and on the news front I am holding a Lockdown Poetry Workshop, online, for Hackney Libraries, where I am now the poet in residence. I also work there, so I’m technically more of a resident poet, but I think we can all agree that ‘Poet in Residence’ (notice how it now has capital letters, and quotation marks) sounds more impressive. It’s what the management have started calling me too, so it’s official. If you want to join, please email
jack.houston@hackney.gov.uk
Don’t worry, if you don’t want to come to the actual workshops, because you’re too busy, or shy, you can still receive the poetry-packed lockdown emails I’ll be sending out until the libraries re-open.
***
It’s a funny thing, a website. Looking back over my older posts, I feel a bit like the girl from Tamar Yoseloff’s ‘Body Language’
Whatever else has occurred, will occur
in her life, in the world, now
she is content, youth
fixed on gloss, while the days
move with a speed that surprises them
as the shutter’s parting lets the light in.
/
It’s a sensation not unlike that experienced by the speaker in Stephen Sexton’s ‘Subimago’
I have been well prepared for small endings.
At eight years old, my first poem killed a mayfly.
My first poem rhymed nothing with nothing.
From that flash; seek endings every five minutes.
/
Or perhaps like how Yi Sha, here translated by Simon Patton & Tao Naikan, describes the ‘One Place I’ll Never Visit’
Spring there
is nothing like
what we have here
Heaven and earth have swapped places
Winds and waters go opposite ways
There, a kite
flies its owner
***
Tamar Yoseloff: The Black Place
Stephen Sexton: Oils
Yi Sha: Starve the Poets!
jackisreading 