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Bob Spencer is a local farmer and a member of the Kent & Sussex Poetry Society. This poem was selected for our Folio #72 in 2018.

  
 Looking Round The Wall
 not sure where   cairo perhaps
 a veil-faint moon
 eternal pyramids
 a blue window
 on a flat oiled slab
 arches  an open doorway
 spewing light
 from a dead man’s ritual
 rag baggery of shacks
 places in amagio
           night surrendering
           to a sky wrenched open
           hillside   light meets dark
           cattle grazing  leafless trees
           bony branches
           clawing the day
           miss muffet weeping
                               cocky Spaniard
                               impatience quivering
           table overhung
           with bordered cloth
           patches dipped in Timbuctoo
           sold in tunbridge wells
           eve’s fruit mouldering
           in a woven basket
           temptation fermenting
                               town mist  ugly windows
                           street seller harrowing cod
                           from yesterday’s trawler
                           women haggling
                           by an ominous doorway
                           to what is not nice
           a lake  a reflecting tower
           a naked woman
           gazing at glow worms
           the moon her life force
           an opening
           to the profound dull tunnel
   

This poem, by our member Lydia Hill, was selected by our external judge for inclusion in Folio #74 in 2020.

Peggy’s Oak

No horses graze today beneath Peggy’s oak. In full leaf it stands
on the slope of a mound, the sheltered side, a good spot.

The small field rises from the road beside the whitewashed village hall
where you once danced. A large cabbage white flutters under the eaves.

I hear the band playing In the Mood, smell cigarette smoke, hear shuffling feet;
you were clumsy, you trod on girls’ toes, laughed when they complained.

How many horses have sheltered beneath this oak? Scratched their rumps
on its rough bark? If I look, will I find a clump of Peggy’s brown hair?

You say she never used her field shelter, winter’s mornings
you’d find her, frost on her back, under the oak.

I lean on the gate, feel through your hands the cold steel catch,
listen as your booted feet crunch on frozen mud,

you call over her warm, steaming horsiness,
holding her harness, inhaling Neat’s Foot oil, waiting for the day to start.

David is the Chair of the Kent & Sussex Poetry Society. This poem was selected by our external judge for publishing in our 2020 anthology, Folio #74

Birthday Blues

Not a moment, but an aeon of pain,
surging from beneath, lurching from within.

We cry in tandem as you burst forth,
surfing the tide of my blackened blood.

You are searching for your own first breath,
you are the beauty I will love to death.

This is our first and final parting,
the start of separation and end of cohesion.

Now you are gone from my bloated body,
no longer my bones and blood but your own.

Your naked fragility fuels my anxiety,
I weep for every future failure you will face.

After birth, there is only motherhood:
not a moment, but an aeon of pain.

John is a long-standing member of the Society, who now lives in East Anglia but still joins our events by Zoom. This poem came second in the Folio competition in 2019, and was published in Folio 73.

Charger
after a screen print by Zsophia Schweger
at the RA summer exhibition 2018

she's left her charger

I am alone in this bare pastel house
with nothing but her charger

its wire straggles on the floor
seeking an absent phone

but this is a comfort
it means she'll return

if only to retrieve her charger

Sophie Herxheimer is our November guest and will be reading to our Zoom audience on November 17th. The meeting starts at 8.00 pm as usual.

Sophie is an artist and a poet.
She has held residencies for LIFT, Museum of Liverpool, The Migration Museum and Transport for London. Exhibitions include The Whitworth, Tate Modern, The Poetry Library and The National Portrait Gallery.

She has illustrated five fairy tale collections, made several artists books, created a 300 metre tablecloth to run the length of Southwark Bridge, featuring hand printed food stories from a thousand Londoners; narrated an episode of The Food Programme from Margate, made a life size concrete poem in the shape of Mrs Beeton sited next to her grave, and a pie big enough for seven drama students to jump out of, singing, on the lawn of an old people’s home. An ongoing project is collecting stories live in ink from members of the public.

Recent publications include: Your Candle Accompanies the Sun,(Henningham Family Press, 2017) Velkom to Inklandt (Short Books, 2017) and (with Chris McCabe) The Practical Visionary published by Hercules Editions. Her latest collection is 60 Lovers to Make and Do, with Henningham Family Press.

Come along and enjoy a gourmet feast from Sophie this month!

Non-members are welcome and can use our Paypal link for the tiny fee of £3.

Clive was for many years chairman of the Society. This poem was published in Folio #72 in 2018.

Turdidae

Blackbird chases Thrush
through the flowerbed;
they share a family name
but don't get on.

That's the thing
with taxonomy; it finds
two small bones that match
and you're linked forever.

Take a funeral:
the strangers who coagulate
after the event - aunts,
confused whose sons we are,

nephews who've grown a foot
or grey since Gran was eighty,
cousins claiming to be soul-mates
and with whom

we swear to stay in touch
as we did when - what's he called - 
their second-born was named.
We wrap a wing around each one,

insist they call
the minute there's a chance
and hone our beaks
in case they have the cheek.

The Gebelein Man, by Kent and Sussex Poetry Society member Clare Marsh, a writer of children’s fiction, short stories, flash fiction and poetry, was selected in our 2020 Folio competition for publication in Folio #74. Clare graduated with an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Kent in 2018. She can be found on Facebook at claremarshwriter1

The Gebelein Man

In the Early Egypt Gallery,
preserved in sand, a young man
from south of Thebes, lies crouched
face-down in a glass cube. Surrounded
by prying eyes, he covers his face
with clasped hand in a staged burial pit - 
defenceless as any caged animal.
I want to cover his naked body
with a blanket of softest wool

Displayed over a hundred years,
dubbed Ginger for his poignant tufts
of red curls, clustered on his leathered scalp.
His given name belatedly dropped due to 
ethical concerns about the treatment of the dead.

The British Museum invites me instead 
to take part in a touch screen
interactive learning experience
to explore inside Gebelein Man
on a virtual autopsy table. Allows me,
and a crowd of giggling school children,
to slice through CT scan layers - skin, muscle, organs -
to reveal his skeleton and discover the fatal
stab wound in his back.


After the Human Tissue Act 2004, the British Museum 
developed a policy for the respectful handling and 
display of human remains. 

Despite the difficulties of ‘live’, it’s not only the Kent and Sussex Poetry Society that’s finding new online ways to connect. Another local group – Voices – that puts on great evenings of performance – a kind of Royal Variety Show – is using Faceboook to provide opportunities for performers and audiences alike: Virtual Voices. Their next link up is on Friday 30th October, using their Facebook group.

For those completely new to Voices you’ll find all the background information about who they are and what they on their website. Have a look around and if you like what you see hot-foot it over to Facebook to register your interest for Friday night’s (Oct 30th) Halloween special. You can book a slot there to read or perform live, or send a video / audio recording in advance: it’s all good! Then, by the magic of Facebook messenger, they’ll be going live at around 8:00 to share whatever has been thrown into the pot. Actually, what with it being Halloween and all that should probably say ‘to stir up whatever has been thrown into the cauldron’… We know for a FAKT there will be poetry and at least a couple of songs, but who knows what else will emerge from the fog?

This poem by our member Mark Harrison, was selected for our Folio #74 published this year.

Brighton Rock

Ten of the clock and in they shuffle
Straight for the £1 boxes, they ain't subtle
Bagged their coffees and give them a guzzle
'Do anything on that, mate?'

Foggy drive down, energy sapping
Carful of boxes ripe for unpacking
Stag Weekend drunks outside overacting
'Do anything on that, mate?'

Russian guy here with red flight case
Grizzled old Mod, knife mark on face
Rocker with daughter, you hope that's the case
'Do anything on that, mate?'

Straggly grey hair and bulging guts
Simpering kids and whimpering mutts
Indulgent wives, their Sundays forsook
'Do anything on that, mate?'

Mid-morning peak, they're all up for buying
Rummaging through the vinyl, then sighing
Pleading gaze at me, mortifying
'Do anything on that, mate?'

Pink Floyd collection found in an attic
Malicious ex-wife been sent apoplectic
Bargain price purchase that made me ecstatic
'Do anything on that, mate?'

Late in the day and my profits are down
Fat leather wallets are thin on the ground
Bloke sidles up, he seems pretty sound
'Do anything on the Floyd, mate?'

'A tenner and it's yours. Cheeky sod.'

This poem, by Bob Spencer, a local poet and farmer, was selected for our Folio #73 in 2019.

The Sacred Tree Says You Are Now A Bird That Doesn't Hate Blue

You never seemed to know
where you were from.
Onetime,
I thought goose green
where the swings were.
Perhaps
the cemetery hill
where we laughed
ten times each week.

Now and then
where you are now
speaks to me.
It says you won't be anywhere
because anywhere
is always blue.
You hated blue.

I walked
into this innocent field
for an opinion.
It also said that
you're not anywhere,
that your kisses have melted away.
Chocolate in the sun.
Aches in the bath.

I wondered
if you were in the sacred tree,
naked now, shorn
of its keys and leaves.
Not amongst my brittle bones
It barked.
She is flown to the sun,
the elephants.
And others.

I looked to the skies,
your path to the sun
and rejoiced that blue
could no longer
be a source
of your displeasure.