It

I have recently discovered a lot of old writing from High School, I'm actually a bit impressed with 12 

year old me. 

The first 'real' poem I wrote, from 2004

                     It

It walked through  the door,

It walked on the grass.

It looked to the floor,

It looked through glass.

But through the glass what did it see,

A girl of pure simplicity.

For, in the chair,

Dressed in pure white.

She seemed only dead,

An angel of the night.

With her red cherry lips,

She seemed to live to excite.

And as it focused on the girl,

And as it eyes streamed.

The girl soon awoke,

The girl of its dreams.

As she looked out the window,

What did she see.

A painting of mist,

Stretching from you to me.

From the window came cold of ice and of snow,

But from the house came her angel like glow.

2004

Review: Jump by Paula Kelly-ince

I have some wonderfully talented friends.

There is a sweet feeling in watching someone accomplish and succeed. Particularly when you have spent the last few years slogging it out with them and following them every step of the way.

One of my brilliant friends (be jealous, it's okay) runs a hilarious blog  and on this blog Paula Kelly-Ince has released the first section of her long awaited short stories collection.



Jump: Stories of Life, Love and Fear is a gentle whirlwind of emotions and lovable characters. Each story is beautifully crafted to lull the reader into its reality, slowly manipulating itself into a gut punch.

From Jump, which I have had the privileged of seeing performed, you hear the unnerving voice of a woman on the edge, both metaphorically and literally. I won't give the game away but her beautifully traumatic voice rings with a survival that inspires.

On top Tara, like watching strangers connect for the first time on the next street over. Two people devouring each other in conversation. It is like opening up.

To the final story in this collection Mr. Philips, which will remind everyone of 'that' high school crush and how we truly live through our experiences.

The three stories together tell a lot about female experience, giving strong voices to the often sidelined characters and providing weighted feathers to the reader.

Make this your Summer read. Then revisit it in Winter and Spring and Autumn. Show it to your grandparents and your daughter because there is something here for every season and for everyone.

Did I mention that I have wonderfully talented friends?

Again the link for a FREE PDF of these three stories is HERE

Review: Coleshill by Fiona Sampson

 
 
 






A collection for anyone Local. I don't mean local to Coleshill but local in the sense of community, of knowing potholes, of knowing Terry as a man and then as a ghost of himself walking down the main road home. Local.
   This is a collection of rhythm, of human rhythm falling into place with nature. Of humans becoming the natural landscape - and isn't it about time? 'a phone rings' and the butterfly effect is set in motion as 'suddenly flocks of starling / are shuttling across the dark'.
  
 There is a sense of enclosure. A trapping in the quaint countryside that isn't as safe as those outside it seem to believe as Sampson writes through the murder of a girl from the local nightclub. The girl in A Charm Against Knives could be the victim, it could be any of us; it could be the earth 'remember[ing] the whisper / of steel on skin'. That is all a murder has come to, in the grand scheme of nature one death is not unlike another, but the difference lies in the proximity of  local.
     When reading this collection I was reminded of myself, stood behind the bar of the local pub and scribbling poems on the backs of discarded receipts. Poems about the trees and trollies becoming part of the stream.
    There is an important connection to made here that all we hold dear is cyclical, it belongs only to itself. Samspon sums it up in three striking lines 'Imagine bees falling from the sky - / yes, all of them. / Small scabs of air'.
    I was struck by the density of Sampson's verse, how she can conjure up entire communities and dreamlands, present them simultaneously in a 'snow-globe' of understanding. She pierces the heart of the scenic to find the moment of hyper-reality that we don't often assume to belong to such picturesque location. It is this hyper realism that tips the border to the dream land for me. Such as in From the Adulterer's Songbook and the 'one / clear note, / / the night odour' - it's almost unbelievable, transported until you anchor it to real life experience, and then it all too true. Seeing the adulterer's legacy lengthen.