Cloudmother by Siobhan Harvey

When a child starts school, so too the
parents:

this is a truth Cloudmother can�t
escape.



Here are others � when a teacher favours
a child,

so too the parents; when a classmate
befriends a child,



so too the parents; when a label owns a child,

so too the parents. The mother most of
all.



The handwriting lessons that failed to
prepare her for life;

the teachers who saw careers in

The Beautiful Game

Looking for a cross
But found
A corner

Clive Tyldesley, commentating on the England vs Uruguay World Cup match, 19th June 2014. Submitted by Ross McCleary.

Sticks and stones

Unfortunately it is far from true�
The power of words to affect
your emotions and actions
is well demonstrated in science.

A word is not a crystal,
transparent and unchanged;
it is the skin of a living thought
and may vary greatly in color and content
according to the circumstances and time
in which it is used.

Majority Floor Leader Jim Stamas, R-Midland,
determined Lisa Brown's comments
violated the decorum of the House,
"What she said was offensive" said Rep. Mike Callton, R-Nashville.
�It was so offensive, I don't even want to say it
in front of women.
I would not say that in mixed company.�

Lisa Brown called a press conference, today.
She defended her use of the word "vagina"
saying it is the "anatomically medically correct term.�

Her English teacher even told her
you can�t get wet from the word water.




Each stanza from a different source: Susan Smalley, Professor Emeritus, Department of Psychiatry and Biobehavioral Sciences at UCLA; Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr; Detroit News, June 2012; Detroit Free Press, June 2012; and Nin Andrews, Sleeping with Houdini (BOA Editions Ltd, 2008). Submitted by Joanna White.

Poems: Charles Wright

Now that Charles Wright is the 20th United States Poet Laureate, many people unaware of his poetry will finally read some of his poems.

The Poetry Foundation offers a selection of Wright�s poems:
A Short History of the Shadow
Black Zodiac
Clear Night
Lives of the Saints
Miles Davis and Elizabeth Bishop Fake the Break
Northhanger Ridge
The Appalachian Book of the Dead

You can read 50 of Wright�s poems that appeared in Poetry or listen to him read and discuss his poetry in some 1992 recordings.

'Chemotherapy' by Mary McCallum and 'In the corner of my mind, a boy' by Frankie McMillan

Chemotherapy by Mary McCallum



who knew she was
there

hidden
inside that thing that turns

her girl upside
down and inside out

(poison, really, a
small inefficient

killing field) let
loose in a body still

young enough to
smell of milk

in the morning, one
the mother must

return to sit
beside and stand over

to stroke the soft
cheek, catch the soft

vomit, be steel to
all that

Absent Father

I find myself here with a baby with delicate bones,
fine features and blue eyes, who � especially asleep,
when she's at her most beautiful � looks exactly like you.
The fine movements of the lips, the almond-shaped eyes,
the one dimple on her right cheek.
I still find this resemblance strangely, unsettlingly painful.

I imagine you waking up beside that other woman,
whoever she might be; she will never find out
about this one aspect of your life.
I find it hard to picture you; I don't know your apartment,
but I imagine you waking up in it, flat on your back,
elbow tucked beneath your head, thinking of your baby,
somewhere, with someone else, hundreds of miles away.

For a few minutes every once in a while,
more rarely each year,
and too briefly.

Taken from A letter to...my baby's absent father in The Guardian, 7th June 2014. Submitted by Angi Holden.

A Poet's Glossary

Looking through A Poet's Glossary, by poet Edward Hirsch, certainly offers many possibilities for writing prompts.

Hirsch has put together a very international collection of terms from A (as in abededarian) to Z (zeugma).

You might try writing a Bedouin women�s ghinnawa (highly stylized verses) or a style of gentle banter that originated as a sung verbal duel in the West Indies called picong.

There are also the more familiar terms that we were introduced to in school.

The book has been called a followup to Edward Hirsch�s best-selling book How to Read a Poem: And Fall in Love with Poetry from 1999 which contained a useful but limited  glossary.

For example, Hirsch defines "couplet" as two successive lines of poetry, usually rhymed (aa), which has been an elemental stanzaic unit�a couple, a pairing�as long as there has been written rhyming poetry in English. 

We call a couplet closed when the sense and syntax come to a conclusion or strong pause at the end of the second line, thus giving a feeling of self-containment and enclosure, as in the first lines of �To His Coy Mistress�:

Had we but world enough, and time,
This coyness, Lady, were no crime.

We call a couplet open when the sense carries forward past the second line into the next line or lines, as in the beginning of Keats�s Endymion (1818):

A thing of beauty is a joy for ever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness, but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep

     Full of sweet dreams . . .

Ben Jonson told William Drummond that he deemed couplets �the brav�est Sort of Verses, especially when they are broken.� All two-line stanzas in English carry the vestigial memory of closed or open couplets.

In an interview, Hirsch explained his intent for the glossary:

I see this as a book for the initiated as well as for the uninitiated reader. People who don�t know much about poetry can find what they need to know about certain basics, like the nature of the line or the stanza, or the characteristics of a form, like the ghazal or the sestina. But there are also a lot of things in this book that even widely read readers of poetry may not know much about because they are outside our tradition. So, for example, you might not know to look up a form of African praise poem called the or�k�. If you care to think about praise poetry�what it is, how it functions�then the or�k� has a lot to tell you. To help the reader along different pathways, I�ve added �See also� at the bottom of every entry.

Curious about the abecedarian and zeugma?

Attention Dear Respected One

Greetings in Jesus name Amen!
Private Message, important message you.
Prayed over select name among other
names due to esteeming nature.

I am account officer south Korea government
accounts discovered most account dormant
account on further investigation particular account
belong former president PARK CHUNG HEE, rule
1963-1979. I am widow being lost husband.

Aware relation born 2nd February 1951, last
address West Africa? Father General Jonas
Savimbi rebel leader control diamond regions
Angola 27 years successfully. Narrowly escaped
tsunami affected spinal cord also ear drum claim
lifes entire family. Simeon Arag died in estate.

New desire assist helpless. First box 200KG
of 22 Karrat alluvia gold dust second ($40
million U.S. dollars). Disguised �Family Treasure.�
This thereby triggers procedure reverting
ownership funds to her majesty's government.
Known condition I make foundation
orphanages widows propagate word of God.

Need assurance you never, never cheat as fund
hit in your account. Transaction totally free of risk.
Forward: Full Name: Sex: any Contact Address.
Not destroy my chance, if not work with me
lets move on not destroy me. What shall it profit
man to wine the whole world and loose his soul?



A collation of various scam emails. Submitted by Hao Guang Tse.

Lucifer In Las Vegas by Joanna Preston

tortoise: from the Greek, tartarchos; �god of the underworld�

i. The Fall


As I fell, I burned

through shame and grief

and disbelief and love �

words that trail like smoke,

like broken wings.

Only rage was left �

its silken tongue, its

crystal shell. I fell

through night and time

into the morning

of this world, and

kept on falling.

Once, I lived

by passion�s flame,

but I learned

Charles Wright To Be New Poet Laureate

The Library of Congress will announce this week that the next poet laureate will be Charles Wright.

He is the author of nearly two dozen collections of verse and known for blending modernism and the landscape of the American South.

At 78, Wright is retired from teaching at the University of Virginia. He has won the Pulitzer Prize, the National Book Award, the Bollingen Prize and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize.

After Reading Tu Fu, I Go Outside to the Dwarf Orchard

East of me, west of me, full summer.
How deeper than elsewhere the dusk is in your own yard.
Birds fly back and forth across the lawn
looking for home
As night drifts up like a little boat.

Day after day, I become of less use to myself.
Like this mockingbird,
I flit from one thing to the next.
What do I have to look forward to at fifty-four?
Tomorrow is dark.
Day-after-tomorrow is darker still.

The sky dogs are whimpering.
Fireflies are dragging the hush of evening
up from the damp grass.
Into the world's tumult, into the chaos of every day,
Go quietly, quietly.

Wright's latest collection of poems is Caribou (2014)





Read more about the new Poet Laureate - http://www.npr.org/2014/06/13/321586882/charles-wright-the-contemplative-poet-laureate

On the division of animals

More often than not, the linguist or anthropologist just throws up his hands and resorts to giving a list � a list that one would not be surprised to find in the writings of Borges.
George Lakoff

Those that belong to the Emperor,
embalmed ones,
those that are trained,
suckling pigs,
mermaids,
fabulous ones,
stray dogs,
those that are included in this classification,
those that tremble as if they were mad,
innumerable ones,
those drawn with a very fine camel�s hair brush,
others,
those that have just broken a flower vase,
those that resemble flies from a distance.




From 'Other Inquisitions' in which Borges writes of a strange way of classifying animals in an ancient Chinese encyclopaedia. Via Futility Closet. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

Help My Mastiff (Not My Business)

I am going to tell you the whole story.

And if can
help to save
my 14 months mastiff; a baby himself.

And if you still feel
like helping you can make some call
on the dog Bruce behalf.

I am trying to understand
that the dog bite a 9 year old kid
that looks like a football player.

My toddles were playing next to the dog
to the neighbors house
and this kid that we do not want

Which the neighbor told him not to go to the back yard
because of the dog. He was there in a minute
hitting the dog on the head

Which my 2 toddles was playing near by. The dog broke the leash
and bite he in the arm. And now
they are going to kill him.

How do we know if the boy was going
to hurt the toddles. There is a lake
like 20 feet away.

What did this boy really want
to do? I guess
we will never know, but neighbors said he is a trouble kid.

He has all his paper work
and not other report of bite. They said
because of the severe of the bit to his arm.

If the dog really wanted to do damage he can he easily
take his arm off or ate it. The boy
had to 36 stitches.

Now we have 2 thing at play here the boy
is really plummie boy with a lot of meat and the second thing the dog
have a huge mouth.

So One bit, easy 36 stitches.




A post on Craigslist in Pets, 29 May 2014. Submitted by Susan Cody.

Bad Housekeeping by Emma Neale

The cat does a
fine patriarchal stalk

his paws all
rosebuds and thorns,

eyes a
tender-censorious almost-blue

as he plays
pat-a-cake, pat-a-cake

with the living
room rug

which bubbles
and bumps

like bread
dough baking

until I lift
its edge

to see a small,
dark, anguished mouse

race the thread
of its tail up and down

like a
seamstress frantic to say least and mend soonest

the deep

How to Be a Bluesman

1
Never have a happy relationship.
If you do find yourself involved in a happy relationship,
kill your partner and then write a song about it.
If they arrest you, all the better.
You can now write a song about being in jail.

2
Chicago, St. Louis,
and Kansas City
are still the best places
to have the Blues.

Blues can take place
in New York City,
but not in Hawaii
or any place in Canada.

Hard times in Minneapolis
or Seattle is probably
just clinical depression.

3
No one will believe
it's the Blues
if you wear a suit �
unless, that is,
you slept in it.



Taken from a discussion on the Blindman's Blues Forum, 12th January 2010. Submitted by Howie Good.

Prompt: All About June

What does the month of June suggest to you? Summer? Weddings?

In Richard Wilbur's poem, "June Light," the month is present in someone "with clear location" and "the just soft stare of uncontested summer."

The Latin name for June is Junius. Ovid offered multiple etymologies for the month's name: from the Roman goddess Juno, the goddess of marriage and the wife of the supreme deity Jupiter; the second is that the name comes from the Latin word iuniores, meaning "younger ones", as opposed to maiores ("elders") for which the preceding month May (Maius) may be named. Though we might associate JUne with weddings, in ancient Rome, the period from mid-May through mid-June was considered a bad time to marry. Ovid says that he consulted the Flaminica Dialis, the high priestess of Jupiter, about setting a date for his daughter's wedding, and was advised to wait till after June 15. Then again, Plutarch said that the entire month of June was more favorable for weddings than May.

I like the Icelandic folk story that says that if you bathe naked in the morning dew on the morning of June 24, you are supposed to keep aging at bay for a longer period.

If you believe in the power of the heavenly bodies, the start of June finds the sun rising in the constellation of Taurus, and at the end of the month it rises in the constellation of Gemini.

Does the month mean to you, as in this month's full moon, strawberries and roses?

This month we ask you to consider June as the theme for your poem. Perhaps, you can teach us something new about the month.

Submission deadline: June 30, 2014

CV

My Most Illustrious Lord,

I know how, in the course of the siege of a terrain,
to remove water from the moats and how to make
an infinite number of bridges, mantlets
and scaling ladders and other instruments
necessary to such an enterprise.

I have also types of cannon, most convenient
and easily portable, with which to hurl small stones
almost like a hail-storm; and the smoke from the cannon
will instil a great fear in the enemy
on account of the grave damage and confusion.

I have means of arriving at a designated
spot through mines and secret winding passages
constructed completely without noise, even if
it should be necessary to pass underneath
moats or any river.

Also I will make cannon, mortar and light ordnance
of very beautiful and functional design
that are quite out of the ordinary.

I will assemble catapults, mangonels,
trebuckets and other instruments of wonderful
efficiency not in general use.

And should a sea battle be occasioned,
I have examples of many instruments
which are highly suitable either in attack
or defence, and craft which will resist the fire
of all the heaviest cannon and powder and smoke.

Also I can execute sculpture in marble,
bronze and clay. Likewise in painting, I can do
everything possible as well as any other.




From a letter Leonardo da Vinci wrote to Ludovico Sforza around 1483, commending himself for court employment. Via Letters of Note. Submitted by Gabriel Smy.

Gatherers

They are likely to have seen a world
much more alive than ours,
where every tree or hill may have had
the Spirit
or been associated with past times
or mythical stories,
where the soul of a man might inhabit
a dog after his death.
They would have known few other people
and few things they called their own.
But then
it�s worth remembering
the Scottish winters spent without houses,
the dangers of travelling
between islands in primitive boats.




Notes taken by a family member during final year of studying Archaeology at Glasgow University, 2012. Submitted by B.T. Joy.

Quail Flat, 1960 by Kerry Popplewell

for Brian

Five of us slept that night on the stone floor
of an old cob hut, close by the Clarence River �
our ears ringing still from the silence
of high screes, our eyes still burning
from hot snow, the bright shimmer of bugloss
and briar rose on the parched valley flats.

When I woke, cold, in that monochrome time
before colour seeps in, I saw you sprawled
quite motionless, eyes closed.

My mother would still like to know

what happened to the set
of yellow clip on bows
she bought for my hair
when I was about six. ??

She put them in a safe place
ready to use
when I went to a birthday party later the same week
and thirty two years later they are still missing. ??

Yet every now and again
she still wonders about them
and does this wistful gaze at my hair, and I know
she's imagining me wearing them now.



Taken from a post by user SarahandFuck on Mumsnet chat forum, July 2013. Submitted by Uschi Gatward.