave in me roars, cracks—opens.

by Katie Byford
Listen to Katie Byford read ‘Salt Creatures’

This week we’re delighted to feature the first of three poems by new ignitionpress poets Katie Byford, Zein Sa’dedin and Fathima Zahra, all of whom have pamphlets forthcomingfrom our press. We’re very excited to be launching them (online) on Wednesday 25 August at 7pm BST and hope that you will join us! You can sign up for the Zoom webinar via this link.

In her new pamphlet, He Said I Was a Peach, Katie Byford’s vital poems resound with a chorus of restless voices. Stifled by male power and drunken violence, the women of these verses nevertheless speak, alive in Byford’s compelling writing. Persephone defies her ‘mud king’, Pygmalion’s creation describes her own drowning, Clytemnestra plots revenge in a hotel bathroom. Encountered alongside stories from contemporary life, myth embodies profound wounds which will not heal. Yet in this pamphlet, the women can be heard, enduring in their pain and fear and calling us to see them differently.

Katie Byford is a poet and filmmaker from London. She has a BA in Classics from Durham University, where she received the Maltby Exhibition Prize for her dissertation on Sappho’s work as translated and interpreted by contemporary poets and artists. She regularly delivers guest lectures at Durham on the use of Greek and Roman sources in her poetry. Katie’s poem ‘Appetit, for Persephone’ placed first in the open category of the 2020 Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition; her poem ‘Son, for Thetis’ was also shortlisted. She was part of the Barbican Young Poets from 2011 to 2014, and since then has worked extensively with the Barbican Centre, most recently delivering workshops and performing commissions for 2019 exhibitions AI: More than Human and Lee Krasner: Living Colour. Other commissions and performances include those at Durham Castle, the Wellcome Collection, Spread the Word and the Houses of Parliament. Her work has featured in Magma, Popshot, Modern Poetry in Translation and anthologies Hallelujah for 50ft Women (Bloodaxe Books) and She is Fierce: brave, bold & beautiful poems by women (Macmillan). Find out more about Katie on her website and follow her on Twitter and Instagram.

Established by Oxford Brookes Poetry Centre in 2017, ignitionpress is a poetry pamphlet press with an international outlook which publishes original, arresting poetry from emerging poets. Pamphlets published by the press have so far received three Poetry Book Society Pamphlet Choice selections (for A Hurry of English, Hinge, and Ripe) and Hinge by Alycia Pirmohamed was also shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Award, 2020. Read more about the press on our website.

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.

My Father Cycling Up a Hill, 1957

July 29, 2021March 22, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

It’s the hill from the bottom of Factory Trip
all the way up to Manor Farm –
a Welsh hill, one long steep and steady climb

to nowhere, punctuated by the occasional sharp
or suicidal incline. These
are his feet, his calves – they’re pushing,

pushing against the weight of the side
of beef or lamb in the basket
on the front of his bike. From his uncle’s

butcher’s shop to Manor Farm is a climb so far
if I were doing it now, by car, I’d think
twice. By bike? No way! Yet there

he is, my father, twelve years old, the weight
of the hill on his legs, setting out
once a week all winter, to deliver

the Sunday joint to Old Man Hodge. These
are his feet, the look on his face
as he pushes, pushes. This is the sweat

on his brow. His uncle pays him
in promises, end-of-week scraps, the back
of his hand. It’s silly to know

what I do: my father is doing this
for his mother, his younger brother,
for his own father, who hasn’t worked properly

since he got back from the war. This
is his front wheel, squeaking,
squeaking as he inches up that hill. I know

all the reasons he’s doing this
and I wasn’t even born then, so it’s silly as can be
to know what I do – that he was doing it all –

look at him, pushing and pushing all afternoon – for me.

by Jonathan Edwards

The Poetry Centre has launched the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition for 2021! Our judge this year is the fantastic poet Will Harris, and as usual there are two categories: Open and English as an Additional Language. Winners in each category receive £1000 and runners-up, £200. For more details and to enter, please visitour website .

‘My Father Cycling Up a Hill, 1957’ is copyright © Jonathan Edwards, 2021, and is reprinted here from Ten Poems about Work (Candlestick Press, 2021) by permission of Candlestick. You can read more about the collection and buy a copy on the Candlestick website.

Notes from Candlestick Press:

We may not love our jobs, but when we can’t go to work we find that we miss them. This mini-anthology, Ten Poems about Work, reflects on our working lives in all their glorious variety with a delightful mix of nostalgia, celebration and humour. Poet Jonathan Edwards’ eclectic and highly entertaining selection of poems explores our complicated and often surprising relationship with the things we have to do to earn a living. The pamphlet includes poems by Liz Berry, Sujata Bhatt, Gillian Clarke, Jonathan Edwards, Thomas Lux, Helen Mort, John Ormond, Kathryn Simmonds, James Tate and Walt Whitman.

Read more about the collection on the Candlestick website.

Jonathan Edwards’s first collection, My Family and Other Superheroes (Seren, 2014), received the Costa Poetry Award. His second collection, Gen (Seren, 2018), was Wales Book of the Year People’s Choice 2019. He lives in Crosskeys, South Wales.

Candlestick Press is a small, independent press publishing sumptuously produced poetry pamphlets that serve as a wonderful alternative to a greetings card, with matching envelopes and bookmarks left blank for your message. Their subjects include Clouds, Walking, Birds, Home and Kindness. Candlestick Press pamphlets are stocked by chain and independent bookshops, galleries and garden centres nationwide and available to order online. In 2019 Candlestick sold over 100,000 pamphlets, supporting its nominated charities with donations equivalent to around 49% of pre-tax net profit. Since 2008 nearly 600,000 pamphlets have been sold, which means that some six million poems have been read via its publications.

Find out more about the press on the Candlestick website and follow it on Twitter.

Jet

July 21, 2021March 22, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

The morning after my fortieth birthday, I met
a bright arc of water. It was thirty feet high.

The source: a cracked pipe under the road,
the point of emergence flanked by barriers.

Our gleaming street was shut.
I couldn’t help it—I had to bounce.
It was pure force, that singing curve,
racing up regardless, liquid stamping down.

It was the best guest: late, theatric,
one I never thought could arrive

at anyone’s party. Happy Spurt Day, John!
What more could I have needed

in that moment, I who didn’t know there was
such thirst in my life till that maverick

showed up and scotched it, till surprise
watered my defiant grey hairs?

by John McCullough

‘Jet’ is copyright © John McCullough, 2021, and is reprinted here from Ten Poems about Getting Older (Candlestick Press, 2021) by permission of Candlestick. You can read more about the collection and buy a copy on the Candlestick website.

Notes from Candlestick Press:

Being old isn’t what it used to be. Sixty is the new forty. The world is full of expressions designed to make us feel better about the inevitable passing of the years. This fascinating mini-anthology of poems selected by John McCullough looks in both directions; backwards to heydays of young love and time deliciously misspent, and forwards to the perils and thrills of middle age and beyond. It includes poems by Elizabeth Bishop, Emily Dickinson, Rita Dove, Mark Granier, John McCullough, Frank O’Hara, Alasdair Paterson, Elvire Roberts, Judith Shaw and Jackie Wills. Find out more about the pamphlet on the Candlestick website.

John McCullough is a poet and poetry tutor living in Hove. His third collection Reckless Paper Birds (Penned in the Margins, 2019) was shortlisted for the Costa Poetry Award and won the Hawthornden Prize for Literature. His two previous collections are The Frost Fairs (Salt, 2011) and Spacecraft (Penned in the Margins, 2016). You can read more about John’s work on his website and follow him on Twitter.

Find out more about the press on the Candlestick website and follow on Twitter.

Drokpa

July 15, 2021March 22, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

‘Longing, we say, because desire is full / of endless distances.’
– Robert Hass
In another life, my father
must have been a nomad.
He drinks butter tea,
knows his way around a saddle,
turns the living room into open rangeland.
There are horses at the door,
nudging their big noses into the hallway,
familiar to him as brothers.
Everywhere we turn they are
stamping down the carpet, swinging wide,
sweating hard, and right in the centre
of that heaving bunch of muscle,
dad pours out the door like wind,
loose bridle, easy seat, running like hell.
In Tibetan, drokpa means ‘people of the solitudes’,
as if solitude was open country
in which we learn early
to lean into the gale, to forage old ground.
He does not dwell long,
disappears for seasons at a time
and we came to realise the way he loves
is the way a horse makes a break for it,
steaming, impatient, expectant,
body corded tight. Horses like clouds
scudding across fields of grass, wild iris,
lashed canvas. He takes off, bad back and all.
His heart opens like a valley.

by Cynthia Miller

Notes from Nine Arches Press:

Cynthia Miller’s debut poetry collection, Honorifics, is an astonishing, adventurous, and innovative exploration of family, Malaysian-Chinese cultural identity, and immigration. From jellyfish blooms to glitch art and distant stars, taking in Greek gods, space shuttles and wedding china along the way, Miller’s mesmerizing approach is experimental, luscious, and expansive with longing – ‘My skin hunger could fill a galaxy’.

Here, the poetry is interwoven with the words for all the things we honour – our loved ones and our ancestors, home and homecomings, and all that is precious and makes us feel that we belong and are beloved. It is also a book that examines contemporary issues of migration in sharp and enquiring relief. Language itself becomes a radical power for reimaging, challenging, and making change, and Miller’s distinctive and multifaceted poetry creates an extraordinary space for multiplicity and celebration.

You can read more about the collection – and buy a copy – on the Nine Arches website, and watch the recent launch of the book via YouTube.

Cynthia Miller is a Malaysian-American poet, festival producer and innovation consultant living in Edinburgh. Her poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Ambit, The Rialto, Butcher’s Dog, Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, harana poetry, The Best New British and Irish Poets and Primers Volume Two. She is also Co-Founder of the Verve Poetry Festival. Honorifics has been shortlisted for the 2021 Forward Prize for Best First Collection.

Read more about Cynthia’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter and Instagram. You can also read an interview with Cynthia that was conducted to celebrate her shortlisting for the Forward Prize.

Since its founding in 2008, Nine Arches Press has published poetry and short story collections (under the Hotwire imprint), as well as Under the Radar magazine. In 2010, two of our pamphlets were shortlisted for the Michael Marks Poetry Pamphlet prize and Mark Goodwin’s book Shod won the 2011 East Midlands Book Award. In 2017, All My Mad Mothers by Jacqueline Saphra was shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Poetry Prize. Our titles have also been shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Prize, and in 2016 David Clarke’s debut poems, Arc, was longlisted for the Polari Prize. To date we have published over one hundred poetry publications. Read more about the press here and follow Nine Arches on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

Spring in Hartsop

July 9, 2021March 22, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

As though God had risen above the fells
and shown his face, the earth answered…
So long since the sun broke the clouds

or the hills shone in their veil of air,
and now the thorn, unturning its clusters,
its spokes of flower – the snowdrops

pushing in rings like choirs, each tilting
its neck, ready to sing. Since you left, I too
have slept in the dark of my body’s

wintering; but now, by the window,
I can feel my heart hatching; your hand,
gentle, lifting my head to the sun.

by Seán Hewitt

‘Spring in Hartsop’ is copyright © Seán Hewitt, 2021, and is reprinted here from Ten Poems from the Countryside (Candlestick Press, 2021) by permission of Candlestick. You can read more about the collection and buy a copy on the Candlestick website.

Notes from Candlestick Press:

Seán Hewitt lives in Dublin where he teaches at Trinity College. His debut collection, Tongues of Fire (Cape, 2020), was an Irish Times Book of the Year and was shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award. A memoir All Down Darkness Wide is forthcoming in 2022. Find out more about Seán’s work on his website and follow him on Twitter.

Candlestick Press is a small, independent press publishing sumptuously-produced poetry pamphlets that serve as a wonderful alternative to a greetings card, with matching envelopes and bookmarks left blank for your message. Their subjects include Clouds, Walking, Birds, Home and Kindness. Candlestick Press pamphlets are stocked by chain and independent bookshops, galleries and garden centres nationwide and available to order online. In 2019, Candlestick sold over 100,000 pamphlets, supporting its nominated charities with donations equivalent to around 49% of pre-tax net profit. Since 2008, nearly 600,000 pamphlets have been sold, which means that some six million poems have been read via its publications.

Find out more about the press on the Candlestick website and follow the press on Twitter.

Kitchen Window, Wells-next-the-Sea

June 24, 2021March 22, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

The window of the second kitchen
in what was once a railway house
looks out on salt-flecked

stones hauled from the sea
and a latticed fence
where sweetpeas climbed

in summer, now flakes of paper
by a single frozen rose.
Through the middle pane

another window
where a woman wearing an apron
leans over

a sink of bubbles,
below the clock above the cupboard,
her pearl earring framed

by a wave of wavy hair
as she leans and dips
while from somewhere

out of this grey afternoon the sun
alights on the casement
and a gold leaf rises. Light hovers

then brightens, follows her
as she enters another room,
then another.

by Mara Bergman

The Poetry Centre has just launched the Oxford Brookes International Poetry Competition for 2021! Our judge this year is the fantastic poet Will Harris and as usual there are two categories: Open and English as an Additional Language. Winners in each category receive £1000 and runners-up, £200. For more details and to enter, please visit our website.

This poem is copyright © Mara Bergman, 2021, and it is reprinted here from The Night We Were Dylan Thomas (Arc Publications, 2021) by permission of Arc. You can read more about the collection and buy a copy on the Arc website.

Notes from Arc:

Writing about The Night We Were Dylan Thomas, poet Jackie Wills has commented: ‘Like a great photographer, Mara Bergman celebrates the moment and detail at the core of memory. Together, her poems show the great changes families experience – the free and fearless life of a young woman set alongside a dying mother hanging on so she can hold a great-grandchild, the one-sided conversations we have with the dead.

Her dynamism is infectious – you are drawn into this family’s wonder, love, compassion, grief and happiness. Bergman’s poems remind me of Pablo Neruda’s belief in the driving force of love: ‘Hold on to that, don’t let it get away …’ and one of the final poems, ‘The Happiness’, delivers the book’s message: ‘Before it leaves, I will bury it deep enough to save.’

After reading these poems, you’ll feel braced and ready, you’ll feel wiser and more generous, you’ll want to hold on to moments that contain your own astonishment.’

You can read more about the book and buy a copy on the Arc website.

Mara Bergman grew up in Wantagh, New York, and graduated from the State University of New York at Oneonta. During her third year, she studied at Goldsmiths College and later made her home in the UK.

Mara’s poetry has been published widely in the UK and abroad. Her collection The Tailor’s Three Sons and Other New York Poems won the Mslexia Poetry Pamphlet Competition and was published by Seren in 2015. In 2016, Crossing Into Tamil Nadu won a Templar Quarterly Pamphlet Competition. Her poems have been awarded prizes in the Troubadour competition and the Kent & Sussex Open Competition, among others. Her first full-length poetry collection, The Disappearing Room, was published by Arc Publications in 2018.

Mara works in London as an editor and is also an award-winning author of more than twenty books for young children. She lives with her husband in Tunbridge Wells and has three grown-up children. Find out more about Mara’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter.

Founded in 1969, Arc Publications publishes contemporary poetry from new and established writers from the UK and abroad, specialising in the work of international poets writing in English, and the work of overseas poets in translation. Arc also has a music imprint, Arc Music, for the publication of books about music and musicians. To learn more about Arc and to see its range of titles, visit the publisher’s website. You can also find Arc on Facebook and on Twitter.

Learning to Love in Greek

June 16, 2021March 22, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

They said beware eros, though many
begin with madness. Learn to fall
in love with dancing – this is ludic,
the love you felt for skipping ropes
or bikes. If eros and ludus combine
you may suffer mania, the white blood
of the moon that petrifies. Grow phillia,
the love of football fans on terraces.
Chant together. Fight with the same heart.

If you have children or a puppy
you’ll know storgi, it rhymes with be.
It sits at kitchen tables, magnetises
crayon drawings to fridges. If you don’t
have these, you may feel storgi
from an old aunt, a mate. A lover
might see the child hiding in you
from a cowlick of grey that won’t
be brushed straight. Then philautia,
loving the self. Not so easy. For others,
who dive into pools of themselves,
too easy. Be your own best friend.
When love moves into a house
with a mortgage and enough space
for the future, this is pragma.
To stand in love comes after falling.
Pray you’ll land on your feet.

Above all, agapè – when you forget
who you are and take someone’s hand.

by Maria Taylor

Notes from Nine Arches Press:

Dressing for the Afterlife is a diamond-tough and tender second collection of poems from British Cypriot poet Maria Taylor, which explores love, life, and how we adapt to the passage of time. From the steely glamour of silent film-star goddesses to moonlit seasons and the ghosts of other possible, parallel lives, these poems shimmy and glimmer bittersweet with humour and brio, as Taylor conjures afresh a world where Joan Crawford feistily simmers and James Bond’s modern incarnation is mistaken for an illicit lover.

Consistently crisp and vivid, these poems examine motherhood, heritage and inheritance, finding stories woven in girlhood’s faltering dance-steps, the thrum of the sewing-machine at the end-days of the rag trade, or the fizz and bubble of a chip-shop fryer. And throughout, breaking through, is the sense of women finding their wings and taking flight – “and her wings, what wings she has” – as Taylor’s own poems soar and defiantly choose their own adventures.

You can read more about the collection and watch Maria read a selection of poems from it on the Nine Arches website. You can also watch the launch of the book on YouTube. In addition to Maria, the launch event featured readings from Mona Arshi and ignitionpress poet Kostya Tsolakis.

Maria Taylor is a British Cypriot poet, critic and reviewer who has been published in The Rialto, Magma and the TLS, among other publications. Her debut collection of poetry, Melanchrini, was shortlisted for the Michael Murphy Memorial Prize, and her poetry featured in the Penguin anthology The Poetry of Sex, edited by Sophie Hannah. She has a pamphlet, Instructions for Making Me (2016), and is also the creator of Poetry Bingo, a quirky set of cards which are part-game and part-concrete poem, both from HappenStance. She is also a keen runner and walker and lives in Leicestershire. Read more about Maria’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter.

[phlox]

June 9, 2021March 22, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

phlox

comes from the Greek for flame

perhaps whoever named it
was thinking of its bright colour

though in the painting ‘La femme aux Phlox’ it’s the form which impresses
the Cubists’ exhibition at the start of last century

in the language of flowers phloxes are united hearts

in the language of war it’s an artillery unit
remarkable for its accuracy of fire
a journalist writes:
the factory is confident this new weapon
will find its consumer

in the kingdom of war
there are other flowers too

hyacinth: a gun with a 152mm calibre
(like a drainpipe hole)
carnation: a 122mm howitzer
(like a grapefruit)
cornflower: a mortar with a range of 18 metres
(like a bowhead whale)

maybe these are the flowers of evil
to which certain butterflies flock
or rather
butterfly mines
these fit in your palm
and weigh only 90 grams

like a newborn kitten
or a bar of soap
I weigh it in my hand

the bathroom is quiet and safe

trusting naivety

hyacinths carnations and phloxes
blaze in the neighbour’s yard

by Volha Hapeyeva

translated from Belarusian by Annie Rutherford

This poem is copyright © Volha Hapeyeva, 2021, the translation is © Annie Rutherford, and it is reprinted here from In My Garden of Mutants (Arc Publications, 2021) by permission of Arc. You can read more about the pamphlet and buy a copy on the Arc website.

Notes from Arc:

In My Garden of Mutants, a bilingual chapbook, offers an introduction to the work of the prize-winning Belarusian poet Volha Hapeyeva, in Annie Rutherford’s beautifully modulated translations. The chapbook was a winner of an English PEN Translates Award. You can read more about the collection on the Arc website and watch a filmpoem by Clemens Büntig of ‘And She Dreamt about the Word’, another poem from the collection, on YouTube.

Volha Hapeyeva is an award-winning Belarusian poet who also writes prose, drama and occasional books for children, and who collaborates with electronic musicians and visual artists to create audio-visual performances. Her work has been translated into more than 10 languages with poems published in countries including the USA, Austria, Germany, Poland, Russia, Georgia, and Lithuania. She has participated in numerous literary festivals and conferences all over the world. She was awarded the 2019/20 ‘Writer of the City of Graz’, scholarship (Austria) and curated the Days of Poetry and Wine Festival (Slovenia) in 2020. Find out more about Volha’s work on her website.

Annie Rutherford, who has translated Volha’s poems, is a writer, a translator from German, French and Belarusian, and Programme Co-ordinator for StAnza, Scotland’s international poetry festival. She co-founded the literary magazine Far Off Places and Göttingen’s Poetree festival and is currently the fictions editor for The Interpreter’s House. Read more about Annie’s work on her website and follow her on Twitter.

Buddy

May 26, 2021March 22, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

He moulds a hand into my right shoulder
to soften the nervous muscle,

the friction between open mouth and stubbled cheek
revealing the truth in how much I’ve learnt

to find pleasure in the things that fight back.
I explore his tall, his swimmer lean,

enjoy touch as in gentle not penetrating,
let my body be a Friday afternoon.

In between exhales he calls me
stupid names like bro or buddy

as part of the experiment,
to be a sounding board of sorts,

to help make peace with old faces
who couldn’t possibly give back.

by Troy Cabida

Do you know a keen writer aged 16 or under? Could they write a terrific science poem? If so, please encourage them to enter this year’s IF Oxford poetry competition for young people! The competition is open to any young writer in the UK and is judged in three age categories (one of the judges is Dr Niall Munro, Poetry Centre Director). The winning poem and two runners-up from each age category will be performed at a special event at IF Oxford, the Science and Ideas Festival in October 2021. Winning poems will be published online and in a printed anthology. Other prizes will include science kits and books. The deadline is 11 June. For more details, visit the IF Oxford website.

‘Buddy’ is copyright © Troy Cabida, 2020 and is reprinted here from War Dove (Bad Betty Press, 2020) by permission of Bad Betty Press. You can read more about the pamphlet and buy a copy on the Bad Betty website.

Notes from Bad Betty Press:

Troy Cabida’s War Dove is a story of profound growth, of growing into oneself, of knowing tenderness, not as a skin to be sloughed on the way to maturity but a central muscle beating vital strength into the body. Cabida’s poetry refracts mental and emotional wellbeing through a kaleidoscope of cultural identities. This dove learns to soar and sway, heal and harden like ‘honey / crystallised and unflinching’. You can find out more about the pamphlet and buy a copy on the Bad Betty website.

Troy Cabida (b. 1995) is a London-based Filipino poet. He is a former member of the Barbican Young Poets and the Roundhouse Poetry Collective, and a producer for open mic night Poetry and Shaah. His poems have appeared in bath magg, TAYO, harana, Bukambibig, Cha and Macmillan. War Dove (Bad Betty Press) is his debut pamphlet. Find out more about Troy’s work on his website and follow him on Twitter and Instagram.

Bad Betty Press is an independent publisher of new poetry, founded in 2017 by Amy Acre and Jake Wild Hall. We love writing that is bad (in the Foxy Brown sense) and beautiful (‘a Betty’ in 90s slang). We love the strange, raw and risk-taking. We believe strongly in art’s capacity to challenge its own definition, to curve away from the norm, making space for more and varied voices. Find out more about our books on our website and follow Bad Betty on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

When I Read Diagnostic under CONFIDENTIAL

May 14, 2021March 22, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

I think it’s related to esoteric mystical knowledge
like predicting rain from moisture in moss
or life through the aleph bet of gematria

should you wear a raincoat in this new
world of extreme weather but the word
is just a fancy way to say test
say people spent their careers devising methods
to organize minds on a bell curve

what is the etymology of evaluation
now that’s a better word all about worth
about value dependent on people’s subjectivity
to get it going and together diagnostic
and evaluation are the appraisal and catalog
so what’s your price.

by Sarah Shapiro

News from the Centre: we are pleased to say that our new online course, Fire Up Your Poetry Practice: Professionalising Your Poetry, has proved very popular, and just one place remains on the session on 22 June entitled ‘Working with other people’. This session is led by poet and researcher Susie Campbell and will explore alternative routes into publication through collaboration and creative projects. To sign up for this event, please visit the Brookes Shop. If you would like to join the waiting list for any other session (listed on our website), please e-mail us at poetrycentre@brookes.ac.uk

‘When I Read Diagnostic under CONFIDENTIAL’ is copyright © Sarah Shapiro, 2021. It is reprinted from being called normal (tall-lighthouse, 2021) by permission of tall-lighthouse. You can read more about the pamphlet on the tall-lighthouse website.

Notes from tall-lighthouse:

This engaging sequence is written as a direct response, through poetry, to the clinical experiences of the poet in how the ‘system’ accepts and treats (or doesn’t) children with (dys)abilities. As a poet, Sarah Shapiro has strived to be called normal whilst growing up with ‘reading issues’. The poems are a dialogue between her documented psycho-educational evaluations and her reaction to the analysis and words used. Interspersed between these ‘conversations’ are heartfelt poems that expose the tribulations of people who are carelessly labelled (dys).

Read more about the pamphlet and hear Sarah read two of the poems from it on the tall-lighthouse website.

Sarah Shapiro was born in Chicago and now lives and works in Boston. She has an MFA from UMASS Boston, an MA from Royal Holloway University, London and a BA from Mount Holyoke College, Massachusetts. She did not start to read until she was eight, so her success is well earned. Her poetry has been widely published in magazines and on-line and her debut pamphlet The Bullshit Cosmos was published by ignitionpress and you can read more about it on the Poetry Centre website.

tall-lighthouse has a reputation for publishing exciting new poetry, being the first to publish Sarah Howe, Helen Mort, Liz Berry, Jay Bernard, Ailbhe Darcy, Rhian Edwards, Vidyan Ravinthiran, Emily Berry and many others. Learn more about the press on the tall-lighthouse website and follow tall-lighthouse on Facebook and Twitter.