Sunday Review

Hello everyone, Michael here, I have been one of the editors of Poetry24 for about 12 months (one whole year) and I’ve learned a lot as an editor and I’ve enjoyed my time working in this team with Abi and Hamish. However, recently I decided I wanted to apply for a PGCE to become an English teacher. So I’ve gone back to college to re-do a GCSE maths course to help with my application, then I’ll be observing classes in a school before I even apply. Also I’ve been working hard on my new novel, which is halfway through and I’m about to send my first written novel to a publishing co. All this and I still work full-time in a department store. So you can imagine how much I’ve taken on recently. This all means that I can no longer be an editor of Poetry24 and after today I will have ended my time here.

But still the week’s poetry needs to be reviewed. We began on Monday with Lampedusa by Steve Pottinger. The story follows a few days after the tragic migrant shipwreck off the coast of Lampedusa, Italy. Bad weather had postponed the search for 200 unaccounted for migrant workers. Our readers found this poem strong and moving filled with poignant sadness. The final lines were the most poignant and sad: ‘their dreams and their names / known only to the sea.’

On Wednesday we had Mystery People by Darrell Petska. This was from an interesting story about a mystery man who saved a baby from drowning. The poem hints that everyone is suspect to be one of these ‘mystery’ people who might be brave enough to do a good deed. The irony at the end being that even the speaker of the poem could be a ‘mystery’ person and maybe not so average after all.

On Thursday we had Higgs Moment by L.S. Bassen about the Nobel prize in physics being awarded to Peter W. Higgs and François Englert. They were the two men primarily involved with the discovery of the Higgs ‘God’ Particle and theorised ‘an invisible ocean of energy suffusing space is responsible for the mass and diversity of the particles in the universe.’ The poem mentions some religious mythology and Goethe fiction yet realises that we, as a species, glimpse the prophecy and ‘welcoming embrace of that destiny.’

On Friday we had Low Voltage & High Prices by Luigi Pagano. This was about SSE who were to raise the prices of gas and electricity by 8.2%. This is an angry poem filled with sarcasm and irony showing the dismay we all feel about this decision and the bleak vision that we’ll be worse off ‘bankrupt / as well as frozen stiff.’

That was my final review. I’ve enjoyed it at Poetry24, it’s been a challenge, it’s had its ups and downs, and I’ve had the opportunity to read vast amounts of your poetry almost everyday. So I’d like to say thank you to the loyal readers and contributors and I hope you all carry on supporting Poetry24 since it can’t survive without you.

And finally thank you to Abi and Hamish for putting up with me this past year. Sometimes I could be difficult to work with but I’ve learnt a lot from working with you two.

Please submit your poetry to poetry24@hotmail.com

Bye

Michael.