The C Word

~ oxfordbrookesuni


catches in the throat; the first syllable
on its own, enabling, following by a hissing snake,
rattletail bringing up the rear.

It trumpets its presence in the glare of the ward,
sneaks into glossy brochures, flashes its statistics
(the odds are against me), looks like carer but isn’t.

Not to be confused with the other c word
that cuts at both ends, detonated in hate
murmured in love – how can it be both?

And how can I contain them, sites of birth
and death? I should know how to speak
of what’s inside me. To be blunt. 


by Tamar Yoseloff

Watch Tamar read this poem (and others from her new collection) on Seren’s YouTube channel, and then come to Waterstones Oxford this evening to see her read from her work in person! Tamar will be reading alongside Carmen Bugan, whose work we featured last week. Join us at 6.30pm in Waterstones Oxford (free tickets here).

On Wednesday we are hosting an open mic and small exhibition on the topic of mental health. All are welcome! We start at 7pm in JHB 203 (John Henry Brookes Building, Headington Campus, Oxford Brookes), and there will be free cake! Sign up to attend here.

You can find details of our other upcoming events, including free creative workshops in fiction and non-fiction, our International Poetry Competition Awards Evening with Jackie Kay, and a reading from Doyali Islam and Mariah Whelan here.

‘The C Word’ is copyright © Tamar Yoseloff, 2019. It is reprinted from The Black Place (Seren, 2019) by permission of Seren. 


Notes from Seren:

The Black Place is a dark and gorgeously multi-faceted artwork, like a black diamond. Tamar Yoseloff eshews the sentimental, embraces alternatives, offers antidotes to cheery capitalist hype. But there is a sort of dark grandeur to her view of mortality, one that matches the sublime desert painting by Georgia O’Keeffe, the subject of the title poem. The central sequence in this collection, ‘Cuts’, is a characteristically tough look at the poet’s cancer diagnosis and treatment. The diagnosis arrives at the same time as the Grenfell Tower fire disaster, a public trauma overshadowing a private one. These poems focus on the strangeness of the illness, and of our times – they refuse to offer panaceas or consolations. Read more about the book on Seren’s website.

Tamar Yoseloff was born in the US and moved to the UK in 1987. She has published five full collections; her debut book, Sweetheart, won the Aldeburgh Poetry Festival Prize and was a PBS Commendation. She published a collection of new and selected poems in 2015 with Seren Books called A Formula for Night. She is also the author of Formerly (the inaugural chapbook from her publishing venture, Hercules Editions), incorporating photographs by Vici MacDonald and shortlisted for the 2012 Ted Hughes Award; two collaborative editions with the artist Linda Karshan and Nowheres, a privately-produced book with the artist Charlotte Harker in 2015. Tamar has also run site-specific writing courses for many galleries across the UK and taught for numerous London-based writing organizations. She is currently a visiting guest lecturer at Newcastle University on the Newcastle/Poetry School MA course in Writing Poetry and the Chair of the Poetry and Spoken Word Group of the Society of Authors. Find out more about Tamar’s work on her own website.

Seren is Wales’ leading independent literary publisher, specialising in English-language writing from Wales. Many of our books are shortlisted for – and win – major literary prizes across the UK and America. At the heart of our list is a good poem, a story told well, or an idea or history presented interestingly or provocatively. We’re international in authorship and readership, though our roots remain here in Wales, where we prove that writers from a small country with an intricate culture have a worldwide relevance. Amy Wack has been Poetry Editor since the early 90s. Our aim is not simply to reflect what is going on in the culture in which we publish, but to drive that culture forward, to engage with the world, and to bring Welsh literature, art and politics before a wider audience. Find out more on the Seren website and via Twitter and Facebook.

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.

New Life

~ oxfordbrookesuni

By the time she reached the age of twelve,
The girl with the red scarf and brown eyes
Had seen human body parts scattered in front
Of the house where she had been born, and she had
Fallen asleep to the sound of bombs and rifles.

She had walked out of the ruins of the family room,
Crossed eight countries, mostly on foot,
Scaling snowy mountains, descending on railway tracks
To signal the way to her parents who pushed the pram:
Made her own map of this world.

Through the nets of barbed-wire fences,
Cataloguing, as she passed through, the beatings
Her parents suffered at the borders where they crossed,
She looks back and smiles at the words
She has now abandoned, because they no longer help. 

At her first school, the teacher speaks a language of freedom
Unknown to her. In this new language, she says,
She’d like to make a garden with her parents and her brother,
Who tries his own language as he sits up in the pram rattling
A plastic toy donated to him by a benevolent woman.

The map of the world the girl has drawn
Is being absorbed by the map of this century—
Soles of shoes scattered across the way to hope.
The road to a better life has not yet been planned,
Everyone is waiting for an architect.

by Carmen Bugan

News from the Poetry Centre: welcome back to the Weekly Poem after a short break as we wrestled with the beginning of the semester! We’re delighted to share a poem by Carmen Bugan this week, since Carmen will be reading in Oxford with Tamar Yoseloff on 4 November in Waterstones Oxford. Do join us! You can sign up for a free ticket here. We’ll be featuring a poem from Tamar’s new collection, The Black Place (Seren) next Monday.

We have a number of other events coming up over the next month or so, including an open mic and small exhibition on the theme of mental health on 6 November (more details here), our International Poetry Competition Awards, with a special appearance and reading by Jackie Kay on 28 November (sign up to join us here), and a reading by Canadian poet Doyali Islam and Oxford-based poet Mariah Whelan on 29 November; tickets here. All these events are free to attend. And if you’re interested in creative writing but don’t quite know where to start, you might like to join us at Headington Library for three free workshops, starting with poetry tomorrow (Tuesday) and continuing on 12 November (fiction), and 12 December (non-fiction). More details here.

Finally, our latest podcast, with spoken word poet and author of Stage Invasion: Poetry and the Spoken Word Renaissance, Peter Bearder, has just been released! You can find it here.

‘New Life’ is copyright © Carmen Bugan, 2019. It is reprinted from Lilies in America (Shearsman, 2019) by permission of Shearsman. 

Carmen Bugan’s books include the memoir Burying the Type-writer: Childhood Under the Eye of the Secret Police (Picador), which has received international critical praise, the Bread Loaf Conference Bakeless Prize for Nonfiction, and was a finalist in the George Orwell Prize for Political Writing, and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Her previous collections of poems are Releasing the Porcelain Birds and The House of Straw (both with Shearsman), and Crossing the Carpathians (Carcanet). She is also the author of a critical study called Seamus Heaney and East European Poetry in Translation: Poetics of Exile. Carmen has a doctorate in English literature from Balliol College, Oxford University and has been a Hawthornden Fellow, the 2018 Helen DeRoy Professor in Honors at the University of Michigan, and is a George Orwell Prize Fellow.

Her new book, Lilies from America: New and Selected Poems, published by Shearsman, was awarded the Poetry Book Society’s Special Commendation for Autumn 2019. Writing about the book, poet Eiléan Ní Chuilleanáin has said: ‘This selection of Carmen Bugan’s poems offers readers an experience with all the surprise and continuity of a long, complex novel. […] [W]e realise that this is the record of a life already recorded, in the distorting staccato of the surveillance transcript, a distortion that leaks into the language of the later poems. Yet faith in the capacity of words to deliver truth survives, reflecting and recalling the exhuming of the typewriter, even if memory is vitiated and language is profaned.’ You can hear Carmen read from her work in a recent recording with A.E. Stallings in Boston  here, and listen to her discuss her parents’ buried typewriter in the context of the Cold War here. You can find out more about Carmen’s work on her own website here.

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.

Oliver’s Mysterious Poems

~ oxfordbrookesuni

Calamari

I can taste the salty solution of the jaw dropping batter that had risen like a star
The texture of the calamari was so deeply fried it was like a waterfall waiting to be let free
When I look at the salted calamari I could feel my heart racing. It raced like a cannon ball
The colour was so dynamic it made me feel like a storm of rain.

A poem about goldfish

The wavy sea washed through my beloved body
Which was as brightly coloured as the sun.
I could see shimmering coral shining off the sea bed below my tail.
The colour of my rare body which sparkled as the raging waves clashed together.

Remembering the Soldiers

The horrific scene which set the soldiers trembling onto the gothic solid ground below their feet.

Goose Fair

As I walked down a street I could see the colours of a fair that made me tingle inside
The loud thumping music that shouted down my suffocating throat that was traumatized by the claustrophobic fear of horror.

Orange Sorbet

As I ripped open the fearsome tangerine
I could smell the delicious mouth-watering heart stopping flavours that had been beyond my reach
It felt like a combination of different types of acids had taken over
It was a hurricane that launched into my watering mouth which felt like a drizzling waterfall.

by Oliver Boyles

Tomorrow (Thursday) is National Poetry Day, and at a time when we celebrate the variety and importance of poetry, we’re very pleased to feature a young local poet in our Weekly Poem series. Many thanks to Oliver’s mum, Donna, for providing us with a biography of Oliver and for sharing a selection of his poems.

Oliver Boyles, aged 15, lived in Epwell, Oxfordshire. In June 2018 Oliver was unfortunately diagnosed with a spinal tumour that had been caused by radiotherapy to the spine from his previous cancer treatment when he was six years old (after which he went into remission for 8 years). This latest cancer diagnosis left him paralysed from the waist down and confined him to a wheelchair, and he received chemotherapy and palliative care as the tumour had metastasized. Sadly Oliver passed away peacefully in May 2019, surrounded by his family at home. During his illness Oliver found comfort in writing poems, especially about his love of food.

News from the Centre: for National Poetry Day, two of our Poetry Centre Interns – Joanne Balharrie and Zoe Mcgarrick – have hidden poems around the Headington campus and nearby area. Find a poem, tag us on social media with a photo of the poem, and win poetry prizes! The poems will be lurking around campus for a week, so be on the lookout!

The Poetry Centre has announced a number of upcoming events in November. Visit our Eventbrite page to sign up for readings by Tamar Yoseloff and Carmen Bugan, Doyali Islam and Mariah Whelan, our IF Festival event about our recent military veterans project, and the awards evening for our International Poetry Competition, featuring Jackie Kay. All events are free, and everyone is welcome!

Parable

~ oxfordbrookesuni


The water in the boat’s hold is five feet high, and I have a thimble for the bailing. Each
day the duty roster remains the same: I take the burden longer than any member of my
crew. Weeks pass with no appreciable progress, and at least daily the tiny steel cup slips
from my fingers, to be rescued from the murk after lost minutes, sometimes an hour. After
months, we find a shipwreck survivor on a dinghy, and in gratitude he offers me his
bucket. I throw it into the sea to show him the magnitude of my work.


by Carrie Etter


Our International Poetry Competition – judged this year by the wonderful Jackie Kay, closes for entries today! There are two categories: Open and EAL, and winners in each category receive £1000, with £200 for runners-up. For more details and to enter, visit our website. 

‘Parable’ is copyright © Carrie Etter, 2018. It is reprinted from The Weather in Normal (Seren, 2018) by permission of Seren. 

Notes from Seren:

Originally from Normal, Illinois, Carrie Etter has lived in England since 2001 and taught at Bath Spa University since 2004, where she is Reader in Creative Writing. Individual poems have appeared or are forthcoming in The Times Literary Supplement, Poetry Review, The New Republic, The New Statesman, and The Penguin Book of the Prose Poem. Her new collection, The Weather in Normal, is published in the UK by Seren Books and in the US by Station Hill Press. It was been chosen as a Poetry Book Society Recommendation for Autumn 2018. Read more about the book on the  Seren website, and more about Carrie’s work here. You can also follow her on Twitter.

Seren is Wales’ leading independent literary publisher, specialising in English-language writing from Wales. Many of our books are shortlisted for – and win – major literary prizes across the UK and America. At the heart of our list is a good poem, a story told well, or an idea or history presented interestingly or provocatively. We’re international in authorship and readership, though our roots remain here in Wales, where we prove that writers from a small country with an intricate culture have a worldwide relevance. Amy Wack has been Poetry Editor since the early 90s. Our aim is not simply to reflect what is going on in the culture in which we publish, but to drive that culture forward, to engage with the world, and to bring Welsh literature, art and politics before a wider audience. Find out more on the  Seren website and via  Twitter and Facebook.

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.

Typhoon Etiquette

~ oxfordbrookesuni


Everything is wet
E  v  e  r  y  t  h  i  n  g
Things are done properly here
For two days you will all struggle with umbrellas
On the third day   the see-through plastic and spoke carcasses
line the kerbs
I wait
for my name and number to be proclaimed across the land
before making my arrival
I don’t rush
up the country
that would be inconsiderate
I take each island in turn
a typhoon etiquette
Yaeyama  Miyako   Okinawa  Amami   Tokara   Yakushima
I savour Okinawa   raking
each field   forcing every cane of sugar   every husk of rice
to drink itself daft
You will know of my arrival
via text 
in the middle of the night
There’s the gathering of winds
the heavy slant
of rain   It is almost a relief for you
The waiting is over
I am here
Some of you bet on my wind speeds
I can perform at a mean 150 km an hour
Most aren’t fooled by the lull
after my initial hit
but I love to see those blond tourists
venture from their Best Westerns
flat cameras like amulets
They won’t stay for long
I like the streets
empty night or day   when even the crows are silent
then I concentrate
Destruction used to be easier
I’d been taught to savour the umashi
of Shibuya’s concrete   how it used to crumble
I spun around laughing when they built taller
But they’re cleverer than before
With this all-seeing eye
I do my best work   and my worst
Don’t be fooled
treesriverscarsseafronts are easy
My life is brief   a few days at most
Respect me
write down my name   worship me in this way
then shake the rope that leads to your gods
see if they are listening

by Katrina Naomi

Our International Poetry Competition is open for entries for just a couple more weeks – until 2 September. There are 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.

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.

Writing about this week’s poem, Verve Poetry Press says: ‘We are thrilled that the wonderful Katrina Naomi has asked us to publish the poems that came out of her recent Arts Council-supported writing trip to Japan. And a wonderful group of poems they are, that at once depict Japan, its traditions, its customs with great enthusiasm and some puzzlement. Katrina doesn’t pretend she is an expert but prods and questions not only what she finds but also herself.  

Also included are Katrina’s translations of haiku by two Japanese masters, which have previously been published in Modern Poetry in Translation magazine. Altogether, this is Katrina trying something new, but with the quality, the wonderful way with words, the earnest grappling with the perceived world that characterises all her work.’ You can read more about the pamphlet and buy a copy on the Verve Poetry Press site.

In 2018 Katrina Naomi received a BBC commission for National Poetry Day. Her poetry has appeared in the TLS, Poetry London, The Poetry Review and The Forward Book of Poetry 2017, as well as on BBC TV’s Spotlight and Radio 4’s Front Row and Poetry Please. Her latest collection, The Way the Crocodile Taught Me (Seren, 2016), was chosen by Foyles’ Bookshop as one of its #FoylesFive for poetry. Katrina was the first writer-in-residence at the Brontë Parsonage Museum in West Yorkshire. She has a PhD in Creative Writing (Goldsmiths) and tutors for Arvon, Ty Newydd and the Poetry Society. Learn about Katrina’s work via her website and follow her on Twitter.

Verve Poetry Press is a new press focussing intently on meeting a local need in Birmingham – a need for the vibrant poetry scene here in Brum to find a way to present itself to the poetry world via publication. Co-founded by Stuart Bartholomew and Amerah Saleh, the press was voted Most Innovative Press at Saboteur Awards 2019 and has been described as ‘always exciting’ by Andrew McMillan. It is publishing poets from all corners of the city – poets that represent the city’s varied and energetic qualities and will communicate its many poetic stories.

Added to this is a colourful pamphlet series featuring poets who have previously performed at our sister festival such as Luke Kennard, Katrina Naomi and Claire Trévien – and a poetry show series which captures the magic of longer poetry performance pieces by poets such as Polarbear and Matt Abbott. Like the festival, we will strive to think about poetry in inclusive ways and embrace the multiplicity of approaches towards this glorious art. Find out more about Verve Poetry Press here and more about the festival here.

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.

Two selections from Running Rings

~ oxfordbrookesuni
Running Rings by Phil Madden
Words by Phil Madden; prints by Paul L. Kershaw

Our International Poetry Competition is still open for entries until 2 September. There are 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.

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.

Text is copyright © Phil Madden and images copyright © Paul L. Kershaw, 2019. It is reprinted from Running Rings by permission of the author and illustrator.

Phil Madden’s fourth book in collaboration with Paul L. Kershaw, printmaker and printer. Running Rings was a winner of the Judges’ Choice Award at the Oxford International Fine Press Fair in 2018. It is a limited edition of 70 copies, bound in quarter cream cloth with suminagashi marbled paper, 28pp, 365 x 255 mm. It was inspired by the trees in Studley Park, a World Heritage Site near Ripon.

As with their other collaborations, the images and words by Phil and Paul do not sit side by side artificially mirroring each other. Instead they are organically intertwined, using concrete poetry, fragmentation and varying focus and complexity. Together they invoke the essence of trees and woodlands in their glorious states of life, death, decay and renewal. You can find out more about the book and see further images from it on Paul’s 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.

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.