Wipe the blade clean on the grass

April 1, 2013April 11, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

For Angela Carter

At night, the Korrigan’s silkworm
hair lit up the dandelion seeds,
he made stars retract their claws.
By day, his hair was brittle white,
his eyes two eggs of dried-out blood.

Wipe the blade clean on the grass,
the hair, the eyes, must all come off.

At night, he buried his treasure under
the heaving stomach of the dolmen:
love that shined like a trout’s back.
By day, the gold transformed to dust,
and cork, and skins of spiders.

Wipe the blade clean on the grass,
the heart, the lungs, must be cut off.

At night, his voice was smooth as yolk,
he sang of the moon, but not of God,
he scaled, he furred across the range.
By day, his voice muttered and squeaked,
A mousey phlegm played hide and seek.

Wipe the blade clean on the grass,
the songs, the sounds, must be plucked off.

by Claire Trévien

Happy Easter to all our readers! This week’s poet, Claire Trévien, will be launching her new collection, The Shipwrecked House, on Thursday 11 April with a reading at 7.30pm at the Albion Beatnik Bookshop in Oxford. The evening will also feature readings by fellow poets Alan Buckley and Amy Key. There are more details on our Facebook page and on Claire’s own website here.

Notes from Penned in the Margins:

Claire Trévien was born in 1985 in Brittany. She is a poet, critic, and literary translator. Her writing has been published in a wide variety of literary magazines including Under The Radar, Poetry Salzburg Review, Ink Sweat & Tears, The Warwick Review, Nth Position, and Fuselit. She has published an e-chapbook of poetry with Silkworms Ink, Patterns of Decay, and a pamphlet, Low-Tide Lottery with Salt Publishing. She is the editor of Sabotage Reviews and Noises Off. The Shipwrecked House is her first book, and was published this month. You can read more about it at the Penned in the Margins site here, and follow Claire Trévien’s work on her blog here and on Twitter here.

Penned in the Margins is an independent publisher and live literature producer specialising in poetry and based in East London. Founded in 2004, the company has produced numerous literature and performance events, toured several successful live literature shows, published over twenty-five books, and continues to run innovative poetry, arts and performance projects in the capital and beyond. Their recent anthology, Adventures in Form, was awarded a Special Commendation by the Poetry Book Society and was chosen as one of 50 Best Summer Reads by The Independent. You can visit the Penned in the Margins website here to sign up to the mailing list, and follow the publisher on Facebook and Twitter.

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.

The Jeater and The Hometown

December 17, 2012April 11, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

The black I can work,
and work, manumitting troche and trait and spillikin from

the sable yield. And in the dark time shy as farwoods fungi,

right here where the forest is beginning to reclaim the field.

The Hometown

I’d been a boy
but could not barani or shin up to the crest of the Maiden Rock.

And I could barely march, not even out into the cold sea where

a saint’s kneecap and fingerbones bobbed in a tide-trapped cave.

by Roddy Lumsden

This will be the final Weekly Poem of the year, as the Poetry Centre will be taking a Christmas break until 7 January. Very many thanks for reading the 2012 selection of poems. May you have a thoroughly enjoyable Christmas and excellent start to 2013!

Notes from Penned in the Margins:

Roddy Lumsden has six previous collections including Mischief Night: New & Selected Poems (Bloodaxe, 2004) and Terrific Melancholy (Bloodaxe, 2011). He edited the anthology Identity Parade: New British & Irish Poets (Bloodaxe, 2010), and co-edited The Salt Book of Younger Poets. Originally from Fife, he now lives in London and has also worked as a puzzle, quiz and popular reference writer. The Bells of Hope is a series of 51 poems, published as a limited edition hardback book. All the poems are written in a short form developed by Lumsden, the kernel poem, in which truth (the ‘kernel’) and metaphor swirl in one dimeter line and three equal, much longer lines. You can read another sample poem from the book at the Penned in the Margins site here.

Richard Branson

October 15, 2012April 11, 2022 ~ oxfordbrookesuni

My love, I feel like this print of Rothko.
I am small and glassy and I want to impress you,
even if it means murdering one of your work colleagues.

You think if you stare long enough at your noodles
you’ll see the combination to the safe.
I don’t have the heart to tell you the truth.

Even the elephant on the 20 Rand note
you gave me for good luck back in 2009
will end up spent in the end.

You adjust my tie and I grow a little older.

On cold hungover days, the white sun follows us
through Jesus Green to the Carphone Warehouse.

Shrek watches from the electrical shop across the street;
seven Shreks, running in parallel across a burning rope bridge.
It’s impossible to root for any of them.

A millionaire’s hairstyle
is trapped in the era they first made their money.

The air turns green above the poles of the Earth.

by Ross Sutherland

The Poetry Centre’s latest podcast, featuring the poet Gill Learner (whose poem ‘About the olden days’ was the Weekly Poem on 4 June 2012), is now live! Visit this page to hear Gill read her poem ‘The power of ice’, and discuss it and her work in general. You can find out more about Gill’s collection The Agister’s Experiment on the Two Rivers Press website.

Notes from Penned in the Margins:

Ross Sutherland was born in Edinburgh in 1979. A former lecturer in electronic literature at Liverpool John Moore’s University, Ross works as a freelance journalist and tutor in creative writing. His first collection, Things To Do Before You Leave Town, was published in 2009, followed by the limited edition mini-book Twelve Nudes in 2010 and the e-book Hyakuretsu Kyaku in 2011. Ross is a member of live literature collective Aisle 16, and has toured solo and collaborative shows nationally and internationally. Emergency Window is his second full collection, and its ‘lucid observations, smart conceits and insight into the contemporary world’ have been praised by The Independent. Discover more about this latest collection at the Penned in the Margins site here, where you can also enjoy Ross Sutherland reading his poem ‘Liverish Red-Blooded Riffraff Hoo-ha’.