Sean Colletti / Philip Walsh / Tom Guest
We've got three poems for you this month and a whole range of great free literature events coming up in Sheffield this autumn.
We're particularly looking forward to hosting the Northern Slamhouse event on 19 October. If you've never been to a poetry slam before, it's a great chance to see why a movement started in 1980s America has spread across the globe. Watch out for the tenth birthday of Opus and Now Then on 30 November too. We'll be bringing some poets to the party.
Joe Kriss
Spoken Word Events
Off The Shelf On The Moor
Sat 6 Oct | 11am-3pm | The Moor | Free
Wordlife are helping to launch Off The Shelf Festival of Words with a pop-up tent on The Moor, featuring the best of Sheffield's local literature and music scene, including an open mic hosted by Gorilla.
Hive Verse Matters
Thu 11 Oct | 7:30pm | Theatre Deli | Free
Hive and Verse Matters team up for a special event as part of Off The Shelf, featuring Warda Yassin, Sophie Shepherd and an open mic for young and emerging writers.
Afua Hirsch
Thu 18 Oct | The Diamond | Free
Join Afua Hirsch for a discussion on her Sunday Times bestseller, Brit(ish). Presented by Our Mel, Festival of Debate and The University of Sheffield as part of MelaninFest.
The Northern Slamhouse
Fri 19 Oct | 7:30pm | DINA | Free
The biggest poetry slam in South Yorkshire. Watch poets slug it out to be named The Northern Slamhouse slam champion and win a £50 cash prize. Email joe@weareopus.org to sign up.
Ruskin Museum Makeover
Sat 20 Oct | 2-9pm | Meersbrook Hall | Free
John Ruskin, the Victorian writer, thinker and philanthropist, is being celebrated at an event at Meersbrook Hall. The exhibition is open 2-4pm, then from 7pm poem films commissioned by Wordlife will be projected onto the front of the building.
Dad's Dad
I always revered him as an exotic enigma.
perhaps selling sports cars in Monaco. or
skimming rocks in the Outer Hebrides
on a postcard I longed to receive.
his two-syllable name rarely tapped
mom and dad's teeth. an air of hushes.
palms pressed into drum-skin.
muffled noise. the note had ended.
there were birthday cards. a yearly dabble
of his affection for us. some abstract noun
found by the circling of his pen.
his feelings were concrete.
vacancy glazed dad's eyes.
some forgotten face he used to know
pushed hand through soil.
grabbed the scruff of his neck.
breaks in his smiled-sadness.
an involuntary huff.
the final crack in his veneer
when burying something surfaced.
tossed about his bedside. other cards
stood looking back on him. supine.
caught in a snare of suppressed memories
like some floundering fish.
somewhere between
my first and nineteenth year.
dad's dad resurfaced. came into
our lives. time-traveller.
armed with gin-flavoured-fables.
a collage for the album I'd set aside for him.
or perhaps his question mark shoulders turned face
in a plea for help.
the cancer had hollowed him out. cored
his innards. termites tearing through
a tree trunk. lit his bellyache like a
Christmas tree we couldn't decorate.
seventy-one years of life
pinned to hospice bedding
for the three months
I knew him.
I yearned for incantation.
fire and chanting to fix his rotten belly.
allow the lumbar of his back to peel away
from the pavement like a wet sock.
he was lighting roll-ups. pouring red.
still ill. ink-running through
the Birthday cards. mopped by my hand.
buried into dad's shoulder.
Tom Guest
The Stars Are Still With Us
So I can feel again
the changing texture of light,
how it thickens to hold off hurt,
or rolls
like blown glass
illuminating
moss on beech-bark,
fungi on woodland floor,
plundered nests
wedged in leaf-fall,
you must
rise from your bed,
unhook your drain and leave behind
the neighbours you never invited,
shut for good the door prised open
like a wound in the night,
leaving you
in no man's land
between a dismal night light
and the near dark,
unable to see
or be seen, unable to distinguish
angels from ghosts.
If something holds you back.
walk to the window of your tall glass tower,
take in the unsurpassable view
of this city; note
after just a moment
at this height how this morning's
pale liquid light spills over lives
still being lived, lives somehow
to be made numinous again.
Note too the stars
are still with us, bleached out
for now behind our local star,
but that at some point we'll be able
to trace the light back to the path
which brought us here:
back to
slow, sad waltzes round the kitchen table
as the nights draw in,
to living faithful
only to the season we wake in,
happy to watch autumn undress
deaf to the threat she'll never return;
trace it back to the lacerating kisses
of hailstones and the beauty
of winter trees;
to Inish Mor
on a day to die for,
freewheeling our bikes into the Atlantic,
only her salt-breezes holding us back.
Trust we'll watch it fall again
on our garden
and know that sacred feeling
sitting first thing with a mug of tea,
the silence in the branches,
the soil warming beneath us,
the earth still buoyant below.
Philip Walsh
Extract from Saeculum
We rehearse our parting
like a stage performance
or farewell tour, where we
play all our greatest hits from
memory. We allow ourselves
one cover song but disagree
on which Radiohead closer,
because you like Amnesiac
more than anyone should.
Have you even listened to
the version of "Videotape"
that's on From the Basement?
When the show is over and
the audience congratulates us,
I play an encore in my head:
you sitting across from me with
a bottle of Mexican beer and
a hand occasionally covering a smile.
We follow each other backstage,
our teeth bouncing off each other.
Sean Colletti
