Poetry Hotspot

Seni Seneviratne, our 2012 Poet in Residence, has created a set of poems using the Festival audience’s contributions to the poetry hotspot.

AN OLD TYPEWRITER

An old typewriter, bought for two quid at a car boot sale

could grow your imagination large enough to push open

the doors of ignorance.   It could let you take your mind

everywhere and still leave you belonging, right where you

are at any moment, with room to expand beyond the doors

of perception or the place where cloth meets circumstance.

You could follow the Perigree moon when it hangs above

the horizon until you reach the purple mountains where

sensimilla flowers are opening.  If you forget the clocks

with unmoving handles, you could pass through time, lighten

your steps, let go of old longings, and still carry your keys

in a bag of dreams.   At the cornerstone, you could take the path

to the place where birds build nests from the bones of trees.

But if you sleep in the mouth of the moor, don’t let it swallow you.

And watch out for cows! They have been known to stampede.

BORDERS HAIKU Beyond the borders of Yorkshire, through doors that are pointless and glass doors where I see out but no-one can see in, across a landscape of love, to swim with bright fish at the edges of the world, I sail a moon boat to the farthest reach of my imagination and then back again.	EMPIRE What is called Empire was always on the wrong side of humanity.  The language and people of our skin had to cross borders, risking all, whatever season, whatever fears, to explore the limits of their horizon. And those who could only dream, hoped it was in colour and looked for signs of life written in the bark of trees.
HOTSPOT HAIKU Someone had the sense at the Poetry Hotspot to set the margins get that tap and ting of good old typing.  After so long to see the words break down into bricks when pressed out with each push. Jerry built ink-house. Where the ribbon leads, I follow.   And look, outside, faces fly with wings.	OUT OF THE BOTTLE For years I lived inside myself, now I am out of the bottle, I dance in the ocean’s current, the fresh salt spray, the foamy fountain of life. I belong between here and there and I won’t let the doors of deceit or doubt keep me locked out of life.  I have seen a world beyond and it glows.
STILL SINGING A girl in yellow shoes, written in a landscape of love, a garden started but not finished, two thousand books and still counting, crossing fear on the other side of Empire, with the sound of a cut-short good morning, drinking espresso like liquid liquorice and my life is still singing.	“WONDERFUL!” Often heard but how often do we wonder? About the signs of life written in the bark, telling us the ways of the forest?  Or the light shining in our eyes that stops us from seeing what’s on the other side?  Or the grey of the sky in the morning, the hint of a raindrop to come, the sign of the raised eyebrow and the pursed lip?

Seán Hewitt’s Ilkley Literature Festival Crowdsourced Poem

Apprentice Poet in Residence, Seán Hewitt, has created a crowdsourced poem on the theme of the Yorkshire Dales.

Lost among the flat

Green grey trees and ancient stones

are our endless, numbered days,

and all the endless nonsense of time,

and being left to think that, after all,

most of them were very old grasshoppers.

Push further and clasp the soil,

Shifting through tree roots,

Sifted by grasses and earthworms

A thin wrapper layering me in;

And perched on top,

Two fools shouting at the wind.

A multivalent tongue-scape for

The mouth to grabble with.

Opening, to cast its spittle

Across the clough’s foggy

Pebbles and the dene’s drizzled wood.

I come open with words words words…

You’d never know

Oakdale takes its name

from nowhere.

Members pay

to see trees

from kept grass.

Struggling to soak up and assert

themselves over the scraggy slade and

Vast moor. A throaty strath of globoid

Vowels and the clombe’s clipped consonants.

People are proud here.

They’ve their old ways,

their new houses,

and no Tesco…

Crowds gather like clouds.

Is there a storm brewing?

Or something we can be proud

Of? Something to be wowed

By? Something loud?

What did I know of you, Yorkshire Dales?

Nowt (or is that “owt”?) until yesterday

at the Cheese Show in Frome, your eponymous

ice cream van urged me in friendly tone

to please pay a visit  to your parlour.

The queue was so long it must be worth the trip

from Somerset to Bolton Abbey.

Nose your way up further still

And find the sea in me

still audible and ringing around.

There is a silence here,

many moments

stopped.

Contributors: Stephen J Hackett, Claire Fuller, T Crotogino, MsJinnifer, Kiran Millwood Hargrave, Andrew Connolly, Patrick Sykes, Ben Comeau

You can also read through Seni and Sean’s tumblr of poetry and images online here.

More about Seni Seneviratne and Seán Hewitt…

Born and raised in Leeds, Seni Seneviratne is of English and Sri Lankan Heritage; her work as a writer, poet, performer, singer and creative artist is internationally acclaimed, having given readings and performance workshops in the UK, US, Canada, South Africa and Egypt.

As a critically acclaimed poet, her work has been showcased in the groundbreaking Bloodaxe anthology Ten: new poets from Spread the Word, a collection championed by Carol Ann Duffy. Her debut collection, Wild Cinnamon and Winter Skin (Peepal Tree Press, March 2007) offers “a poetic landscape echoing themes of migration, family, love and loss”. Highly Commended in the Forward Poetry prize, her work has also been shortlisted in the 2010 Arvon International Poetry Competition. Her second collection, The Heart of It (Peepal Tree Press, April 2012), writes Mimi Khalvati, “is a tender, moving collection, full of passionate intensity and an unswerving faith in the power of reconciliation and love”.

Follow Seni online at www.seniseneviratne.com

Recently graduated from Cambridge University with a degree in English, emerging poet Seán Hewitt has been published in a number of magazines including, Agenda, The Shop, Northwords Now, Crannóg, The Cadaverine and The Mays XIX. In 2011, he won the Rima Alamuddin Prize, and he has recently been nominated for a Forward Prize for Best Single Poem. As the Apprentice poet in Residence, Seán spent the Festival shadowing Seni and staged his own event.

You can follow Seán’s blog at www.seanehewitt.com