The Poetry Drawer

Hello Poetry Lovers

Well, poetry really is all around us. Particularly at the back of a drawer it seems.

Aren’t they dinky?! The tiny Battery Pack pamphlet I took at face value and assumed it was a forgotten instruction manual! Nearly meeting its fate in the bin! Thank Goodness I realised.

Now Battery Pack volume III’s origins is a complete mystery to me. Did I buy it? Was it handed out? I guess we’ll never know.

However, the larger pamphlet/handout was given out by a feisty poet Luigi Coppola at poetry@3 in the Poetry Cafe. Lord knows when! A while before COVID I suspect.

This poet had a lot to say, and good for him. I’ve chosen my favourite extract;

Manifesto

Sonnets lack sense;

Ballads all bore;

Limericks cause offence;

And odes are good for….?

Haiku causes ennui;

Sestinas?! Who knows;

Free Verse ain’t free;

But don’t start me on prose.

Luigi Coppola

Now, the cute little Battery Pack vol III pamphlet doesn’t really deliver for me. It’s like very flash fiction indeed.

However, I’ll show you what I think is the best of them;

Ned, Steven

Ned and Steven fished together every weekend for seventeen years. Ned hauled in the biggest pike and they made the newspaper. Ned bought a house in Fergusonville, stopped fishing, lost touch, led a separate and uninteresting life. Twenty years after they fished, they collided on a sidewalk. “Excuse me,” Steven said. “Excuse me,” Ned said.

Tim Wenzell

I kind of like this one. True and sad.