You know that moment when you finally get what a poem means and then you realise – aghast – that every time previously you’ve heard the poet read it you’ve been smiling faintly or staring at the floor and then you realise IT’S A SAD POEM. This happened to me before when I submitted a poem celebrating my newly born daughter for critique to a writers group at the same time as another writer submitted a poem about her dead baby son and I still didn’t realise until critiquing it at the group when suddenly the penny dropped. Continue reading
Tag Archives: Daljit Nagra
When your mother calls you smart she doesn’t mean it as a compliment
9 Oct Mona Arshi
embarrassed daughter
Mona Arshi was really pleased to be at Poetry Swindon Festival. ‘I wanted to come here for so long,’ she said, looking around at the Tent-Palace, ‘This is beautiful.’
She brought her husband and two daughters. The older of the two also looks smiley-faced but the younger lounges on a pouffe with her coat mostly covering her face. Mums are meant to be embarrassing but when your mother is a poet who dedicates her work to you, that’s another level, ‘When your mother calls you smart she doesn’t mean it as a compliment.’ Continue reading
The one that didn’t get away
8 Oct
Ken Evans – 2016 Battered Moons Competition Winner
I am the wastepaper basket under the desk of a tired poetry competition judge and I’m full.
I’m waiting for the black bag to come again to release me from this heavy weight of 40% hope and 60% despair that has me brimming over.
But this time it’s different, I can sense a poem being uncrumpled, flattened out and reconsidered.
It is, of course, the winning poem and I am glad to give back for once.
Daljit Nagra hasn’t got to where he’s got to without being a disarmingly honest and funny bloke. Continue reading
Festival Chronicle 