Dickens and Quips - Poetry Pod

Welcome to the third episode of Dickens and Quips!

This week we have Christina Thatcher on the show and I shall be reading from Audre Lorde

Find Christina at @jwritetoempower on Twitter and Insta

I'm almost certain that Audre Lorde doesn't have a Twitter, but you can read more about her here.

We are at

Twitter: @dickensandquips

Instagram: @dickensandquips

Email: [email protected]

Prompt for this week is "fire extinguisher" and you don't have to be an established poet to submit a poem.

Featured poem:

Who Said It Was Simple

BYAUDRE LORDE

There are so many roots to the tree of anger

that sometimes the branches shatter

before they bear.

Sitting in Nedicks

the women rally before they march

discussing the problematic girls

they hire to make them free.

An almost white counterman passes

a waiting brother to serve them first

and the ladies neither notice nor reject

the slighter pleasures of their slavery.

But I who am bound by my mirror

as well as my bed

see causes in colour

as well as sex

and sit here wondering

which me will survive

all these liberations.

Bad Things Are Going To Happen by Dee Dickens

After Ellen Bass

Bad things are going to happen.

You will get your heart broken

by someone who will deny they

ever held it in their hands.

Bad things are going to happen.

You will have to deal with idiots

who think coronavirus is caused

by 5G,

or the ‘Lady Chemicals’ that are released

when someone’s tongue

knows its way around your clit.

Bad things are going to happen.

Avril Lavigne will actually die.

Again.

Britney Spears will murder her clone.

The moon landing will be proved to be real.

The moon will be proved to be real.

911 will have been an inside job.

Barak will admit he is Kenyan.

And we will have nothing to talk about;

except art, and music and poetry and

we will have nothing to do;

except write poetry and paint and

sing. Sing. Sing.

And love.

Bad things are going to happen.

But there is always love.

Addicts Die a Thousand Deaths by Christina Thatcher.

Christina read from

When My Brother Was an Aztec by Natalie Diaz

Line that makes you go OOOH from A Litany For Survival by Audre Lorde.

Prompt for this week is movement of people

Welcome to the second episode of Dickens and Quips!

This week we have Joe Thomas on the show and I shall be reading from How to Carry Fire by Christina Thatcher.

Find Sam at @joefishthomas on Twitter and Insta

Christina Thatcher is @writetoempower on Twitter.

We are at

Twitter: @dickensandquips

Instagram: @dickensandquips

Email: [email protected]

Prompt for this week is "fire extinguisher" and you don't have to be an established poet to submit a poem.

Featured poems:

An Improper Kindness

Worth Telling

What If

All available in How to Carry Fire by Christina Thatcher.

Supermarket by Dee Dickens

I’m on the floor in the grocery store

howling.

Great globbing

sobbing

snotty trails on my jumper.

Everyone has been so nice.

It’s just that

my brave face is so damn tired.

My arms ache from wiping their tears.

My throat burns with words unsaid.

I make tea and hope they

don't taste the salt water.

Supermarket guy comes over to ask,

Is everything alright?

No, supermarket guy, everything is not alright.

I want Yorkshire pudding,

and I can’t find the batter mix.

He’s smiling, but his eyes say confused,

there's a tilt of a head

from a passing old woman telling me

I should just make my own.

I can’t remember how.

I don’t know the ingredients.

I can’t focus on anything

but the emptiness of my belly.

Except that I need to have

Yeast.

To know that something inside me is still alive.

Scrimshaw by Eley Williams

Imaginary friend: by Joe Thomas

I.

I’m an imaginary friend

that’s been thought into existence

or maybe you wished hard enough.

I don’t know. You tell me.

I’m the madman who fell from the sky,

and before anyone says it, I’m not him.

Mr love of my life and Mr man of my dreams

aren’t nearly chaotic enough.

Mr Right’s entrance runs too smoothly

to come down to Earth with a crash.

How boring.

No, I’m not here to be your first choice

but I know what

“I like you…

a lot…

like more than a friend…

but not…

you get me?”

means when I hear it.

Don’t worry. It worked.

I’ve been doing this

long enough to know

we wouldn’t be here

talking right now if it hadn’t.

II.

If you’re interested

here are the rules.

Take food as a given.

If you stalk my social media,

if I find a heart react

on a selfie I took with my cat

because I’m in the picture

you’re doing it wrong.

If you scroll past my pictures,

“Oh my god!

He’s so cute!

I LOVE him!”

and you didn’t mean the dog

but come out with “I want in,”

you’re brave, I’ll give you that much…

If you try to make me choose

“Who is it going to be?

Friend 1

Or friend 2?”

when ‘universal’

by definition means:

“BOTH OF YOU.”

I’m sorry,

it’s not going to work out.

III.

In return, I can only give you a hug

one you can still feel long after it’s finished

one that clings on and will not let you go.

If I do it right, it should squeeze

every “You’re not as good as you think

you are” thought until they pop

I write you a pretentious poem

which, at the end of the day,

is just a glorified shitpost

that I crafted to look like a love letter

because I don’t know how else to say it.

And yes, I do it better than most

of your real friends ever could

We keep our streak going.

We let months go by

between conversations

which last for two messages,

an unspoken “You didn’t have to answer

but thank you for coming back.”

No, being left on read is not rude,

we haven’t run out of small talk

It’s an electric “Until next time

Love from an imaginary friend

who was lucky enough to come to life.”

Prompt for this week is Fire Extinguisher

Welcome to the first ever episode of Dickens and Quips!

This week we have Sam Tate on the show and I shall be reading from My Darling from the Lions by Rachel Long.

Find Sam at @samtatepoet on Facebook, Twitter and Insta

Rachel Long is @rachelnalong on Twitter. #

We are at

Twitter: @dickensandquips

Instagram: @dickensandquips

Email: [email protected]

Prompt for this week is "I dance in my own head" and you don't have to be an established poet to submit a poem.

Featured poems:

Night Vigil

I was a choir-girl. Real angel

-lightning-faced and giant for my age.

Mum let us stay up late

if we went with her to night vigil.

It started at midnight, a time too exciting to fathom.

How the minute and the hour stood to attention!

During Three Members' Prayer, my sister fell asleep

under a chair, so she never knew

how I sang. Or how I fell silent

when the evangelist with smiling eyes said in his pulpit voice

Here, child.

Had she woken, I would have told her, Sleep, sleep!

so she'd never know Smiling Eyes

also meant teeth,

or that he had blown candle for hands,

with which he led me down an incensed corridor,

and I followed.

by Rachel Long from My Darling from the Lions

Orion’s Belt

We sat in the pub,

surrounded by poets,

conjoined from hip to knee.

We walked, smiling,

swapping stories of

ridiculous siblings, giggling.

You showed me how

to spot Orion.

By his belt

and disco shoulders, you said.

Not sure if it was

invitation or starlight

in your eyes, I left.

On the train home,

Orion mocked me from his

celestial dance floor.

by Dee Dickens

A Little Closer to the Edge

Young enough to believe nothing

will change them, they step, hand-in-hand,

into the bomb crater. The night full

of black teeth. His faux Rolex, weeks

from shattering against her cheek, now dims

like a miniature moon behind her hair.

In this version the snake is headless — stilled

like a cord unraveled from the lovers’ ankles.

He lifts her white cotton skirt, revealing

another hour. His hand. His hands. The syllables

inside them. O father, O foreshadow, press

into her — as the field shreds itself

with cricket cries. Show me how ruin makes a home

out of hip bones. O mother,

O minutehand, teach me

how to hold a man the way thirst

holds water. Let every river envy

our mouths. Let every kiss hit the body

like a season. Where apples thunder

the earth with red hooves. & I am your son.

BYOCEAN VUONG

Poetry Foundation

Helios

You are yellow;

The colour of sunshine,

reflecting off the white of my skin.

It’s… blinding.

The sun shining,

finding the milky-way whites of my eyes.

The light was drawn

into the dark stone well

of my pupils –

and the colour is

muted.

What was block yellow,

bold and defiant against the darkness,

casting shadows

like an excorcist –

is, now, less.

The shade has become opaque;

I can see it,

blurring the factory settings

of my optical input.

I can see through it.

And I have to wonder

what palet the world would take

if you took away your filter.

Would my eyes sing out in monochrome?;

Could I ever grow to know

the pastel kiss of flowers?;

The violent strokes of neon?;

The duality of sky and sea,

as my feet softly dig

into the golden freckles

of the beach?

Or, would I be resigned to graphite?;

My sight surrendered

to the two-hundred and fifty-six shades of grey?

Along the left bone of my hip,

‘LOVE WINS’ is tattooed

in the colours of pride.

The yellow ‘E’ is fading;

slowly disappearing from my skin.

Tell me, will the colour ever stand out again?

By Sam Tate

Line that makes you go OOOOH!

"Girl, you're the blackest you ever might be in here"

From Communion by Rachel Long

Next week, How To Carry Fire by Christina Thatcher

Just over a week to go before we go live with the podcast and I am ridiculously excited. This trailer tells you what you can expect from the show and how you can get involved.

For accessibility reasons, where I can, I will be putting scripts and stuff in these show notes. I am passionate about paying people for their labour so will not be able to get transcription done for whole episodes for now.

Follow us on @dickensandquips on Twitter and Insta for more updates and if you want to get in touch, email is [email protected]

TRAILER

Hello, hello and welcome to Dickens and Quips, the podcast that takes the Poe faced out of poetry. I’m your host, Dee Dickens and I invite you to wander round the world of the written word with me while I show you that poetry isn’t all old or dead white men.

I’m here to give room for marginalised voices to speak and will be doing so weekly, with the help of a guest poet. You won’t have heard of most of them, but that is the point. There is a universe of amazing poets out there being actual superheroes and I will be helping them fly into your lives.

Each week I will be telling you about a poetry collection I’ve had my nose in and reading you my favourite from it. There will be a chance for you to hear writing from guests along with their favourites poems too.

Lines that make you go OOOOOH is pretty self explanatory really. There are lines that hit you right in the feels and make you wish you had written them. I will be sharing a new one each week.

There will also be a weekly prompt where you can join in the fun and you don’t have to think of yourself as a poet to do so. My favourite each week will be read out too.

First episode will be on the 14th of September with poet Sam Tate and I will be reading from the collection My Darling from the Lions by Rachel Long. Going to be amazing so don’t forget to subscribe and follow us on Twitter and Insta. We’re @dickensandquips on both.

Have a great week and try to make good choices. If you can’t, well, that’s what writing poetry is for.

This is a placeholder while I sort out doing some actual content! This is a sea shanty I wrote for my dissertation about my fear of drowning because of the inherited trauma of being descended from enslaved people.

Co vocals and beautiful harmonies by Anna Fruen to whom I shall always be grateful.

Credit is also due to Florence Welch for the inspiration from Sky Full of Song.

Find me on twitter at @thepontypoet

Poem transcript

Mother of My Mothers - A Shanty

After Florence Welch

Ohmother of my mothers

Ifeelyou in thestorm

Ireach foryou and

Know that for

TonightI’m not alone.

The father of my fathers

Is lost beneath the waves

While the man with gun

And bible wants to tell me

Jesus saves.

And I was sitting at my window

Gazing out across the sea

And in mygriefI swear that

You were looking back at me

Whispering the music

Of a land so far away

Calling me back to a place

I always want to stay.

Mother of my mothers

No matter where I roam

I will always look upon the sea

And wish that I was home.

Lying on the ocean floor

With seaweed in my hair

Singing with the sirens

songs of love and songs of care.

Hand in hand

I’m so frightened now.

I’m scared to die.

Pull me down

Where we alldrown

Leave me where I lie.

And I can tell that you are with me

As the storm begins to break

When the wind is wrapping round me

And my heart begins to ache

It feels like something’s gone

That I never got tograsp

was lost down on theseabed

In one last choking gasp.

And silence is a virtue

Or so I have been told

Sowe’ll be oh so quiet

In the deep and in the cold

And when the ships are gone

On rocks they’ve run aground

We’ll drift up to the surface

Where our songs of love abound

Mother of my mothers

No matter where I roam

I will always look upon the sea

And wish that I was home.

Lying on the ocean floor

With seaweed in my hair

Singing with the sirens

songs of love and songs of care.

take my hand

I’m so frightened now.

I’m scared to die.

Pull me down

Where we alldrown

Leave me where I lie.

I thought I was flying

But maybe I’m dying now

I thought I was swimming

Butmy light is dimming now

I thought I wassinking

But I am clear thinking now

Mother of my mothers

No matter where I roam

I will always look upon the sea

And wish that I was home.

Lying on the ocean floor

With seaweed in my hair

Singing with the sirens

songs of love and songs of care.

Hold my hand

I’mnotfrightened now.

Not afraidto die.

Pull me down

Where we alldrown

Leave me where I lie.