Having had a power-cut at 1pm today I took this unexpected opportunity to forgo lunchtime TV’s awful news to read instead these poems that recount with delightful alluding the routines and journeys of the alphabetically-restricted-named personas who become each individual poem’s title.

With the power now back on I can type and post, so here is a quick appreciation: in reading where a San Francisco room [motel/hotel presumably] is ‘strewn with fliers from Liverpool’ [jenny] I was taken by the symbiotic experience of how such unexpected events can happen anywhere, like a comet called rebecca who/that ‘collides with a poem’ – and the further information that she says

‘pistachio always tastes like the moon’
[rebecca]

reinforces this, surely?

Reading in another that ruby ‘paints my room chilli pepper red’ which then colour-transforms to

‘….when we kiss
i can’t stop thinking how blue the sky is’
[ruby]

the liquid transition between these first and last lines of the poem is the more poetic and romantic, conveying beyond the unexpected so it is the often lyrical which roots us to our engagement, whereas back to rebecca, similar is occurring

‘watch wave by wave wave by in the blue of her eyes’

I’m not saying rupert [as in loydell] isn’t as gracefully and romantically alluring as either ruby or rebecca, but his involvement in the roll of alluding in these poems may lack a colour reference when it does draw our attention to its unexpected revelation

‘graffiti sprayed in french       your mother sucks bears
[rupert]

I feel compelled in concluding this hopefully tempting and intentional snapshot to sustain some equilibrium with a return to ‘j’, and this from jacanda addresses its moment so, again through colour

‘like lavender mist the eye is drawn to horizons’

and this from jaako [the name, incidentally, of a boar whose back I massaged with a screwdriver – he loved it – when looking after pigs] presents yet another example of surprise and unexpected solace

‘to the ornate sound
of harpsichords

recorded on cassette’

This is the joyful reading of dancing between and among the r’s and j’s of these poems in their playful reciprocations, ‘the product of mimesis’ being a poetic capture of the collaborating imaginations of Baylis and Taylor.

To get a copy, go here.

Honoured to have this posted as Cal’s Poem of the Week.

I haven’t forgotten
this is Andy’s October,

the October of his leaving
with that poem about geese.

And he was wild,
wildly in his head and then

when this took over.
Flights of the unexpected

and dangerously funny,
but he was always good –

the palliative he shared
despite his growing noir.

If you are interested in exploiting a transatlantic festival for creative writing stimulus rather than knocks on the door and a perpetuation of childhood tooth decay and obesity, here’s your opportunity.

These Halloween Poems ideas are available to download and use for encouraging classroom creative writing on its theme – and playing with rhyme – with Student and Teacher notes as well as model/guide poems to support the activity.

Originally produced for Teachit English and still there if you are a member and would like to use their simplified presentation, or you can otherwise download from below:

Halloween Poems 1

Halloween Poems 2 Student Notes

Halloween Poems 3 Teacher Notes

Always so pleased to have my poetry up at IT, with thanks, this one here today. I like the surprise also of any illustration that accompanies, and though this isn’t credited, thanks again.

The crane in my town until recently was dominant in the landscape and therefore inherently photogenic, and for subsequently playing with. I don’t believe I have posted this one. Glad it is now gone, but a vestige of missing.