The Poets' Graves Workshop

Thanks Ray. I flip flop on the repetition thing. I think you might be right.

R

Thank you both. A rewrite, pinching some of the ideas! R

I see what you say about s1 Tony, but it doesn’t work for me I am afraid. Liked the end a lot. R

Five hundred yards from home V3 Metaphors of war do not have empty villages marked by closing notices pinned to shop doors, sun-dried paper, rustling thanks and safeness. Metaphors of war do not have old folk first in line for silence on their usual walks, smiling with a fretful friendliness shy of ...

I might think about excising the bits in bold...? It was never going to be enough to merit a round of applause of a Thursday evening . But as a means [way?] to get involved in the resistance , to meet other people and be observed to assist while keeping [and keep?] my distance, then fetching Mrs She...

Ha, nice punch line!

Nice!i had a quick play to snip out bits I didn’t think you needed or deal with line breaks that jarred (with me). Hope you find it useful, if not, apologies! Emulating the sea, as if all babies are mariners, yearning for a life once lived on blue terrain. Sleep is a currency; we’re adrift of its wa...

Agree with Ray. Intriguing though

Thank you all! May have to kill that owl!

I quite liked this. Maybe it does sag a little in the middle. I enjoyed the end.

R

Eira, thank you!

Nice! I feel like I should not like simulate but do.

Only one the in s1 would be better?

I’d definitely jettison hanged. I wouldn’t care that it was ‘correct’.

Best

R

Redraft - thanks all!

Hmm, yes. I see what you mean. Thanks Ray!

Thank you both. The detailed crits are really useful. I’ll have a think.

R

I like this, it’s playful and mysterious. Could you get rid of the gerunds? Just a thought, but not sure it matters.

V2 My heart fills up, a flooded room of you. Its silence is the Chapel where I saw you last. A shroud of heavy blankets turned down reveals your face; a floating photograph, the background fading first. A chance to kiss your hair the nurse had brushed, and stare at your nose pulled to an owl-like ho...

David,

I like the end. It’s a nice idea/memory for a poem.

I’d like to see you abandon the tentativeness of the first stanza. And the neat form carries forced line breaks. Try more natural line breaks, and less structure? Trim just a word or two, I think.

Nee bugger can really skate on a pond!

R

David,

I’m not getting the title. Given that they are not Coevals. Nor is N. Am I missing something?

The last stanza is delish. Very gently melancholic.

R

I'm with James, I think. Evocative as far as it goes but a bit too fragmentary to be more satisfying.

R

Thanks Luke. I'm not sure there is a great deal to say about the hat: it's something N has left behind for his child, something that echoes (not the right word but you get the idea I hope) his presence; it's empty; its turned over in the manner of someone asking for something but not receiving. JJ -...

Oh, thank you very much!

I wonder if this deals with the problem....?

English, in the half words, that you
um um um, an upturned song, a broken one.

Best

R

Your mother told me you were asking after Dadda in your weh weh English, in the half words, that you um um um, an upturned song, a broken one. You are your own, an empty sense but full of music and there will be words eventually. For if I leave without a splash in the papers or the Ocean, know I wil...

I love the economy and the rhythm of this. I went away and looked up the story and re-read it. It worked even better. I know tastes differ on this, but I think you might want to explain at the outset: Alice Glass and was the youngest child hanged in England or something like that. It's cold, that's ...

There are lots of evocative, nicely drawn phrases here. I'm struggling a bit to see the whole, to take away some kind of story or message. I wasn't sure that "you" in each of the verses was referring to the same person. The "you" seem to become quite specific later on. I'm generally a bit wary of ar...