WELCOME TO VIRTUAL DODO TEN - NOVEMBER 2022
Welcome to
the 10th virtual show from Dodo Modern Poets. This programme takes our tally to
nearly 260 performances and contributions since launching in April 2020. We
thank everyone for continuing to provide such engaging and interesting work.
We’re
delighted that viewers take time to enjoy the shows and offer comments.
Your continuing support is of immense value.
The latest
show begins with two tremendous featured acts, Sue Johns and PR Murry, followed by 16 open mic
contributors.
We hope you enjoy the show
and welcome your feedback.
Best wishes
Patric Cunnane
PR Murry
DODO MODERN POETS
01303 243868
SUE
JOHNS
Sue Johns
originates from Cornwall where she began performing as a punk poet in the 1980s.
She has published three pamphlets and two full collections, the most recent Hush
(Morgan’s Eye Press 2011) , Rented:Poems on Prostitution and Dependency
(Palewell Press, 2018) and a new pamphlet Track Record (Dempsey & Windle, 2021). She was highly commended
in the Prole competition and the Amnesty International competition. She
has an MA in Writing Poetry from Newcastle University/ The Poetry School
Her work
has appeared in anthologies including Can You Hear the People Sing (Palewell
Press, 2020), Alter Egos (Bad Betty, 2019) Welling Up (Palewell
Press, 2019) and Time for Song, Contemporary Cornish Poetry ( Morgan’s
Eye Press, 2009), Ver Prize anthology, 2022 and magazines including Poetry
News, The Morning Star, Southbank Poetry, Dreich, The Atlanta Review, Prole,
The Alchemy Spoon, Brittle Star, The Big Issue and London Grip.
Sue has
written and performed theatrical monologues and worked on numerous art/poetry
collaborations. She’s a veteran of the performance poetry circuit and has performed
at readings and festivals around the country including the Edinburgh Festival,
St Ives Literary Festival, Merton Festival, Wimbledon Festival, Hastings Poetry
Festival and Canterbury Festival.
PR
MURRY
Peter Murry has been writing and performing poetry for many years. Once he taught in a North West London College which is now being demolished to make way for unaffordable housing. He’s also a painter and sculptor, with work exhibited by Free Painters and Sculptors and Brent Artists.
Working with Patric Cunnane he edits a video blog for Dodo Modern Poets at http://dodovidpoets.blogspot.co.uk/.
His writings can be found at http://quadraoptica.blogspot.com/ and in a collection entitled The Glowing Nightsoil Of The Concealed Emu, obtainable from him at <yrrumuk@googlemail.com> and his poems have been published in poetry magazine Dreich and included in environmental anthology, Welling Up (Palewell Press, 2019)
Peter was a member of performance groups Worthless Words and Tongue Circus. He was a founding organiser of ground-breaking poetry outfit Apples and Snakes, now celebrating its 40th anniversary. Latterly he joined Patric Cunnane and others in setting up Ragged Trousered Cabaret, which arose from the labour and trade union movement. He is co-organiser with Patric of Dodo Modern Poets.
He is obsessed with his compost heap, but his work continues to involve birds, beasts, menswear and ecosocialist politics.
TEXT
Patric Cunnane
Rosie greets me as I stir my coffee
I’m tempted to ignore her
But she speaks in a sad voice
She’s lonely and wants to talk
She has problems with her bank
Her father won't see her
And refuses to say why
She has a sweet smile and seems lost
There are lonesome spots in the universe
We all fall into now and then
Rosie rises to leave-
Says goodbye several times
I goodbye back
Two strangers making contact
Watching the day grow sunnier
Tomorrow she’s having her hair dyed blonde
You will look so beautiful, I wish I’d said
Loraine Sacks
They're certainly queueing up to say 'I've
been there and I've done it'!
they’ll be measured in history’s annals – like wet
flannels, they all fit!
the Vox Populi unanimous, now chronicle each gutless nitwit,
and the whole globe are sitting tight, with
their teeth grit;
they know all of these self-protagonist
braggers,
await their demise, à la vieux Roman daggers!
Emile Sercombe
POETRY AT ELETO
In this late
Octobre when the trees in switch colour fold
and tempests drive
leaves soaring into piles of gold
for kids and
dogs and spadgers to kick and dance in
Then from ilke
hamlets of Kentenland and een
from oure capital
do poets come to be seen
and share their
joyful words at Eleto chocolate cafe
by Saint Thomas’s
Cathedral of blessed memory
in Caunterbury
And especially from
Mitcheham Sue Johns has comen
And Patric Cunnane
hot foot from distant Folke-stone
Frank Crocker feted
poet of Londone
and great
wordsmiths Aisha Celestino and Luigi Marchini
who live in towne
Yes
Welcome all poets
and brilliant audience alle
To our festivalle
But now no silence
more
Let us beginne
HURRAH HURRAH
HURRAH!
Lantern
Carrier
Identity 3 mins
Life can be a pageantry of exotic colours, or a
Kaleidoscope of ebony and injustices, in which
tribe
And culture will inevitably help shape my destiny.
Who am I? I am a strand on the sitar of the music
we
Call Love, yet I can only walk with the moon in
darkness.
Creating chasms and divisions, like a sliced
tomato; the huge
Waves of giant predators, lash me against rocks
with hostile intensity.
In this illusionary chimera of life, identity
embraces my
Moral compass and political persuasions … my
religious
Beliefs, memories, values and life-choices from
Nubian Kings
And Queens, which may very well contradict that of
others.
Who am I? I’m paired with the duality of Light and
Darkness, cold and warmth, walk with twinkling
Stars, even while dancing with the shadows of
Night, leaving an Eden of painful scars in my
emotions.
My mind’s reactionary, and I tussle with the agony
Of prejudices perceived, attempt to deal with the
Weight of my burden of labels, engrossed in pain,
while
Insecurity and loneliness, slice my heart with
scimitars.
Who am I? I am the Light I long to see, and change,
for
Sure, begins with me. I struggle to rise from
oppression; to
Improve my angle of vision, my environment, my
darker impulses;
The turbulent forces I can’t control, in my quest
for happiness.
Solitude evades me like the tail of a dog; I’m
forced to
Reminisce on the wisdom of the ancients, so I’ll be
free.
Theirs was a golden Path of dauntless courage, of
Light
And humanity; of decorum and beauty … of selfless
love.
Their sacrifice spoke to me of the glories of man;
his ancestral
Wisdom, enfolding and insulating my Heart with
beauty. Yet
I was called bad names, saw the indignity of
kindred spirits --
My women suffering the depravity of self-worth; of
self-esteem.
Shaped by life, I, a wayfaring vessel on
tempestuous
Seas, wandered alone, as clouds dispersed from the
Heavenly blue, no place to call my home; stumbling
In a hollow maze of chaos and confusion.
Who am I? I’m a Queen molded by the Weaver of Time,
Kept playing in mud like babies, just to get dirty
again. I
Was once pristine, like new plates, now I’m stained
and dirty,
Tempted by the residue of life’s culinary flavour,
of illusionary meals.
I am a child woven from an embryo, carrying seeds
and
Blueprints of a DNA, going all the way back to
ancestral
Africa. I marvel at the intricacies of birth, while
living in dread of
Demise, to an invisible ghost, pulling me to the
end of my summers.
Alas! Like the deer that runs after its own
musk, not
Realizing that it comes from its innate self, I
have forgotten
That golden Light within from whence I came, to
ascend the
Winding Path of righteousness, in order to find my
way Home.
Joseph Healy
Vin au Bord de la Mer
(Wine by the sea)
The granite harbour walls of
Folkestone
Flowing to a shapely lighthouse
at the end now a drinking spot
Day trippers sitting in July sun
look out on chalk white cliffs
And foam flecked waves
France visible on a clear day but
a haze obscures the view.
So near and yet so far
The once great ferry station a
heritage site
Trackless and home to fish and
chips, burgers and tacos
Platforms and signs still pointing
to vanished trains from France
The London and Paris hotel like a
dowager who’s seen better days
Overlooks the harbour mudflats
exposed
Like the station the ebbing tide
has left beauty bereft of industry
I sit glass in hand surveying the
restless sea
Seeing fleeing refugees from the
guillotine
Baroness Orczy and Dickens
seeking English common sense
Not French zeal and anarchy
And Hogarth’s Gate of Calais with
its mendacious French friar and hungry troops eyeing the Roast Beef of Olde
England
A plaque on the lighthouse
remembers the opening of the harbour by the emissary of France when steamers
and trains disgorged their passengers by the briny walls
La Manche obscured by the mists
of Brexit but French wine still welcome
Below a border agency boat ready
to take to sea to repel unwanted migrants
No haven here.
Who now the zealous and wild
driven by the furies of Farage?
Scion of the Hugenots driven from
France
A bottle yes but no
sommeliers
bon mots but no carers
The Folkestone Gate truly closed though
the waves crash against it
The English vicar and thirsty
sailors hanker for an aperitif
But no boats sail from France and
the Continent’s cut off!
John
Sephton |
haunted realms
ode to Vladimir
Putin
Steal yourself away
in your fetid kingdom,
the haunted realms
of your dank
mausolea.
Crawl among the
spectres
of the unknown
soldiers,
journey through the
twilight
to your darkness at
the edge.
Kevin
Morris
The Thunder Spoke:
The thunder spoke
And I awoke
To heavy rain.
I lay awake
Pondering on lakes
And climate change.
I took pleasure
In rainy weather
As a child
But this wild
Storm warns
Of change.
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