This one is about running, which used to be an enormous part of my life, but is something I’ve hitherto written very little about. There’s definitely a lot more to say, but at least I’m out of the blocks, as it were…
Slam
Poem A Week #19: The Real World
PAW #19 is about graduation, and all the magnificent shit people chat about the ‘real’ world…
PAWs #16, #17 and #18: The Referendum Poems
Rather unsurprisingly, a lot of my writing around this time concerned the EU referendum, and so the poems from these 3 weeks inadvertently became a sort of Brexit triptych. The first is a warning, the second some sleep-deprived and probably-misplaced optimism, and the third outright despair/fury. They can be, if not ‘enjoyed’, at least ‘watched’ together.
Poem A Week #15: So You Want To Study English?
Be prepared for a lifetime of misery, heartbreak, and insufferable pedantry. Studying English is HARD…
Poem A Week #14: It’s difficult for children to pinpoint the exact moment they realise that nothing lasts forever, but rather it slides into view, like the silver wink of the sea as the family Astra rounds the bend of a Lincolnshire hill
PAW #14 is a very personal one, about the breakdown (and slow -ongoing- rebuild) of my family. About seeing your parents as 3D, fallible people for the first time. I hope there’s something in it for anyone whose folks have separated. The garden path to happiness is paved with truth, even if the bricks scratch your feet a little, even if it’s covered in weeds…or something like that.
Poem A Week #13: Data Retrieval
This poem means I’m a quarter of the way through my year of poems! If you’re enjoying them, please share them around.
Almost every device I own and use daily broke simultaneously recently, and – among other things – I lost all my laptop files. This is about the things that are really worth saving…
Poem A Week #11: Those Three Words
This is a poem about telling someone you love them for the first time. Or, rather, about the build up to telling someone you love them for the first time. Inspired by a brilliant workshop from Andrew McMillan, and by the wonderful poem ‘Hyphen’ by Geoff Hattersley, I wanted to write something that throws itself off the edge of a narrative cliff, lemming-like, ending where another poem might begin.
Poem A Week #10: Delilah
PAW #10 is about the hairdresser at the University of Birmingham students’ union (she’s astonishingly nice), and about how shocking and beautiful it can be when real talk emerges from small talk.
Poem A Week #8: London Not-To-Do List
This week’s PAW is all about trying not to completely lose yourself when moving to London, and comes complete with all the identity crises you’d expect
Poem A Week #7: A very tentative ‘like’ poem
Warning: contains mild romance
Poem A Week #6: It’s 9:32 in the Big Brother house
PAW #6 is a slightly surreal look at how bizarre even very recent past can seem. It’s about Ant, and Dec, and table tennis, and the fact that we never, ever, learn.
Poem A Week #5: Nightswimming (after R.E.M.)
Poem A Week #5 is about the dislocation I felt when moving house from Birmingham to Cardiff, and what I did to remedy that. It’s about ancestral memory, and the sea’s power to make a new place feel old.
‘Nightswimming’ was shortlisted for the Bare Fiction Poetry Prize.
Ben Norris 