We began the week with Caroline Hurley's 'Pest Control', a densely meaningful and thought-provoking piece that wove together a number of recent news stories to ask us to consider if we are 'pride or are we pest'. The poem ends with a series of questions, all of them too often ignored:
'Can we come to our senses, stop running amok and start travelling light? Can we down-skill
to stewardship, calm the wildfire blaze of us and nurse harmony back into last-gasp
ecosystems without adding catastrophe to catastrophe?'
Tuesday's poem was my own piece, 'Then and Now' which had its origins in the NHS cuts protest march that took place recently in Manchester and which reminded me of working-class history and the Peterloo Massacre of 1819. The more things change, perhaps, the more they stay the same.
Wednesday brought us back to the climate change issue with Richard Alfred's brief but entirely pertinent 95% Sure Perhaps and 'the ice of cold hard facts' of the case while. on Thursday, Amy Barry picked us up by the scruff of the neck and shook us awake with 'Flickering in Darkness', her powerful response to the recent massacre in Kenya. It is no surprise that his was the piece that elicited the most comments this week. If you missed it, I recommend that you click on the above link immediately.
On Friday, we went to Luigi Pagano for his poem 'The Magician'which was a wry and gently probing examination of the career of Sylvio Berlusconi. In it, Berlusconi is aptly compared to the suave and but ultimately fading 'magician' of the poem's title who, finding, in the end, that there is nothing in his top hat, faces a 'disenchanted' audience. Well done, Luigi. This was a clever and stylish piece.
And that was it for this week, folks. Keep those submissions rolling in. Now the days are growing shorter and the nights are drawing in - at least for us in the increasingly damp and chilly UK - then you can amuse yourself and keep your wits and tongues sharp by scouring the news for inspiration. That's all from me for now.
Abigail Wyatt
