The Poets' Graves Workshop

revision 1 All the silent November nights, full of rain, the freezing days of ice and thaw, keeping your head down, tucked up to the chin with snow. A silent parallel world knuckled down to the task, like a weather-beaten postman, who delivers his letters come rain or shine, good news or bad, in the...

Thanks for the tip Ian, been wondering how to mix it up a bit!

Hi Mac, I too liked this piece. Her lips became as dry as pebbles without their sea-salt kiss. My voice echoed a rust of song, that spray of gulls. I lifted her like a baptism into the waves. The shimmer of silver scales in moonlight breathed life, the frame of our goodbye. Along the shore the famil...

Hi Trobbo, some truly nihilistic images here, such as Only flaccid hills of tone-free stomach muscle are married to fatty, diabetic kidneys, no longer needed in the grand scheme of his life. I think if you want to write in this vein, to be successful you have to introduce a bit of light , as well as...

There's not a bar in the grate.
Rain has issued its final demands-
wet leaves like letters.

Thanks for the replies, just having a bit of fun. Its probably me but i cant seem to vary the spaces at the start of each line, so when I set down the poem they are all lined up underneath each other, which is a bit boring sometimes.

Thanks jackie and katherine and Lou for your replies. The wall bit did seem to distract from the poem, but i was trying to set up its context, ah well, never mind. I think the lesson ive learned here is to be carefull in the details.

we've got
to make
the
best
of
what
time
we've
got
left

and thats not by writing vertical poems.

Thanks for the replies. It really wasn't about anything except bumping into a mole that had fallen from a wall which was level with park-ground, that was trying to get back underground I guess, and i was too scared to pick it up and let it carry on with its its life. Thanks Moth, for your response, ...

Revision 1 Nose twitching downwards like a divining rod, a mole went this way and that besides the busy road, at rush hour. I couldn't pick it up and set it back on its way, instead I inserted my foot, blocking its path to try and guide it back from where it came. But it wouldn't have it. It didn't ...

Why not try haiku-ing it?


Freedom

Tall tomato plants
with warmth, sunlight and some water
press against the glass.

..#BOOSH!

cheers, Ton

Hi Luce, I liked this piece a lot. The details , i think make this poem , such as the vegetable tops tickling the legs. Just such a simple description somehow brings everything to life. The title seems a bit provisional, though.

To feel the sweat of a race not run and hold the clench of a stomach churned, as I crumble and fall, using artifice to fool this world of my consummate ease. This daily pulse with racing blood, like the sparrow evading the falcons dance. And I, with this shrouded face try so hard to solicit speech f...

captures a childhood moment, nice one!

I actually really liked it. I get what you're trying to say, comparing the image of an egg timer/hourglass, and a stalagmite. Maybe you could expand a little on why you prefer the hourglass rather than the stalagmite, but both images compliment/push against each other in ways that you could expand u...

Cheers for the replies everyone. It was a poetry exercise, with the title being given as a starting point. It needs reworking/starting again, but I appreciate your comments, especially it being like a Carlsberg advert, which made me chuckle!

A remote control with fifty buttons of promises. A garden center that dreams of Eden. A ring road that doesn't stop and start. A heart that doesn't break but breaks even. Clothes that make you look ten years younger. A plumbing system that repairs itself. The all new self-weeding garden. All of the ...

The poem fulfilled the promise of its title. ie a poem about a bird of prey doing its thing, but to me its all a bit bog-standard, over explained, and wordy. I don't feel excited about it even though you're telling me i should be, if you get my drift. Have you read Ted Hughes The hawk in the Rain. N...

I think i just wanted the map-words to do the talking, the spaces of grass and green, and a bit of wind, where no one goes, but where were all left in the end.

Thanks Pauline for your input, and your poem isn't half bad by the way! Trobbo, and Boat, yes your comments confirm its not quite there yet! This is work in progress, just trying to work out what i want to say, and how to say it! Its more an exercise in how not to do a poem exercise if you get my dr...

Mary-Lou twiddled the nipple on her left diddy and tuned into the voices only she could hear. Her head resting into the cigarette held in her free hand. Oblivious to the smoulder and smell of sizzling mane she was delighted when Dermot came through. He talked dirty and she could forget about her blo...

Thanks for the replies, and glad you liked it Mac, and Firebird. Its not finished yet, so thanks for the constructive criticism, maybe the last two lines are a tad cliched. I liked what you did with it Pauline, ie you have tied it up a bit and made it neater.

I liked it but im like Greg Wallis from Masterchef- I want more of it !

Maybe your eyes have it sometimes
when the words come out wrong-
a stone dropped in a well, that second or two
of lost meaning,
counting with our heartbeats.

Thanks everyone for the replies, glad everyone sort of liked it. I think Ross hit the nail on the head with what I wanted to do, ie make a poem out of the place names, and let them take up the slack, almost without the author being present. I agree it needs something else though.