Poetry |
Motherhood: of love and lossAn updated and beautifully produced collection of poetry and prose by Stirling Makar, Laura Fyfe, exploring aspects of motherhood that all parents can identify and sympathise with: the big events and the tiny special moments that stay with you. The love and the frustration, the humour and the heartbreak.
"...powerful and affecting."
"Utterly authentic, beautifully written with sincerity and unflinching honesty" "an important and influential work" "spare but charged, these are sensitive pieces which will move you whether or not you've had the same experiences" "Often the most memorable pieces come in small packages - small but perfectly formed" |
|
The Truth Lies
|
The unflinching, hotly anticipated debut from a leading light in Scottish poetry. With poetry full of tenderness and candour, sensuality and vulnerability, Fyfe welcomes you to join in her reflections on love, death, longing and the myriad conflicting facets of what it is to be a modern woman and mother at the beginning of the 21st century. This is poetry rooted in memory and experience, both warm and painful. Some poems lift your gaze to the sky, some grab you by the throat.
'Visceral, heartfelt, true - there's a raw physicality here but a rare lightness of touch, a haiku-like compactness and clarity. A great wee collection.' - Alan Spence 'Elegant and spare. Laura Fyfe's poems have beauty with a bite. Step inside this collection and reap the rewards.' - William Letford 'An authentic voice rising from the diaspora of a fresh generation of writers. Laura has the ability to hold the gravitas of the moment, with a light touch of reflection and humour, in the alchemy of her words. This collection is written from a place of truth. Direct and honest, it brings forth drops of vivid reality that resonate, slowly building in the margins of the poems and in the heart of the reader' - Anita Govan |
|
Balloon Gubble Pollem (or Gobbledegook Poem)
a prose-poem
This poem was written with the contributions of parents from Stirling and surrounding areas – composed of our children’s malapropisms, the words they mistake for other words in cute and funny ways.
There were over 250 suggestions. I’ve tried to include as many as possible in this utterly joyful guddle: a day in the life of a toddler.
Thank you for sharing your memories, this has been so much fun to write!
There were over 250 suggestions. I’ve tried to include as many as possible in this utterly joyful guddle: a day in the life of a toddler.
Thank you for sharing your memories, this has been so much fun to write!
Eatipops in gogurt blush sweetly from a brefix bowl, purple crumbs, the tiny blue pop of boobies. A papple a day keeps the doctor away.
Choose your comfiest demin tangerines to wear. If it’s sunny splash in the poodeling pad, go out and pick fwowers on a walk, dodge the fuzzing bimnolees, collect pet buggylugs and pitter-catters like green rainbows on leaves, watch greedy hombine bannisters guzzle corn. Put magic cream on grazed bumpies. If it’s cold, put on your glubs and ear muffins and try not to vissure.
Shrisps for a snack. Dip buttery yumps in slurpy hoop.
Grab some letter holders, go to the Oast Poffice, then the Lenter Centre on your bangolol down recycling paths, feel the ache in the mushrooms in your legs, ignore the barking bengo bongos, the howling amberlance going to the hoskital in the diskins (wish you had ear suspenders). Make the digestion to ride the sub home, avoid the empty dis-tabled spaces, ride the alligator up to the boop shop. Read: Flingo mangoes and flaming-ga-lows walk on stilts, leaving knobbly pootfrints in silt. Chipsnpeas and fluffy-tailed swirls climb trees. Hodghegs prickle and rush, dolipants and eleavents and ampants trumpet from their snortles. Explore rockpools and you might find an unlucky opitus, happy opiti swim in the sea.
Oopsidentally take the longcut home in the rain, shelter under the heartlove ellabella, splash through pubbles on the papermints, wish you’d worn your wellow wee wahs. Wind screamers sweep car windows.
Get in where the radigators are warm. Rest on your bahootie. Dip your batty and bak bak in a sweet milky hupatee, drink biluting juice, snack on crippies (beefy keypots), smash mallows and peter bunner.
Play Ponopoly, read about Little Bee Pope and Christopher Robin’s Willies and Poos, swap channels with a mokamatrole to watch Pokanose, play spot the dimference, rub the fins and noodles from your feet.
Switch on the radio, that’s enough Wobbly William, rockit instead with Lellow Submarine, sing ‘Roley roley pizza brick in the wall’ and stand spellbound by LittleMix working their doo doo on you while mum jiggles her wiggles.
Learn to stay out the road of big school-year-olds. If your throat’s sore when you swallow, it might be ton-silly-itis. If you don’t behave, you might be unrolled at Brownies. Old McDonald rides on a sleigh at Christmas. Icy colds hang from bridges in winter.
Bite into a big bugger and chips, thread sketty hoops onto fork twines, twist pasgetti banana carb, spear Mac and groin from the macrarave, stretch the lots-a-ella, flip flawncakes, rescue crispy fluffy potattie coats and salty hot peppermoni dapzas from the oven before they burn. Eat your veggies, even asgusting boongoobungers, nattos and coombungers and earn your tee tees or maybe even nice-cream and cocklate pudding. Horsey guns at Easter, pumkinin pie at Halloween, piggy pudding at Christmas.
Complain when you’re too young to go with mum to chicken parties and cuckoo weekends, remember when she drank Famous grown up chicken juice at Happy Near.
Try not to fall asleep on the wosa. Put on your jamamas, lay down in your ted. Sing Tinkle Tinkle, Ba Ba Black Street, enjoy a cuggle.
Dream of fairy boats and silver screened cimenas. Helliclopter and lallydakter trips past popping babloons, holidays in Anne Summers with vingwing on a plate of lish and ships. Knights with big shiny swords riding from assole gates, jumping on trampopeens so high you touch the moon, reach for a whooping star but it’s too terrificult to catch.
Cumin beings. All we are is aminals with wonky voiceboxes.
Too-ta for reading. Llama steak.
In which we burn *
A film poem written and filmed for the Macrobert Arts Centre, in association with Film Freeway, for their Ultra Short Film competition, June 2020
* title inspired by the line "Time is the fire in which we learn" in Calmly We Walk through this April's Day, by Delmore Schwartz
Cat Call (excerpt)
published in Butcher's Dog, Issue 13, Summer 2020
It's not a compliment,
it's a proposition,
unwelcomed and uninvited.
It's not innocent.
It's an invasion
of my space, my air.
It's the expression of your intent ...
it's a proposition,
unwelcomed and uninvited.
It's not innocent.
It's an invasion
of my space, my air.
It's the expression of your intent ...
To read the rest, order your copy of the magazine here: https://www.butchersdogmagazine.co.uk/shop
Authorised Access Only
published in Here Comes Everyone, December 2019 - The Classified Issue
Remembrance Bridge
Published in DoveTales, Bridges and Walls, Summer 2019
We looked upriver
to the water flowing towards us
and put the world to rights.
Recriminations, hope,
despair for our children.
We turned to watch the future
slip out of sight
shoulder to shoulder
hands on stone.
We threw our prayers down only
to see them sink
and hoped one day
downriver
they’d rise once more.
Below us,
the world reflected.
In that dark water
We saw only shadows.
We hugged our warmth to each other.
Rain fell on our cheeks,
our lips.
Below us
in that moment
the river seemed still.
(written after a small event I launched on Remembrance Sunday, 2017, in which friends met on bridges across the world. Established in response to a traumatic few years in Scottish and British politics. Three days after Trump won the US presidential election)
to the water flowing towards us
and put the world to rights.
Recriminations, hope,
despair for our children.
We turned to watch the future
slip out of sight
shoulder to shoulder
hands on stone.
We threw our prayers down only
to see them sink
and hoped one day
downriver
they’d rise once more.
Below us,
the world reflected.
In that dark water
We saw only shadows.
We hugged our warmth to each other.
Rain fell on our cheeks,
our lips.
Below us
in that moment
the river seemed still.
(written after a small event I launched on Remembrance Sunday, 2017, in which friends met on bridges across the world. Established in response to a traumatic few years in Scottish and British politics. Three days after Trump won the US presidential election)
Mirrorball
Published in Black Bough Poetry II, ‘lux aeterna’, a tribute to mark the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing. July 2019
Work to Live
published in Landfall, the Anthology of New Writing from the Federation of Writers (Scotland) 2017
Shadows lenthen.
Cornlice tickle sun-damp skin
Held by chubby fingers,
a tiny watering can
filled from a warm paddling pool
sprinkles sunlit grass.
Pebbles click, moved
from one spot to another
in a pattern beyond
grown-up mind.
Shadows lenthen.
Cornlice tickle sun-damp skin
Held by chubby fingers,
a tiny watering can
filled from a warm paddling pool
sprinkles sunlit grass.
Pebbles click, moved
from one spot to another
in a pattern beyond
grown-up mind.
Seize the Day
Stirling Makar's Poem of the Month, April 2017
Carpe diem’s a tired old drag
mascara-gritty
sitting in the corner
cigarette drooping
sparkle-shedding
rictus-grinning.
A dusty old spider
inviting you in
with promises
of a live well-lived.
Don’t let her seize your days.
Carpe diem’s a tired old drag
mascara-gritty
sitting in the corner
cigarette drooping
sparkle-shedding
rictus-grinning.
A dusty old spider
inviting you in
with promises
of a live well-lived.
Don’t let her seize your days.
20 Steps to Physical Perfection (excerpt)
published in Razur Cuts VIII, Dec 2019
Round women, square women,
short women, tall women
skinny women, fat women
somewhere-in-the-middle women.
Wrinkled skin, double-chin,
stretch-marked bits or saggy tits?
Roll up, roll up!
Solve all your problems in a trice
with a slice.
This knife will cure your soul.
Skinny on the outside
But fat clogging inside
arteries and thought,
nothing tastes as good as empty feels.
Too thin too fat
between pages of Hello and Chat
Cellulite, Bullemia
Celebs and anorexia
Doesn't she look old?
Opposite miracle-poll-winning-award-winning wrinkle cream.
Don't wear that, wear this
Last season's, this season’s, next season’s fashions.
Dogs in purses
and pursed lips
open your legs for the camera darlin'!
...
short women, tall women
skinny women, fat women
somewhere-in-the-middle women.
Wrinkled skin, double-chin,
stretch-marked bits or saggy tits?
Roll up, roll up!
Solve all your problems in a trice
with a slice.
This knife will cure your soul.
Skinny on the outside
But fat clogging inside
arteries and thought,
nothing tastes as good as empty feels.
Too thin too fat
between pages of Hello and Chat
Cellulite, Bullemia
Celebs and anorexia
Doesn't she look old?
Opposite miracle-poll-winning-award-winning wrinkle cream.
Don't wear that, wear this
Last season's, this season’s, next season’s fashions.
Dogs in purses
and pursed lips
open your legs for the camera darlin'!
...
to read the rest, order your copy of Razur Cuts VIII, by contacting Razur Cuts here: https://www.facebook.com/razurcutsmag/ or here: deeko1963@googlemail.com