For 24 hours only, U.K. readers can buy a package of all three V. Press 2015 poetry pamphlets for £12.50 (including P&P in the U.K.) - a saving of more than £5 on our full price!
The paypal button for this special offer was below (removed after the 24 hours), followed by a sample poem from each pamphlet.
Happy National Poetry Day!
From CLAIRE WALKER'S THE GIRL WHO GREW INTO A CROCODILE
The Girl Who Grew Into a Crocodile
When she was young, they'd swim. Take off
sandals and frilled ankle socks and jump
into the river. She loved to feel the water pull
ribboned hair to float behind her.
The games started with smiles: splashing; testing
who could hold a breath longest. They never matched her.
She was born to lie in wait, to feel the kiss
of the current in her ears until her head turned light.
But children wish to win. The others turned
as green as the rushes lining their pool. They plotted, held her
down too long. The water swilled round her lungs and she coughed
her heartsong out with it.
That night, she lay awake under a sky that was turning
tides with its dust covered ball. She pulled the cold rock
down, seethed until scales replaced skin, found the biting point
of a new jaw and wished for the crunch of bone.
Next time, she waited in the shallows, camouflaged
in the rushes, cold blood immersed. Eyes broke
the surface, webbed feet treading water. The sun hit
her back and she felt her armour shine.
her huge grin. Felt never-ending enamel sink through flesh
as easily as arms stroke water. She snapped her jaws shut.
Swallowed the damage whole.
Claire Walker
From DAVID O'HANLON'S ART BRUT
art brut
So, after my swirling black abyss, a work
still in progress, we turned to Sophie’s landscape:
a jazz-hands sun, the wide Vs, almost Ms
of birds, a green ribbon, edge to edge,
and, poking their heads up out from the grass
five earthworms, five pink splodges
more finger than worm, with blobbed eyes
and there’s-no-bad-in-life smiles.
Are they supposed to represent real people
or a specific event, maybe?
It’s a fascinating choice of subject matter.
Worms usually have quite negative associations,
particularly death, but yours are content,
blissful. Do you think maybe there’s
something in that, a desire to make
positives from even the worst situations?
She didn’t take it with her.
Like others left behind, it ended up
on the wall where, my sentimentality
assures me, it remains, unfaded.
David O'Hanlon
From art brut
From JACQUI ROWE'S RANSOM NOTES
PHLOGISTON
but light was not his field
dirtier in busy doors and tightly
woven doorways shades
of its refraction dimmed
and skimmed dishevelled ladies
his brain kept flaming
spills alive in bell jars birds
fell dead out of the sky his phantasy
revelled at length in patterns
of great earthquakes the certain
stars showed smiles
of loosened hair that wicked
away all terrible appearances
and unforeseen in time he went
for phlogiston and weeping said within
