https://www.poetryarchive.org/interview/wendy-cope-interview

 

“What do you see as the role of humour in poetry?

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heaven-hell/

I’ve come to the conclusion that G.od made the world

by knitting.

My bones have been knitting too but when you do knitting on needles with wool you can undo it if you make a mistake.

Yet God can’t undo the world because we would all die.

Of course that would solve an awful lot of problems like the middle East but it just seems rather extreme.

Maybe he doesn’t want to do that because he said look at them they’re doing it all themselves

DIY… Kill your neighbour ..

It seems like the opposite of what we really need or who knows perhaps I’m crazy because I want the world to be knitted together and our hearts to be listening together.

So let’s try to do our knitting every day and if we make a mistake let’s try to undo it before it becomes permanent.

Yes if you do your knitting well it’s a life saver I should know

Rhythmic poetry echoes our own rhythms

The way the heart beats and the flow of blood.

Music is biology at play

The joy of being alive is well and good

There is no no need for willpower and its strains

Does the River have to push itself?

Does the tide need training who could tell?

Imitating these is poetrys stealth.

Overwork is easy but it’s wrong.

Distracks us from the pain of life and death

Both can come together in a song

Let your mind be vacant till you find

The evidence that there is another mind

An American filmmaker actor and playwright.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tyler_Perry

“Poetry is a mirror which makes beautiful that which is distorted.” Writing poems, particularly the elegy poems about my mother, did this for me.

Is it still hard to talk about what happened?
Sure. Even this level of conversation I am having with you is very hard. It’s not simply that I am sad. It is much more complex than that. I at once hold these two emotions and one of them is this sense of bereavement that I have lived with my entire adult life. The other is a real sense of happiness because I can talk about her and someone will listen.

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jul/19/natasha-trethewey-i-decided-i-was-going-to-be-the-one-to-tell-my-mothers-story?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Other

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2024/feb/25/catherine-coldstream-cloistered-my-years-as-a-nun-god-interview

https://thehumanist.com/magazine/july-august-2019/features/imperial-borders-and-mythical-frontiers/

If today’s mass immigration is going to end in anything but catastrophe, it’s going to require facing unpleasant truths about American empire and global capitalism. It’s much easier to panic about the Hispanic roofer who just moved to town than to confront those who control the economic and political forces that pushed him there. But that’s exactly what we must do. We can weep and woe about either the plight or burden of immigrants, but if we don’t address why they’re migrating then we’re just going to see, as Barack Obama’s Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano put it, fifty-one-foot ladders for every fifty-foot wall.

1. Rice pudding is very nutritious and you can make it yourself or you can buy it in the supermarket.

2. Cheesecake nutritious but it can also be full of sugar and fat.

3. Fruit with egg custard.

4 Milk based desserts.

5mInstead of cream you scream mixed with natural yoghurt

Things that you can make without shopping if you have a store cupboard and vegetable

Eggs in onion sauce with rice

Eggs in curry sauce with rice naan bread etc

Red lentils in cheese sauce… With rice or quick hook macaroni

Potato omelette

Spanish omelette

Cheese tart or onion

Let’s have a leader from a humble home.

Let’s have someone intelligent but also wise.

Someone who’s not full of himself or herself.

Someone is in touch with reality as it’s being experienced by the poor and the needy and children living in poverty

Let someone come who will give hope even if it’s only in a small quantity

If we have no hope then we will die spiritually and emotionally and given the shortage of money in the working classes it’s possible that people are literally dying as food is so expensive and

Hospitals…. What is going on?

We can create some hope votiing for the best people to win the next election or helping others

Let’s hope extremism is not going to develop any further. There’s enough alienation already

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/john-dryden

England’s first poet laureate

https://lynettebye.com/blog/2021/1/31/the-10000-hour-rule-is-a-myth

The pebbled beach on which we walked at dawn
The sun was dancing singing stone to stone
The sea was pale as silk and gently ran
The tide was coming in, the day began

Why is my memory so deficient here?
I remember little but you near
I remember Portland Bill at dusk
The sea was wilder then with its fierce thrusts

Happiness was like a golden shawl
A world like Eden, man before the Fall
Today they say, illusion, I say, no
What matters is where this insight makes you go

The fruits of meditation are its test
May we be generous,kind, may souls be blessed

S

Now the black sheep’s back inside the fold.

The lost are found,the gate is open wide

We all eat together,timid bold

We weep for joy,our love is not denied

The years of trudging on . through mud and mire

The wounded heart the tears love wiped away

Consolation came, the saints conspired.

The children learnt in stages what to say.

Before we reach the end of earthly life

Before our minds dissolve, before the fire.

Before the husband’s dragged away from wife

Before the eye of God, beyond desire..

The final act of love is reached at last

We know so clearly now that love is just

I saw, while half asleep,  her face was gone
She faded, like the mist does at the dawn,
From the gallery of my most loved ones

Ungrounded by the loss, fearful, forlorn,
Skinless like a worm  picked off a lawn,
I saw, while half asleep,  her face was gone

Do not leave me, do not my love scorn
Lost and gone are my beloved ones
I  am human in both ghost and form

Heart constricted, lungs  pant out my pain
Haunted and bereft of human warmth
I saw, while half asleep,  her face was gone

I shall have no mother but that one
Now I have become a dried out corm
Lost and gone are  my beloved ones

Like a little leaf from its plant torn
Gnawed by slugs,  fragmented  till unborn
I saw, while half asleep, her face was gone
With the gallery of my lost, loved ones

A  homeless woman crouched in bitter  cold
Her face was clean, her entire body  shook
Trembling  in the wind, so rough and bold

Though she was young quite soon she would look old
Her  heart bereft she gave me a  dark look
A  homeless woman crouched in bitter  cold

Was she the sheep that left the fold
That Jesus would not leave to fate  so bleak?
She trembles  in the wind, so rough and bold

A coat I’ll bring tomorrow,I’m appalled.
With her   childlike hand she touched my cheek
A  homeless woman crouched in bitter  cold

Then a humble  Cross between her fingers showed
A flame glowed in her eye, a golden streak
Trembling  in the wind, so rough and bold

 

For the  mystical we do not seek
We are affected by the lost  we meet
A  homeless woman shone in bitter  cold
Trembling  in the wind, her  love,her gold

 

About the golden light what can I say
Love is near and we don’t need to pray
Enter into darkness without fear
Another hand will guide help us steer

I had lost my faith I was bereft
I could not speak, and sinking was my craft
Then a the soft bright cloud embraced me whole.
I felt a presence and I saw the light

Why should I be helped when many die?
The mystery ,of God the soul destroyed

Sometimes sunshine makes us feel bereft
Rain and shadowed clouds would suit our mood
When we are the warp without the weft

As if we are the pen and no ink’s left
As if we hunger yet there is no food
Sometimes sunshine makes us feel bereft

Our mind slows down and all we do is drift
Evil thoughts into the soul intrude
Like we are the warp without the weft

Let the eye and all its muscles rest
With wider focus we may cease to brood
Sometimes sunshine makes us feel bereft

Do not try with will power nor it test
Relaxation brings back knowledge of the good
We take it in like babies at the breast

We must not test the will but let it go
Trust the ocean and eternal flow
Sometimes sunshine makes us feel bereft
Sometimes sunshine brings its golden gifts

Winter sunshine shows the branches bare

Reveals each shape both elegant and spare

The little birds fly in and out at will

The low sun’s bright, the wind is light as well

What kind of world has human language made?

Evolution does not always pay

For language can speak love but also hate

And brings to some misfortune and black fate

Words can hurt much deeper than a knife

We may be traumatised by our own life

The bitch the witch , the charlatan, the Jew

These categories old, are ever new

Language wrote both Dante and Mein Kampf,

From ecstasy to Concentration Camp

J

Against sadness:no-one here can weep
Nor lounge about in111 melancholy deep.
Was Van Gogh senseless to permit his muse.
For his masterpieces ,was the price too steep?
We see the yellow chair but not his views
Nor his mind where technique made such leaps.
Nor was his journey broadcast on the news.
Against sadness.

Happiness or joy is hard to find
When we rest, the News preys on our minds
Yet some are cold towards the slaughtered priest
His nose a beak of bone in old face lined
Now Muslims go to Mass and join Christ’s feast
Against sadness.

What rages in the mind make men kill thus?
In Syrian wars the innocents fare worse.
But these are our near neighbours so we weep
And wonder how to end the frightening curse
The sins we once committed hold us deep
We hold our hands out wanting to be nursed
Against sadness

I’m glad that I can put a bra on now. It’s so useful to have somewhere to put my smartphone other than in my knickers.

In the past women wore knickers with long legs with elastic around the bottom and that was where they could keep their handkerchief or if they’d had a phone they could keep their phone there but now most women wear trousers.

So if you’ve got a large bust a bra is a useful storage place. You don’t want to look as if you’ve got a weapon in there so think about it very carefully especially if you own a gun.

Never carry a pair of scissors in your bra. You could carry a rolled up beanie hat or a pocket hanky.

Remember less is better the more. If you carry a ballpoint pen make sure it doesn’t leak.

But don’t keep your smartphone in your bra when you are feefing a baby because you don’t want the baby to start using the phone do you? Wait till the child is at least two years old before you let them have their own phone and wait till they are 15 before you buy them a bra.

It is better for them to leave their phone at home and let them run out to play in the street with any other children who are still allowed to go out of the house.

Because you can use a phone all your life but you can only play in the street until you are adolescent and it was  one of the happiest times of my own life. Of course there wasn’t so much traffic then. People didn’t lock their front doors and the kettle was always on the fire for any  unexpected visitor.

Once you reach adolescence I’m afraid life is completely different and I don’t think any adolescent wants to keep a phone in their bra to be absolutely truthful. A bird in the hand is worth two in a bra.

Postmodern poetry has no formal shape
No sonnet,villanelle or rondeau there
Nor is it true or false that we are apes

A sentence made from curses aggravates
Makes even slight hurts something we can’t bear
Postmodern poetry has no formal shape

This very poem’s ironic , it emotes
Glares with total rage at you who care
If it’s true or false that we are apes

This poem,alas, will offer no escape
If it has no rhymes then I have flair
Postmodern poetry has no formal shape

The forms are hung until we get to break
We shatter and we crack the poet’s lair
I think it’s true and false that we are apes

For a metre I will hang in here
Waiting with no patience for a jeer
Postmodern poetry has no formal shape
Nor is it true that thoughts annihilate

Between the world and how we represent
The nameless by a name and even place
There is a space or void in our intent.

What mother saw, what father really meant
How love and hate might intertwine in space
In our own world, what can we represent?

In writing, there is lack and letters bent
For ancient writing often scholars traced
There is a space or void in our intent.

Today the sun is golden, gods descend.
With love, for moments, we are all embraced
Of the felt, what can we represent?

Our willingness unblinds the heart so rent
And then we see the face within his face
The space or void is in our interest.

I cross my eyes with fingers interlaced:
The crucifix, the love, the death of Christ
Between the world and what we may attempt
There is a space or void where he was sent

I wish I were in Lancashire again

Pendle Hill the pike of Rivington

The mountains of North Wales , the Cheshire plain

I will never climb, my legs are gone,

Dear home, the cobbled Street my skipping rope.

The end wall of the house my mother’s face.

The tree she planted and her helpless hope

The love ,the feeling sad, the lost embrace..

I wish I were in junior school once

more

The powdered ink,, the brass the desks of oak

Children’s laughter to the sky can soar,

Skipping fast and how our arms would a àche

I wish I were a child and has no cares

I miss the. Freedom, bonfire night the War

The wordless feelings of the soul catch light
Like fire,like diamonds, like the dust of stars
With their fire they penetrate the night

To expression, they the mind incite
To where the words may open and be clear
The wordless feelings of the soul catch light

Expression by its methods brings delight
We see the molten universe desire
With great fires , with wonder, what work’s wrought?

Like a flock of geese in happy flight
The heart of unknown worlds is not a liar
The sense of feeling souls will bring us light

Of the thunder and the lion we note
The natural world with its own might conspires
With its being it permeates the night

So our hearts and souls does love devour
Never cornered never shall love cower
The wordless feelings of the soul catch light
With such brilliance, can we feel the night?

https://davidjrogersftw.com/

David’s latest post is of his poetry and this is well worth visiting this. He is very accomplished and full of feeling.

A President’s Death

Poor Professor Johnson,
I pitied him–his deep feelings.
A dignified man, a scholar,
Teacher of eighteenth
Century British poetry,
Couldn’t speak but to
Say go home, there would
Be no class today.
On the subway someone
Had a portable radio.
No passenger speaking,
Everyone listening in shock,
The tinny, crackling
Radio voice telling us over
And over as though we
Wouldn’t believe him, that
The President I felt I knew
Though he was rich and I
A student struggling with
Illness and poverty,
Had been shot.  Professor
Johnson went home and read
Alexander Pope’s masterful
Couplets through tears.