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Thread: Matt's "Some more of me poetry" Pam Ayres tribute thread (IFT)

  1. #16
    Join Date
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    Hi Matt
    Lots of vivid images in your poetry,
    "a shimmer on the sound"
    will stay with me for a long while I think.
    and I nodded vigorously at the punchline.

    re: soundscape, I sympathize, but I love the dogs.
    Nonetheless, your images are apt and recognizable.

    all the best

    G.

  2. #17
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    Hey Matt, this is great Well constructed, hard working line breaks and excellent rhythm. I actually wrote something similar though far less polished, and less delightfully claustrophobic, yesterday:

    My flatmates smooth R&B vocals and the hysterical screams of the child next door merge, diverge and blend into a thoroughly disorienting and disturbing soundtrack. Perfect for life right now.

    Maybe by the end of the month we'll all be writing the same goddamn poem... just with slightly different voices
    Theoretically Mystical

  3. #18
    drumpf is offline Fun and felicitous PFFA patron
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    Long-ass sentence. Felt like a car ride (you don't say?). The subordinate details of your piece, like S3 commentary, and S4 camera from coffee, to mind of the writer, to cat being pushed off the table was good to follow. A very transitional-tory-story.

  4. #19
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    Pleasure to read these Matt, your N always takes us on a whirlwind ride if tweaked images. There’s optimism for creatives in at least N has read the book, though it’s now of ergonomic value only. And her words are still there, with potential to be read, kinda. Happy NaPo fella.

  5. #20
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    Nice soundscape (well, not 'nice' but real and interesting). I like that this feels like a compressed geolocated playlist, is highly situated, is highly human and doesn't dwell on narrator, but places them/creates N through describing their surroundings.

    https://echoes.xyz/ might be interesting in these times?

    (and go on, put something on the NaPo playlist)

    S

  6. #21
    Join Date
    Jun 2005
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    793
    I love your line breaks and the interesting sound imageries! This one is for keeps after the NAPO!
    Quote Originally Posted by GreaterMandalaofUselessness View Post
    In the garden next door the dog is barking a marathon
    at the marathon-barking dog in the garden
    after that. It’s enough to make me for wish a plague

    on all dogs. And in the next room, my flatmate,
    with too much time on his hands, has had his hands
    on his double bass for over an hour. Almost as long

    as the kids in the flat upstairs have been playing
    trampoline on my ceiling. To complete this soundscape,
    a song is playing over and over on the radio

    in my head. It’s Lennon, from his Plastic Ono days,
    and I like that album, but you know this kind of radio,
    it plays the chorus on repeat, or even just one line—

    or sometimes, as it’s doing today, a single word:
    I-e-i-solation



    -----------------------------------
    If you're looking for an ear-worm, here's the song.
    Cheers !
    Anita
    ( www.lifeintheusa.org )

  7. #22
    Featherless Biped is offline Ray to rhyme with bay; not Rae to rhyme with bae
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    Matt, wonderful to be reading you again.

    "From a distance" is a good idea well executed. I love that you wind me up for about eight lines, getting me on the band's side before letting me in on fact that the theme of the poem is mediocrity. Your narrator brings a lot of empathy to the mediocre without excusing its shortcomings, and I love that. And how could one not love the author of the imaginary mediocre novel, with her cold coffees and her annoying cat?

    Very nice play on the multiple meanings of "isolation" in "Song on the radio"--it's a study in a single sense, of a person feeling emotionally alone, amid, well, the pandemic meaning of "isolation". The dog volley is particularly well captured. All that's missing is a car alarm.
    You can call me Featherless, Biped, Featherless Biped, variations on the themes of featherlessness and bipedalism... or Ray. I'm going by Ray these days.

  8. #23
    Dunc is offline but say it is my humour
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    Matt

    I'm completely won by the idea of a Pam Ayres Tribute Thread!

    From a distance ─ I LOL'd at line 9, ya got me! (In line 21 I have a pair of phonebooks, white and yellow, still in their sealed plastic wrapper, not as avenging-fateful as someone's fantasy novel.) Masterful direction and tone throughout .

    Song on the radio ─ Ennui o ennui, the world is far too wide for thee ... You catch the awfulness with a sure touch.

    A fine start to April. Pam, I dare say, would be proud.

    Regards / Dunc

  9. #24
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    Geoff, Gabrielle, Drumpf, Ben, Sarah, Anita, Ray and Dunc,

    Thanks everyone for stopping by to fluff and comment. It's much appreciated!

    Here's number 3, and already NaPo is 10% done!

    -Matt
    moderator

  10. #25
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    3) Sometimes

    Sometimes there are only sensations
    stumbling down the hallway with a full bladder,
    toward the toilet door, the hallway itself,
    only an absence, a fathomless space
    between rooms. Sometimes the slight backache
    drifting in the same direction has neither mass
    nor form and no back to attach to, or even if
    there were a back, that back would have no body
    and no front. Sometimes, but only for moments,
    time absents itself, or puts a hand over its eyes,
    or is otherwise distracted, so that one
    could not really even call these moments
    moments, even if one were not just sensations
    stumbling down a hallway towards the wordless
    memory of a toilet. At other times, of course,
    time is staring hard and will not even blink
    and there is nothing but coalescence,
    and all matter in the universe condenses
    into single point of infinite weight.
    moderator

  11. #26
    JFN is offline Fun and felicitous PFFA patron
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    Matt, I'm loving the careful consideration of the creation of these things that must have been so significant to the creators, followed by either the irritation of being on hold or the misuse as a monitor leveller. It is amusing for it's everydayness. The close is on point too.

    Just started playing The Beatles to the kids; that counts as homeschooling surely. I can fully understand why that would get stuck in your head. I've been going around singing the line don't stand so close to me by the Police in my head on repeat.

    Sometimes is effective in translating that disembodied, disoriented sort of feeling that comes with insomnia, which I'm assuming is your intention. It certainly reminds me of my sleepless nights.

    Glad you caved and decided to join us. Keep well,

    John
    Poetry is everywhere; it just needs editing.
    James Tate

    johnnewson.com

  12. #27
    Sorella is offline Fun and felicitous PFFA patron
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    Matt,
    Song on the Radio refers obliquely and spot on to the pandemic, but with situations that are nicely generic until the earworm appears: Isolation!
    Masterful stuff, and I echo the praise for your linebreaks, also in your first. Will read no 3 now. Wonderful work.
    Sorella

  13. #28
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    Hi Matt
    I'm not familiar with Pam - I feel like I should be however, so I googled, and came across her website which caused mixed emotions. I think I like her?!
    In any case, your poetry is ever brilliant. Song on the Radio - a song for our times, I'm sure, that creeping madness and cabin fever, and the noise, which will be the last straw.
    Sometimes is brilliantly structured, the linebreaks and repetition unsettling, fantastic stuff.

    K.
    It was a wild, wild ride. But is this something we can do? Is this something society will allow?

  14. #29
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    Sometimes is a poem after my own heart. It illuminates those hard to describe states of being/awareness that do not conform to regular waking consciousness & identity. Gorgeous & well done.
    Theoretically Mystical

  15. #30
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    Mar 2012
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    Hey, Matt - I think Sometimes is a post NaPo keeper that could go into the sharpener. I love the way the poem ends (and in a sense, begins), collapsing in on itself. Nice meta thought.
    Resigned

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