Poem Of The Week, Week 5: Gothic by Maureen Jivani

We have a thunderously powerful poem up next with Gothic by Maureen Jivani -

Gothic

We were chasing lovebirds when the hail arrived

in violet clouds that burst and scattered their icy

bullets over us. Back home with fever we watched

through blurred windows as Old World vultures tore

up the sky like unanswered prayers. For immediate

safety we hid under the stairs with perfect dolls inside

perfect homes in perfect form while at the end of its leash

our house raged and staggered on the edge of a cliff;

its foundations rocked; its walls cracked, its doors

remembered the axe. And split. Its rafters shivered

and shook, its roof thundered and wept until the whole

brickwork shrieked and finally whimpered tearing

itself into crumbling halves. Vultures and lovebirds

descended like fallen angels on the brokered tiles.

Poem Of The Week, Week 5: Black Men Should Wear Colour by Jenny Mitchell

It’s week 5 already of Poem Of The Week and this time we have Black Men Should Wear Colour by Jenny Mitchell who says, ‘It was written for my brother and all the black men who are judged and often hurt by ignorance and prejudice.’

Black Men Should Wear Colour

I mean an orange coat,

sunlight dripping down the sleeves.

A yellow shirt to clash with bright blue trousers –

taking inspiration from the most translucent sea.

Pink leather shoes. Fuchsias might be best

to contrast with brown skin.

Red socks should add some warmth,

so long as they’re the only flames to ever touch your feet.

A tie could be mistaken for a noose,

unless you choose a rainbow swirling on your chest.

It will help to show the heart

has all the colours in the world.

Walk down any street with head held high.

I will wave my colours back and we’ll both be safe.

This poem is published in Jenny’s debut collection, Her Lost Language (Indigo Dreams Publishing), and is joint winner of the Geoff Stevens Memorial Poetry Prize. More details available here: Jenny Mitchell - Indigo Dreams.

Poem Of The Week, Week 4: Lockdown by Audrey Ardern-Jones

For our last poem of this week’s Poem Of The Week, we have Lockdown by Audrey Ardern-Jones. This relatable sonnet reflects on the solemn and hopeful moments of lockdown-

Lockdown

It’s Easter week, Holy week, another week

of quiet, no aeroplanes overhead, an empty sky

waiting; days slipping into days in this unique

regime of  silent streets where no-one passes by.

We listen to radios, stroll most mornings;

the dead are counted daily, numbers spin like dice across

the globe - a pandemic in crisis - messages spread

in seconds: words that pool in times of loss.  

In our garden a blackbird sings, his yellow beak

opens wide like a chorister, he loves this calm;

a robin chirps in harmony, multiple magpies shriek

in voices, hey, hey, hey, loud as a burglar alarm.

The world’s on hold, our planet heals, cools down,

we long to dance again - live life in a fancy gown.

Poem of the Week, Week 4: I Slip into My Mother's Shoes by Jo Roach

Another poem of Poem Of The Week is I Slip Into My Mother’s Shoes by Jo Roach. With VE day approaching and the language used to describe lockdown in the media, this poem rouses a relatable mood -

I Slip into My Mother’s Shoes

and stand at the bench in the munitions factory

oil pours over my hands

the air thick with the choking smell of sulphur

my skin stained canary yellow

the deafening din of the machines

the clatter of metal trolleys

I run into the Anderson shelter

terrified by twelve seconds silence of doodlebugs

have all my teeth removed at the Angel Dentist’s

ready for an ill-fitting set of false teeth

take dictation in Pitman’s shorthand

type sixty words a minute in an office in Charterhouse Square

catch a Green Line bus for a day out

lift my skirt and go for a paddle by Southend Pier

dance down Oxford Street on VE Day

with men in coarse demob suits

I’m wearing an engagement ring

a ruby with diamond chips

I wait in the church and he doesn’t come

I go back to my baby son and one room.

Jo Roach born and brought up and still lives in the part of London where she can trace her mother’s family roots back to 1650. Jo’s father was from Ireland, a connection to place which exerts a strong influence on her poetry.

Poem Of The Week, Week 4: 'Three Paintings by Giovanni Bellini' by John Mackinnon

For week four of Poems Of The Week we bring you John Mackinnon and his poem, Three Paintings by Giovanni Bellini. Whilst the galleries and museums are closed to the public, perhaps this poem will conjure the imagery of the Italian Masters…

Three Paintings by Giovanni Bellini

Madonna

If we are to be judged

it won’t be the bambino

sucking his finger and staring

vaguely heavenwards,

but the unlettered girl watching us,

not smiling, not unkind,

whose charged stance is the question

we won’t evade.

Circumcision

She urgently holds

her child to the knife.

His body shudders

as he takes on the law.

The old priest,

so careful in the act,

is all beard,

eyelid, eyebrow.

Jerome

He is reading a book

in a rock landscape

a face disfigures.

It frames the lit city

and the hills’ recession.

While the lion waits

he will lift God’s word

on the state’s stretched tongue.

Mackinnon states, …”recently I have been writing a series of short poems on paintings; the poems here relate to the National Gallery’s 2019 exhibition of Bellini and Mantegna and their permanent collection. I see a poem as an exploration of a territory opened up by some kind of form or material.” Mackinnon website is www.johnmackinnon.org.uk.