Making Poetry relatable

Looking for poetry outlets I came across a lot of journals publishing poems that to me were obscure. I like poems that speak to me without having to scratch my head too much...

So I found this little gem of a video featuring the shortlisted poets reading their poems for  Ballyroan library competition 2020. Hope you enjoy...

Competition shortlist read their poems 

Amendment

 It's that time of year in Ireland when we do actually get spells of glorious sunshine. 

I'm sitting out back reading a book or whatever and my usual multi-layers just have to be shed. 

That's when I go in search of the summer stuff. 

If I'm lucky it's not in the attic. 

Some of this stuff actually dates back to the last century and is worn threadbare. Not that our summers are so long, quite the opposite, but because summer here is ephemeral I simply don't buy and I wear the same clothes year in year out. 

At times my style, or rather lack of, gets even to me and I bin my glad rags. 

So when summer arrives again I can be sorely caught out....rag-less and full of remorse...

The pic above is the harbour at the end of Lamb's Head, Caherdaniel, Co Kerry.

AMENDMENT

I thought for a head-spin second

that in one of my holier than thou

moments of purge

I’d binned my twenty year old black T-shirt.

Worn stratocumulus in places

and wringer-stretched to my thighs

rather than shrunk neckwards.

The one for which,

despite all my on-line browsing

on Twin Strangers and ILookLikeYou,

I couldn’t net a doppelgänger.

 

It was a second of hair-shirt outrage

and I have form in this area;

there was the tan linen jacket

that had morphed into my torso

and the cream cotton trousers

memento of Summers eternal

too threadbare to even recycle

and still seasonally mourned.

 

When I finally turned it up

having up-ended a whole drawer full of Summer

it was like hearing Kitty thud through the cat flap

after an long unofficial leave of absence

or a last seen today at … on your WhatsApp profile

after a long haul flight.

Still on the radar after all this time

my twenty year old long black T-shirt

and no need to make amends.

Copyright 2022 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved

Who wants to be Home Alone?

 

I'm stocking up on beans for the trip abroad,

your trip, my beans, 

Beanz Meanz Heinz, not sugar-free.

For though baked-beans-on-toast gets very bad press

it's one of my favourites and knocks years off me

which very little else does these days

and takes me back to the '60s-

not to free love and burnt bras unfortunately-

but to that glorious crush on the geography teacher.

It was our weekly if not daily fare, the beans I mean,

and I'm looking forward to a week of nostalgia

when you take off to Mallorca

Even though I know 

that within a hot second of Home Alone

I'll be phoning a friend.

Copyright 2022 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved

Talking to yourself

 

Talking to yourself aloud used to be a sign

that you were:

Not the full shilling

A sandwich short of a picnic

Sixpence short of a bob

Or had a few slates missing.

 

Now everybody’s doing it

and their Smart-Chat punctuates:

your early morning ramble

your Daily commute,

(an honour once the preserve

of Spanish students on TEFL courses)

 

It could be useful, mind you,

to whip out the phone, earbuds lacking

when your personal space is threatened

by  chatty neighbour

or  ranting spouse.

 

Better to be

Hit on the head by the sail of a windmill,

(the Dutch equivalent to not the full quid,)

than to endure sabotage.

Copyright 2022 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved

The Net

 

I wonder how Shakespeare did it

or Wordsworth or Hopkins or Clarke

masters of semantic shifts,

innovators of compounding,

discoverers of the true sense or sense of truth

the root, the stem of words-

without the use of the internet?

 

When I go to the woods and a poem stalks me

and a line or two of it tails me back home,

something on the theme of Nature’s blessings,

I have my cable internet simulator

The YouTube dawn chorus from all over the country

and ten free hours of rain sounds from the meditationrelaxclub

 

And when I ask Google why leaves bud break in Spring?

I get one million, eight hundred and eighty thousand results

In under a second and discover that the word bless

has made a semantic leap, that it used to mean to mark with blood

which puts a different take on my morning stalker.

 

 

Copyright 2022 Cathy Leonard

A fog of Inspiration

 

One Long Take

 

I once read a poem about writing a poem

where a bloody-mouthed, deep-fanged muse

held the poet in its jaws.

It seemed a bit OTT to me at the time.

But lately a big cat in the underwood

is stalking my every move

urging me to spew out

what I’ve taken in.

Or else!

 

So here goes… 

The mist this morning 

has muffled every sound but that of birdsong,

counterpoint to the habitual

honking car horns, screeching brake-bikes,

rolling perambulators, smart-phone-loud-speak.

And fog bound I see in single shot coverage

the oak tree not yet bud-broken

fresh ivy tendrilling its bark

and sprouting at its root a suckling conifer

and, discordant too, the bike-lock minus the bike

and the empty park bench tipping into the fog.

Copyright 2022 Cathy Leonard All rights reserved

Jane O Wayne -Sunday Poem

 I heard of Jane O Wayne when reading Zaro Weil's poetry last Sunday. I couldn't find a lot about her but follow the links below to read two of her poems. She has 4 collections published and has won some  prestigious awards including the Marianne Moore Poetry Prize 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poetrymagazine/browse?contentId=34839

I liked the use of a quote from Gabriel Garcia Marquez here.

"The secret of good old age is simply an honourable pact with solitude."

Also liked this poem written for Maths teachers.

In Praise of Zigzags