1 post tagged “katie metcalf”

Posted by Trevor
Here is a selection of poetry from the main Writers Cafe site to be found HERE. The poetry on the site includes material from performers at the Writers Cafe and International contacts. A link back to more of each poets work will be found by their names. I will add some audio versions soon to some of these posts where available.

Belinda Subraman is from the USA and has lived in various countries as her poetry reflects. She is the dynamic editor of the poetry magazine Gypsy, which began in the 80's and is still gong in a Podcast from on her My Space. Belinda has several cosmic and inspirational My Spaces and more links to her sites can be found on her post on the Cafe's main site HERE. I came across Belinda in the 80's when she published one of my poems in Gypsy and found here again on My Space. Here is one of her poems - more to be found on our main site...

Another Holocaust

Every night in Sudan ,

children walk miles

to be locked in,

eagerly jailed

against a greater harm:

torture, rape, murder.

Every morning

they walk back

to semi safety,

no respect

and little love

in their small lives.

Some run

toward their cold friend, Death,

protector from further harm.

This is not broadcast.

We watch sitcoms, soaps

and staged reality shows

about American egos.

We moan the price of gas for our SUVs

while children walk in fear, without hope.

........................

June Dixon (along with Sarah Henderson) were the Writers Cafe

reviewers in the days we were based at the Arc. Their contributions to the cafe were numerous and I witnessed their development from new poets to confident performers, reviewers, guitar players, to songwriters, playwrights and a band in the short space of two years. They formed a group called Knitware and when had a performance group that played the Studio in Hartlepool and the Spa in Saltburn and elsewhere with actress Dionne and poet Dominic. They were fun days! Sarah's poetry will appear here when I find some (or she sends some more), meanwhile here is one of June's poems with more the be found HERE

Habitual Liar

Temptation, like honey, drips
Its shiny film – sweet and pungent –
onto your mesh of fresh resolve
squelching through the vents

Your voice – squeaky like plastic –
affects overwhelming sweetness.
Yet your breath’s sour stench
betrays your eyes’ watery promise.

Your nails’ polished exterior
is tarnished and I am smote;
juicy red, stained yellow:
you are denounced by tobacco’s ghost

The headless stalk of your sin
lies without on a tablet of stone
where your crunching boot’s unyielding
underbelly thudded the roan.

But the poison lives on inside you
and poisons the atmosphere between us.

...............

Carmen Thompson - I met Carmen when we started the Writers Cafe, she was the Education officer for the ARC (Stockton's plush Arts Centre) and although she was responsible to the ARC for overseeing the project from their angle, Carmen was a poet herself and threw herself into the project with a zest unusual for an arts administrator! She must have felt role conflict at times as we regarded her as part of our team as well as the our link with the managment of the ARC but Carmen was dynamic and so in tune with all our our ideas and aspirations. Her contribution the development of the Writers Cafe and its success was outstanding. I have a lot of respect for her both as a friend and as an arts administrator (if only all arts adminstrators had the skill to straddle both roles without being at all patronising!). A joy to work with. Carmen also ran a Creative Writing group from which many of the students developed in to first time performers at the Writers Cafe. Here is a poem by Carmen - with more  to be found HERE

Glastonbury 98

Open your mind
To the blind – drug hunger
Hit hawkers cry
Acid e’s and whiz
Hash cake, hash cookies
Sweetmeats for the semiconscious
The hunger of dealers and users
The mute hunger of the curious
Joining in the subterranean chorus of need
The need
To be off it
Out of it
Cold scum
Filthy sky
Any where but planet I
Where mary jane waits with her arms open wide
And i
Sink with the rain
Beneath the pulse of the caustic bass
I stare past sockets where eyes have been
My eyes struck still by the slow moving grace of a smile.

by Carmen Thompson

Katie Metcalf - Katie was young and new writer not long out of hospital

after suffering from Anorxia. She performed her poetry for the first time at the Writers' Cafe and we encouraged her and helped to build her confidence so that soon she graduated from doing  a five minute Open Mic spot to being booked to do a longer set. She joined in some of the Creative Writing classes in the area and began performing her poems further afield and then she wrote a book full of insights into her experience of Anorexia with useful insights that are helpfully to families whose off spring suffer from this. The book took off and next thing we know Katie is being reviewed by the Guardian and the Independant and her book is being hailed. It was a joy to watch Katie transform her life and problems from a negative into such a postive in such a short space of time. Here is a poem or two in which she began to translate her awful experience into the written and spoken word - with more to be HERE

Hi Annie

Hi Annie
How are you today?
I am great, fine and dandy
I ate less than Mandy
At lunchtime today.
The sandwich Mum made went straight in the bin
Except for the tomato slice, but that was wafer thin.
Gym today was fantabidosy
I showed Mandy my thighs as she was being nosy.
She said I was thin, she said I was grim,
But what is she between us?
Hi Annie
How are you today?
I’m scared,
Feel alone,
I’m no longer at home,
I’m in a room where there are bars at the window
And I’m ordered to stay on my bed
Annie why don’t you come and help me
Come and step out of my head
And hold my hand like a real true friend
Annie please come and help me
I’ve been asked to eat
But I can’t
I’ve been asked to drink something too
And the people here are blaming my actions on you…

Katie Metcalfe. 2005

Ann Wainwright - I met Ann at Teesside Poly in 1980 shortly after my move from Coventry to Teesside. For 27 years Ann has been a close friend and co-conspirator on the poetry scene on Teesside. In 1982 she began Cleveland's first Poetry magazine Poetic Licence and I started the Multi-Media Workshops / gigs at the Poly encouraging drama, poetry and music. Soon we put the two together and established the Castalians (later the New Poetry Scene) from 1982 to 1984 at the Dovecot Arts Centre in Stockton (a forerunner of the Writers Cafe). On the Writers Cafe 's move to  the Georgian Theatre Ann once again helped us re-establish the Cafe after the former team broke up, despite living miles from Teesside now. Her more prolific period of poetry writing was in the early 80's and I loved the quirkyness of her poetry (meaning that to be a positive comment as in not at all common place!). Here is a poem by Ann with more to be found HERE

THE ART OF DEFEATING YOUR FOE

i kiss these kissed lips no more

now spring has shown the way to go.

infirm, undone i feel i

am indeed a noble victory

that has been won-

i praise my men

(they fought so hard and well)

as oaken trees

(while i was sapless)

as is my won't.

acting no more, the day has come

for kissing a farewell

to your silken lipsofanger

hanging onto my tongue

(never let it go).

when kissing was a game

it came more easily

(such a lark it was)

no more.

Ann Wainwright 1981

Margaret Weir was my partner during the 90's - she became

chair of Middlesbrough Writers Group (where we met) and I helped her form the Phoenix Poetry Group with students from my many Creative Writing courses at the time. She soon became involved with Outlet - the Cleveland Poetry / literary develpment magazine I ran) as an editor and with Write Arite ( the Literary festival that was formed from Outlet). Margaret networked  with all the writers groups I set up in the Cleveland area and few that wer already running and soon had them interacting with each other. Things slowed down when we had kids but a lot of ground work had been done in establishing a dynamic community based writing culture in the Tees Valeey area which has been been built on considerably. Here is one of Margaret's poems about those who come to the area as careeist - establish some great things to put on their CV before moving on to higher things having done little or nothing for the area and its indigenous people. This is especially true in the arts. The great thing about it is that when she read it out at Write Around Everybody was paranoid it was about them - even the visiting poet who Margaret had no previous knowledge of! It was certainly remember for a while.

WHITE LILIES (A Poem for Cleveland) 1990 by Margaret Weir

You who arrive like white lilies against the sun

Your hand clutching your blood red heart

Or is it a sword?

To build ivory cities in the future and the past

The future which you can own and the past which you do not

Take it and bend and mould the pliable steel until

It fits you’re perfect dream

As sweet, as true, every bit the picture postcard

As her rose clad garden, the sparkling hills and sea

His ballad of the fireside cat.

 

What shall I say of you?

That you were merely a lily

Trying to create an oasis

Out of the desert of the past

Which, from the safe, safe haven

Of your land of milk and honey

You can neither understand nor see.

Margaret Weir

 

MORE FROM THE POETRY GALLERY LATER IN ANOTHER POST....