Slam Poetry

Friday the 15th of June at Gilbert's I was joined again by Gregory Tome to discuss Susan Stewart's poetry among others. Gregory introduced Stewart to me the week before, but though I enjoyed some of her poems as single pieces I struggled to read her book Red Rover in an entire sitting. This week I have also been reading Dennis McDermott and Peter Minter. These two poets are masters of imagery and language and I am afraid that Stewart's imagery of child hood games and nursery rhymes were obvious and repetitive compared with McDermott and Minter. It was great to talk to Greg about these poet's works and his own poetry.

FAW and SCWC member Ken Challenor and his wife came and had a coffee with me and discussed the process of writing in response to an artwork, as well as writing to a theme. It was lovely to meet Josephine and talk about the writing process with the two of them.

I have been thinking about attempting a slam poem for a while now, but yesterday, while attempting to write a poem on the theme 'Forgotten Days' for the FAW homework I found the perfect inspiration. Here is a first and very rough draft. I need to extend the poem and add some rhyme. My inspiration for this has come from Kasabian's song Days Are Forgotten. The lyrics for this song are absolutely the worst thing I have ever read, but a great starting point for a slam poem, hopefully!

Let’s set ourselves free with a helping of monkey brains

that’d be the way to go. Forgetting

days of our lives and the surfing couch

as we disappear under bleeding stars.

Kasabian get it,

we need to be free.

Put an end to black

too toos, tattoo sleeves

and bathroom tears, cos

we got blood lust

we’re going to live Twilight