Poetry Night Barbara White Room, Newnham College

7:30-9:00pm, FREE ENTRY!

Poe t r y E ven i ng20 | 11 | 14

Dav i d Godw i n Head o f E ven t s

dggg2@cam .ac . u k

We l come !

A l y s W i l l i amsEven t s Team

kaw65@cam .ac . u k

A very warm welcome to the Cambridge Creatives Poetry Evening!

We are so thrilled with all of the submissions we received and have compiled some of our favourites here. We thank all of the poets for speaking tonight and to everybody else who has been involved in this evening of creativity!

We’re off to the pub afterwards. Come with us!

David and Alys

SOCIAL MED IA

10 M INUTE INTERVAL

We lcome

M ike Hood r ead i ng Tha t B i g T ree

Hope Dohe r t y r ead i ng Yes te r day and Un t i t l e d

Cha r l o t t e Cho r l ey ’s S i ng l e Bed ( r ead b y A l y s W i l l i ams )

Max Mahe r r ead i ng Bu f fe r Coun t r y ( an e x t r ac t )

Geo rg i a Macqueen B l ack r ead i ng The Bounda r y

Hannah Cohen r ead i ng My Rucksack

A r t hu r Goodw i n r ead i ng D r i ve and Wo rd A l i ve

Row land Bang l e ’s Poem ( r ead b y A l y s W i l l i ams )

Ca l l um Ou l ds r ead i ng YR lando and P i n k Cand l es

N icho l as Ho f fman r ead i ng My t h and Sun -god

Madd i e Geddes -Ba r ton r ead i ng A l z he ime r s and I n somn ia

RUNN ING ORDER

Max Mahe r r ead i ng l yc i ndas@facebook . com

Rose Reade r ead i ng Facebook ( an e x t r ac t )

Madd i e Geddes -Ba r ton r ead i ng An Exe r c i se i n Abs t r ac t i o n

Thomas Fo l l ey r ead i ng Th ree Tw i t t e r Pos t s

Michae l Skansgaa rd r ead i ng Came ra C l i c k

Mike Hood

That Big Tree“Son?”

The voice is warm like a log fire. it’s got the crackle of agebut something in the throat is braveand truelike it would tear itself to shreds to save you,and its soft and wizened like the little leather book your granddad gave you.

“Remember what I told you,” he says.

“OK Dad.”He’s restless, young.Throbbing like a chosen one ‘cos he’s always been the only sonsince before he can’t remember,so he says “OK Dad” and rocks back and forth on his feet.

“What did I tell you?”

“Don’t climb that tree”

“The big tree beyond the garden, at the edge of wood”

“I know”

“Nothing survives therenothing that’s good;just don’t climb that treeat the edge of the wood.”

And the son nods, and rocks back,and his father’s eyes burn with all the fires of historyAnd he says, “Go on then, son.Go on.”

And off he goes. Fast, fierce,coursing like blood through strong veinshe goes,Throwing the past behind him.and he splashes through the creekso fast he doesn’t seeThe smooth stones glitter underneath his feetAnd the sun glistens on his proud sweating browand he’s too big to listentoo small to know howuntil the penny dropsand his feet stop: he’s come to the tree.That big tree beyond the garden at the edge of the wood I knowand he looks up.And it’s tall, and it’s a climber. Its long, sidewards branches beckon in their woody way and they seem to say, sneering,

Are you brave, little one, for the climb?

Mike Hood (con t i n ued )

Yes I am.

But you’re only a child, I don’t think that you can.

Well I think that I can and I think that I will, as long as you’re fair and you keep standing still.

Very well, very well, I give you my word. While you climb, I’ll be still.

That’s not what I heard.

You can’t trust what you hear - believe what you see! Look, foolish child - I can’t move, I’m a tree.

And he grits his teeth and he catches his bottom lip and he knows it’ll bleed but he doesn’t care because he’s man enough, he knows he is. And it must be dust in his eye he swearsas he hauls himself up onto the first branch. And already he feels that he might be a fool, but he’s not a coward. He won’t be a coward. So he clambers on, onwards and upwards, don’t look back, don’t look down, no room for doubt. No room for the fear rising up in his chest like a cold, hard stone from the bottom of the stream. But for a moment, he hears it: “Remember what I told you, Just don’t climb that tree”. And he swallows the stone down hard because he will not stop. He will not be a child for one more day, he will not be the little one, he will not be the one who’s never climbed the tree and doesn’t even know what it looks like up there. And he wishes he had a little brother to be bigger than as he reaches for the last branch and pulls himself up.And as he lifts his leg overHe feels the branch shiver beneath him.Just lightly, quickly, like a chuckle.Then again, and again,like the tree is laughing at him.and it’s bigger and growingand its mocking and groaningand he’s clinging on as everything roarswith the bellow of a sick joke so oldits scrawled on the walls of the worldand he screams -“You said you wouldn’t move! “

“Now, what did I say? ‘I’ll be still, while you climb’? You can’t trust what you hear, least of all when it rhymes. But of course, I was faithful - I kept to the deal. But the climb’s over now – so things might get surreal.”

And the fear-stone rises up in this throatcold, hard, and it sits, pressing against the back of his skullas he waits for the world to end.

But the world bends.

Mike Hood (con t i n ued )

And the tree twists and turnsAnd squirms itself inside out like a wormAnd he doesn’t know which ways up anymoreOr if there is one or just down just round and around anddown the rabbit holedown where the dark things wriggleand writheand then silence.

Darkness.

Drip.

Drop.

Hello?

Hello?

Drop.

Who’s there?

Only me.

Who are you?

You’ll see.

How are you here?

Same as you. Climbed the tree.

What? Why? To show that you could? Or did your father not warn you that nobody should? Well actually that’s funny, that’s quite different to you. I climbed because that’s what Dad told me to do.

What? No! How could he? You’re taking the piss. What dad puts his son through something like this?

He hears a faint sigh.

Did he explain to you why?

Oh yes, yes he did, and now I know that it’s true. He said some day, if I waited, that I would find you.

And it hits like a wave andhe knows it’s true.And it almost feels like he always knewlike every breath he’d ever breathedhad been a clue to this.Then out of the darkness a hand takes hisand once againthe whole world meltsbut this time in a good way.Like an ice cream on a too-hot day.He can almost feel himself dissolving.

Mike Hood (con t i n ued )

He can smell the ambiguities resolvingAnd he’s falling, in love, but not like that: upwards, and the joy of it sings right down into his toesand he knows he’s mixing his metaphorsbut he doesn’t care.‘cos he actually feels like a bird of the airlike a stray dog coming in from the coldlike a miracle breathing, bright to beholdand he feels like he’s underwater:he can hear that strange silent hum in is earsand his heart beats deeperpumps out all fearsand his old soul dances in slow motionbut at the same time it’s like he’s just beenpulled out of the oceanand he’s lying on a lifeboatlungs exploding with air‘cos he’s actually alive.

Now go forth and thrive.Infinity and beyond mate,reach for the skies,‘cos as he opens his eyes he sees heaven and earth shatterinto a sea of glass,when all the shadows pass away in the molten voice of this brand new age old brother of his;and the hand holds hisas if nothing else isand he’s free.‘Cos they’re lost togetherhim and the one who had waited foreverthey are lost, they are lostbut they are together,him and the one who had waited foreverand this little boy feels found.

And he can feel dewy grass under his feetand they’re running now.And he can see the river flow belowand the sun reflects so brightit’s a torrent of dancing stars.And they dive in headfirst and it’s coldand clear,and the flecks of light ripple over his skin as he swims,and it feels like the first kiss of dawnlike he’s being rebornand as they scramble out onto the banktheir feet slipper and slide on the smooth stonesand they laugh.

Mike Hood (con t i n ued )

And the sound sparkles off the mountainsides.And then he hears the sounds of crunching, eager feet, running on the stony beach,towards him and a voice.And his heart beats harderthumping eager in his chestAnd the fear comesbut now it goes because he knows that he is not alone and he knows that voice.Warm like a log fire. it’s got the crackle of agebut something in the throat is braveand truelike it would tear itself to shreds to save you,and he feels strong, warm arms reach out and hold him and he knows that he is not alone.

And the voice says softly,“Welcome home boys, welcome home.”

Hope Dohe r t y

Yesterday

This plight heralds no whimsy;

The fears of a small woman

Warped by the world

Sick

With her own mind

Pervading-

Black, dishonest

Thick with rain and fume

The thousand eyes

Fixed on one point

Some century ago,

Already forgotten,

Too far to grasp, yet-

Call it habit;

I came in through the window

Though I had the entrance key.

Call it ageing,

I didn’t cry when they

Tied her to a chair

Or when

She screamed for help and death

Without a thought

In her seamless head.

Hope Dohe r t y

Untitled

A world of spheres

Becomes one with itself.

The rain sighs

To cleanse and obscure,

To fall on the heads of the heads of the heads

That have come before,

But somehow come backwards and emptied

With lies unlistened

Eyes that have forgotten to glisten

Too embalmed in vanity to glance up at the sun.

There is light and disease.

Kiss me, traitor, kiss me;

Come and follow me away.

There were fairies once upon a time.

I think of words when I fall asleep,

They tear at the tissue of my mind

And swallowing they find

The black and simmering lake,

A Styx of the head.

Is this why the angels died?

Is this why the stars began to move against their will,

And touched each other until they once again were still?

The tongue fastens on a precipice,

And then dares to say no more-

Hush, my darling, hush! The truth doesn’t want to be found.

Cha r l o t t e Cho r l ey

(Read by Alys Williams)

Single bed

When I turned ten, my mother taught me how to sew,

using slow and subtle movements to master pattern and print.

I often watched her squint at the fabric, her delicate fingers

seducing the cloth into the body she desired:

skirt, shirt or, as it turned out, a quilt that now covers

the cover of my bed.

My first time, I bled,

pricking the needle with naive flesh and learning

“next time, be more careful”. I never tried again.

But bedroom politics, all mine-and-yours, reminds me of how to sew.

The edge of a stomach, chest, lip, stitched onto me:

a battle of materials within the chalk-lines of bedposts.

The human body a secret sewn into skin,

worn by another who gives and takes,

traces his way along the threads of veins that hold us together.

My paisley print duvet a reminder,

“next time, be more careful”

Max Mahe r

(an extract)Buffer Country

Looking through the borders of a Matrioshka sphere

at the waves transversing the mantle,

the spectral space that should separate the polysemes

in the agnostic folds of the orbital.

At the point where the aeons play their dizzy

crisis with the synapse

and harmony is a subset of dissonance

the estrangement has an enticing reliability.

I know that if you follow the trail too far, you

just increase the risk of a wrong turn,

each of which

outreaches itself to shatter

the outskirts of reality.

The truth lyeth in a darke Dungeon unfathomed deep

your Lepdopteric brain will rupture at the strain

of that metaleptic shock.

At the bottom,

Written or Real

There's more than sandstone

lose under my feet.

Geo rg i a Macqueen B l ack

The Boundary

This is not the time for sadness:

You have a structure, you are structured,

A solid boundary between within and without,

There is love from the figures that made you.

But time at whole is fragmented:

Remember, how the hairdresser looked and said

‘Your hair is very porous,’

She gave her judgement,

You (maybe possibly) feel everything.

Open pores are exhausting,

The unequal osmosis between within and without

Unsettles your boundary,

The inside flourishes if the outside will miss.

‘You are too much,’ a wise woman said:

Over-attaching when the vacuum

Seeps into without,

And openness becomes catastrophe.

The words are not totally yours,

But they feel as yours could,

Of the person whose language reads closely

To your own thought-potential.

You suspect that your structuring

Is not ‘too much’ of within,

But caved against the boundary,

Re-remembering the porous child,

Anxious and precocious, stage of the inconstant figures.

Hannah Cohen

My Rucksack

Wait, what?What’s that doing there?

My rucksack, out of the cupboard –

Where I left it -

Sprawled in a limp heap on the floor

by the door.It has been hired again,

But not by me…

I left it empty

Behind my backsomeone claimed my pack,

As if it was their own,

Unaware of all it had been through with me,

On my shoulders,

This cold holderseeks to fill it anew,

After all we have been through!

Sweating up mountains in the heat

of the Middle East,

Stressing each week to pack it all in,Each time thinking I should just pack it in,

And my eyes,

With the strongest of ties,

Would watch that bag tight,

Like a watch on a wrist…And this hand,

Applying a frequent stroke,

Or absent-minded swat,

To confirm its presence and that it did not

suffer from a bursting zip…Alas, another person it will equip,

Clinging to their blades

as the daylight fades

I was always the one to back it up,And though my bag will be full-filled,

And uplifted,

Now I feel empty

A r t hu r Goodw i n

Drive

Night-called, driving, handsover hands on the wheel,

just one lonely beer to wax the way with.

Hard-up, snub-nose to the road,

red light barrier flickerings,roll-top flyover skips to city rhythm.

Rolling over roundabouts,

looking, signs in the gloom flymolten shapes clawing at a wide dark

in the duck and roll of

headlight dip and carry

lighting dusty motor-lane sierras,

before the lurch and slow

the turn and strangle, off

in a car-shaped clot of bundled light.

Night-called, healing tarmac deserts

of blackened driftwood shades.

Healing the night of its curdling dark

waters rising under bridgesbelow towns over rivers

loosing the train-track rotting sleepers

from embankments embedded.

Everything rolls. Clutch down.

A r t hu r Goodw i n

Sunday Morning

I am the dawn ape monkey wobbler rain-looking on 8 o’clockbalconies of Camden Town in no wind

all sour inside out throat folding in acid waves of drunken smokyhangover the beer blurred to piss in whitewash arms of the one tenement tree

pig-face moon-face in bearded forest mountain nose eyes no longerlead eyes in glassless pools of morning

and somewhere in the distance overground coming the blessed heavy-back buildings gain passage to Hammersmith with a heart a click-clack twisted rocker

and the thick-shirt white-shirt collared words to keep warmwith on the long grey walks of bitter pavement footbridges shrugging with cracked light graffiti in cagey hometown smallness

the leaves bubble around one anotherthe keys turn in clockwork cranium scrapings to unlockironglass metalwork

dreamsand the word alive godless shakes the skull still livingI am the sweat-man sick bucket walking worlds with earthquake

footstep dragging with a whole battalion of lost dead-nightjelly-legs of London in birdlike calling ‘Sunday morning, Sunday morning’

Row land Bagna l l

Poem

I encountered the disparity between a trivial and a consequential loss,watching the pixelated figure of a man falling for fifteen secondsfrom a burning tower. The image did not describe the world, but recreated it.I grieved that I could not grieve.~Then I watched a five-minute video of a gorilla learning to communicate through sing-language. Its trainers used sign-language to convey to the gorillaits own mortality.I was forced to reconceive my connection to the future as a relation, not an identity. I was forced to drink from a cup which I had poisoned. ~A duplication of van Eyck’s Ghent Altarpiece (c.1430) appeared to me, untranslatable,and I made an unsuccessful attempt to apprehend the concept of ‘representationalism’.The real life of my senses and flesh transcended my senses and flesh. Like its response to grief, the painting was one of frailty. ~She said that the possibility of creativity existed as an isolated form of creativity. I separated thought from action, action from agency, and experienced a profound sense of desperation. I illegally downloaded Microsoft Office for my PC.I hoped to encounter the women of a Charles Bukowski novel. ~My unrealized capacities for thinking, feeling, and acting remained unrealized. I began to understand ‘representationalism’ by association to what it was not.I fell in love with Jenny Agutter in Logan’s Run (1976). I fell for fifteen seconds, pixelated, from a burning tower.

10 M INUTE INTERVAL

Ca l l um Ou l ds

YRlando

me & ginny woolf down at the parkme & ginny woolf lusting after the fisherwoman's heartme & ginny woolf talking about the curve of her neckme & ginny woolf bleach the blood out of our cheeksme & ginny woolf give up painting and write books all afternoonme & ginny woolf wake up with a burning desire to kiss all the succulents in the countyme & ginny woolf play male privilege bingo with tv news hosts & cheer on the bus driver who nearly ran us overme & ginny woolf haven't seen you around here in yearsme & ginny woolf take one of your hands each and debate by subtle symbols whether to leave our red colour on you or pull you apart like Horsesme & ginny woolf speak dutch terribly until midnight when we are overcome by a thirst for water, oranges & orange juiceme & ginny woolf have something to tell your mother about what modern psychology and ancient astrology think about your futureme & ginny woolf before we know about all the horrible things we have done

me & ginny woolf have everything we need between us: a compass, a map, a vegan quiche, all of her novels and two matching water bottles.

me & ginny woolf never did exist firmly in the first place

Ca l l um Ou l ds

Pink Candles

crushed velvet in my mouth &"the story of what the night is thinking".

when i am dead you can assemble me from the stacked messages in your inbox.sometimes we reply,sometimes we leave everything on & blazing & screaming while we go for walkslike dutiful kids,like that actor's an asshole,i don't think we should pay to see this.

remember when i was in some sorts of love with you in another book too?i was reading hamlet, but saw more truth in imaginingUon some bench,preaching sunshine to a peninsula crowned by itwith you in the middleand all the movies i want to watch with you,later moving somewhere you could get toand finding their namesakeswhere the fog rolls over the hills surrounding the strangers on the traincramping meinto the delicate thought ofU.

i thought you were going to die but instead you're getting your teeth straightened &if i can't stop talking about the gaps in mineyou may as well suck someparts of me out through them.you said you wouldn't change anything about mebut some seeds must fall off of us when we move to makethe plaques that say where we lived and where we died.

N icho l as Ho f fman

Myth

She circles a tiny coffin no bigger than a matchbox and red as a salmon’s suicideChewing coal to diamondsher breath is rancid-sweet like burning sparrow bones.She is the sword-hilt,the bearer of great and bloody things, (sometimes holy things) fluent in the language of the hand— the sound of sea against stone.And so she will die—a mute thing. The tongue of rage lacks translation.

N icho l as Ho f fman

Sun-God

You were a cold stormprefaced by a flock of flying somethings all screaming: ‘Bitterness, bitterness!’

The bees were burying their dead in piles riddled with stingers— threatening retribution, threatening a flowerless spring

Their amethyst eyes won’t shut, still scattering my reflectionin that chaos of polished gem

They called me Dido...but I gave no eulogy and choseto tie each little one to a stone and hurl it into the sea

My greatest sin was this bee-burying

And even then on the sand I heardthe buzzing of my Carthaginian children all whispering: ‘Bitterness, bitterness!’

Madd i e Geddes -Ba r ton

Alzheimers

Each fallen house or field or concrete pasture

Each emptied lorry knacker yard returns

Now suffer not an ignorance of their departure

Tramp not in carelessness or mocking laughter

Each moor road’s dream of prehistoric ferns

Each fallen house or field or concrete pasture

Those thoughts unspun that held up roof or rafter

Those memories that cobweb dance unlearns

Now suffer not an ignorance of their departure

Speak not lightly of their failing venture

Each crinkled cell of fathomless concerns

Each fallen house or field or concrete pasture

A sight struck badger lies in baffled gesture

The road retains its casualties in urns

Now suffer not an ignorance of their departure

A silent calf disbanded of its vesture

Or woman watching self ’s unwoven turns

Or fallen house or field or concrete pasture

Now suffer not an ignorance of their departure.

Madd i e Geddes -Ba r ton

Insomnia

Dusty sunshine, brittle November air

And the scraped up barrels of sleepless days;

Barrels down-rolling the ramp of the year and light

All fleeced and scattered round like moorland sheep.

It will not snow. And thankless as the Christ-

Mass mistletoe’s significance; it will

Not snow. Yet bowled and barrel-rolled the days

Spin by; not span of hand nor twist of light

(All fleeced with dust) can slow them; nor sheep that watch

The edges of the beck. It will not snow. It will

Not snow tonight because the dusty fleece

Of mistletoe has flecked the sunlight; left

The evening of the year exposed to the stare

Of ancient oaks. It will not snow tonight

Because the barrel-socket sleepless days

Can sense the ancient eyes of tree hollows

Behind the mistletoe. No snow. And lost

Or dreamed significance rolls days rest-

Less round in oakwood casks and dust-

Bitten sun and moorland wind. We must await,

Each night, the grave witholdings of the snow.

SOCIAL MED IA SUBM ISS IONS

Madd i e Geddes -Ba r ton

lycidas@facebook.com

As the client grasps for an arm out in the ether,

A callous binary communion

Connects the neuron with the logosphere

The centenary pitch per second song

Diffracted out the border of the larynx

Outreaching your limit.

The pixel has no grasp of mortality

Its passions are bound up by its colour depth,

Beyond the blinding poles of blue, red, green,

All else is an interpolative effect.

So the sea retained its temperature, the coast

Continued its detritus deposition.

One less observer quickens it at most

Spiral on spiral unbound by the known,

and the news feed slipped from irony to grief

Quicker than the fibres' width could process

Amidst the contemporary cacophony

The pop-ad spangled nihilistic surplus

Stockpiling the lack.

You'll fear no more the thrownness of the dawn

Or the flaying of all being to its presence

Converted to that fractal pantheon

Revealed bystanding in the middle voice.

Thus wrote the human frame in broken clicks

In reverse requiem, the keyboard litany

Of being in the singularity.

Rose Reade

Facebook (an extract) I look at his picture,

And I miss him– man – I really do.

We two were chaotic;

He always forgot it (but still returned)

Fingers itching close to the electrical socket,

It was easier to hop it, pop it – the frenzied pills

and wine. This world wasn’t mine,

So I had to stop it:

From me, chaos runs away;

I’m the girl who gets straight A’s

But when I see his photograph,

kisses from the past burn

my cheeks –

Those weeks still are

fat-berried memories

Wrapped far

In some secret sanctuary of my skull.

In my head.

You’re not dead, but the fuzz

Of facebook seems to be

Somewhat an obituary:

Through the cut-pasted archives

We edit our lives – though, on

Facebook we are fine!

Rose Reade (con t i n ued )

“Look at me, I’m reckless

I’m fun – I’m a fucking

Teenage rebeliion – a new

batallion of wankers.

But these wankers never knew what we know

(Though we are all of them)

What you and me know.

And although we can smile amd

fake-forget the moonlight…

tight tight deep it’s the

knowledge that makes the

meetings

slightly not alright.

Too formal for former lovers:

Yet formality’s a necessary shadow and

I’d rather face the gallows than

Have the bright tallow candles light my face

- How fucking British.

The Finnish fight with knives for love –

The Romans sacrificed lives for love –

They battled to choose wives for love.

And what have I loved or done?

Built a world on foundations of selfishness

To increase my helplessness,

Created conjurations of awkwardness

I’ll put on a dress and

see if Facebook will let me

-at least try – to forget.

Thomas Fo l l e y

Three poems from Twitter

Find rest in a housecobbled together by favours,

fond, foundations.All you can towards, arcing forwards#myfirstTweet

Don't let them in | through the backdoor

Leaded in sin | alive no more.Burn from the sore | under my skinDon't let them in, under my skin.

(Based on Shelley’s ‘Ozymandias’)Falling vast and trunkless,mocked while fed: O King of Kings.

'Wonder at hand' rings the stone,Boundless and bone, lain and level.

Michae l Skansgaa rd

Camera Cliché

Downy birches shadow the new moon—the close-cropped

halo dissolves the marble-matted tract of black background,

out-shined by Dahlia's incandescent eyes and by the compound

pixels pigments of her mulberry smile and the Photoshopped

finish, the glossy texture, the dappled luminosity

enhancement program, the pixellated laughter low

and lingering, cherry lips enshrined in the afterglow

of tooth-whitening software—O!—what a paucity

of colours Nature left for painting Dahlia's dimples!

Thank Samsung Heavens for the sepia smile, the airbrushed brightness,

the motley gradients of her cheeks whitewashed, snow-whiteness

of her skin spotless, attenuated pimples

lost in grayscale saturation—look!—with a sudden flick

of her hair they disappear behind a buttonclick ・ﾟﾟ・｡ *✧* ｡・ﾟﾟ・☆