Sunday Review

Hello everyone. We’ve finally reached Autumn once again. I bought my first car a few weeks ago. The back windscreen washer doesn’t work and the air conditioning starts on number three, but it runs just fine. I’ve been terrified of driving in traffic, but now I’m used to it and I love driving in the Autumn weather. I was going to drive to certain places to get me writing again since I’ve not written much in a while since I went back to college to do a maths course before I can do a teacher training course. (I want to teach English but I need maths for some reason).

So after all that I’m still here at Poetry24. We published one of Poetry24’s editors, Abigail Wyatt on Monday with No Peace. This is a strong poem on the difference between the rich and the poor and the perception and treatment of them. The repetition of ‘It’s true I mismanage things,’ give the point of view of a person struggling to cope. We’re shown a stereotype of the poor at first and are shown painful sadness in their struggle, only to hear a sort of ridicule from the government from when Michael Gove said poor people have only themselves to blame. I found interesting the headline from one of the articles used: ‘Rich people sleep better then poor people.’

On Tuesday we had Voyager One by David Subacchi. This was about the spacecraft, Voyager One, which had left the solar system. Since the 1970s, with its 1970s technology, it has reached interstellar space so the gravity of the sun no longer influences its movements. The poem begins in a positive tone, full of nostalgia of by-gone days.

On Thursday we published Janner Bird Goes East by Jane Slavin. This was an unusual story of a woman, Sarah Colwill from Plymouth, who suffered from a migraine and woke up with a Chinese accent. It is called Foreign Accent Syndrome. The poem is a metaphor of a ‘Janner bird’ flying away. ‘Janner’ meaning the common regional accent for people from Plymouth.

We published Carolyn Cornthwaite’s poem, The Unheard, on Friday. This was a particularly strong piece on the subject of abuse of young Asian girls in the UK is often missed. Young Muslim girls do not want to bring shame on their families and the focus is mainly on white victims. The poem invokes philosophical questions: If a tree falls and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? The question is obviously about the abused girls and the poem used brackets to show hidden concepts of abuse, not overtly clear to the general public, but still existing. The last stanza was very interesting: ‘If a girl falls / in a silent land / does anybody listen?’

Yesterday we published Now The Playing Fields Are Level by Philip Johnson. This is about how the love of money has corrupted our idea of the public service. It highlights how ideals have changed over time and that more often than not, the idea of money is more important to people than other things. I liked the satire of the bankers: ‘The man from the bank had a good night / hand over fist / nobody won.’

That's another week over with. Thank you for your submissions. Please keep sending them in to us at Poetry24@hotmail.com.

Michael.