Poem of the Week: Damian Walford Davies

Today's Poem of the Week taken from one of the pamphlet collections launched this year by Rack Press is Commission by Damian Walford Davies from his collection Alabaster Girls which you can order here using Paypal.

Commission

Damian Walford Davies reading at last month's
launch in London

Suffolk, 1650

I was in the graveyard, islanded

by creeks, parsing deep botched

cuts that pass for epitaphs. 

Horses drummed their piss 

on clumps of woundwort – 

so loud, the troopers laying

statues on the fire turned to look.

Stare long enough, the tower’s

flintwork will bewilder you. Gilt

paint burns especially. He called me

from the porch, framed by gargoyles

and the Lamb, bitter ramsons

mixed with sweetish smoke.

My sergeant rose among the reeds,

a tan bird mewing in his gloves.

The church was cool; their eyes

were hammering at three angels

on the roof. I wrapped the balls

inside a paper patch and shot,

walked out decked in golden dust.

Poem of the Week: Katrina Naomi

Each week in March we are featuring a poem from one of the new Rack pamphlets published in 2015 and this week the chosen poem is from Katrina Naomi's collection Hooligans. You can order it now from this site using the Paypal button (£5).  "Hooligans" was a term used against the suffragettes by their opponents.

Katrina Naomi (centre) with friends at the launch
last month in London of Hooligans

Special Delivery

23 February 1909 from West Strand Post Office to 10 Downing St, SW

What a shock for the postie,

one woman, then two

human letters – 

Elspeth McClelland and Daisy Soloman –

addressed to Mr Asquith,

a threepenny stamp like a small tattoo

on each hand, as they walked,

too large to be perched

on the delivery boy’s basket;

words indelibly printed in their mouths,

which just needed to be opened,

their contents clear 

from both women’s signatures –

the way each spoke when angry.

Poem of the Week: A.C.Bevan

Each week in March we are featuring a poem from one of the new Rack pamphlets published in 2015 and this week the chosen poem is from A.C. Bevan's collection, De'ath & Daughters. You can order it now from this site using the Paypal button (£5).

EVE                                                                                    

 …peeled the apple before she ate it, 

cored & pared & separated 

into bite-size halves & quarters, pipped 

& pitted, & destalked it.

Then she named it: Golden Russet,

Maiden’s Blush, Sweet Delicious,

Adams Pearmain, Yellow Tremlett’s.

Made her pies & crumbles, pressed it

into pomace, sauce, fermented 

juices, sparkling wines of moonshine,

applejack & scrumpy cider.

& after several pints of snakebite,

danced stark naked & debauchèd 

with a serpent through the orchard.

                                                                            

A.C. Bevan reading from his new collection at the Rack
Press launch in London last month
Photo: Paul Bevan

Poem of the Week: Fiona Pitt-Kethley

Opal Menilite from Agramón

Each week in March we will be featuring a poem from one of our newly published 2015 pamphlet collections.  To order the pamphlets click on the Paypal button on the top right hand corner of this page.

The first poem is from Fiona Pitt-Kethley's pamphlet
Mineral Adventures (£5)








The Opal Menilites of Agramón

Fiona Pitt-Kethley

Bright yellow broomrape bursting from the clay,

close to the minerals we’re searching for.

Nothing’s what you’d expect in Agramón.

Blue-grey on grey at first they look discreet

and crisp as sugared almonds in the walls

until we marvel at their varied forms.

This quarry’s the sex-shop of the mineral scene:

Willendorf Venuses, testicles, dicks

beside more toy-like marbles, skittles, ducks

and half-formed pre-pubescent young girls’ breasts.

A heavenly jest, perhaps. Exuberant,

tumescent, waiting in their matrixes.

If stones could speak these ones would say to me:

“Release us on an unsuspecting world…”