5 On a Routemaster bus Spitalfields Market, 2009. There were only five people in the audience, which was about as many as you’d want in a bus. I sold two books though, which is a good ratio. 4 In a curiosity shop in Hackney I think it was run by artist collective LE GUN. TheContinue reading “My Top Five Strange Poetry Readings”
Category Archives: Poetry and writing
Collaboration with a Ceramicist
I am in the early stages of a collaboration with the ceramicist Joanne Ayre. Initial ideas have been around < the island > – a theme I have been writing on and which interests Joanne too. I’ve started to make some experiments by ‘translating’ the processes by which clay becomes a ceramic material (wedging, forming,Continue reading “Collaboration with a Ceramicist”
This is what a love poem looks like
You are underfloor heating. You turn my insides to so much packable meat. You are thoughtful in dreams. You make secret signs. You swim with impunity. You are speculative. You are radio & tides. If the cuckoo sings you sing right back. You wake to this. You have the qualities of snow. You are spaceContinue reading “This is what a love poem looks like”
The New Market
YOU ARE NOW ON PRIVATE PROPERTY reads the flimsy A-frame at the Western edge of Spitalfields. A formless winter sun splits the Church in two. And so I enter with a limp and an eyepatch.
Putting together your first collection
I’m running another one of those “So, you think you’re a writer?” sessions for writers’ organisation Spread the Word. Date: Monday 12 March, 4-7pm Venue: The Poetry Library, London £30 / £20 concessions Info and booking This is what the blurb says. Are you a poet looking to put together your first collection; or perhapsContinue reading “Putting together your first collection”
Just 99p!
This is embarassing. A friend sent me a text message with a photo attached. It’s my book, on sale for “Just 99p” in a second-hand bookshop somewhere. Remaindered after only 2 years. Well, it could be worse: at least whoever had read it considered it good enough to flog on! Perhaps this is a goodContinue reading “Just 99p!”
Poem Set in a Remote Outpost of the British Army
** We go to bate the jauntier hun, the pearl that grows in the wadi. One jaunt leaves half the team without toenails, just shims in obis sucking up toxic puds and fingering the pearly hafts of their rifles. So we spar amongst ourselves, eke out our wraths in full gillie, knees against the dashboardContinue reading “Poem Set in a Remote Outpost of the British Army”
Indy, cover your heart!
Yes, I am involved in co-organising this brilliant and brilliantly silly homage to Indiana Jones – celebrating this year its/his 30th birthday. It’s Saturday 22 October, from 7pm. Jazz star Gwyneth Herbert will open the show with a rendition of “Anything Goes” from Temple of Doom, poets including Jack Underwood and Kirsty Irving will performContinue reading “Indy, cover your heart!”
Everyman
Your shaven pate has the hue of a whole economy chicken in the freezer cabinet though not corn-fed with the yellow almost foreign tinge and you are not kettled because you do not care though you are trapped inside the centrifugal force of this one-way system and a mediaeval subway through which I used toContinue reading “Everyman”
The Herbals
3:AM Magazine has published a poem of mine: The Herbals. Thanks to Poetry Editor SJ Fowler for that. Written last year sometime, this piece now seems strangely prescient. Then again, you can stretch a poem pretty far. In any city or text-based practice to be confined in such articulated coffins collapses desire & its attainmentContinue reading “The Herbals”
Tom Chivers 