Poetry

In looking for a suitable sample to put on here, I chose one which is short and not too complex behind the scenes. It’s a straightforward descriptive piece, but I hope I made it three-dimensional. The real-life location is in Leicester, near the DMU student district; I was waiting there for a venue to open, then I could take part as a reader. As usual in real life, other things happened which I couldn’t get into the poem. I found a whole cucumber on the pavement outside the shop, and two ice-cream vendors were having a turf war because one of them had occupied a pitch which affected the other’s business. I really wanted to put the vendors in, but they didn’t work as part of a poem; and the cucumber would have lent a sharp surrealist touch.

WAITING ON WESTERN ROAD

At 5pm the buildings shake their people loose:
the japanese canal with its painted-on lily pads
is an enamelled trackway,
the air is as sultry as a dark peony whose time has come
and I’m outside the 24/7 convenience store
sharp grit in the turnstile of commerce.
The concrete and its small thrust stage
these littered people, spreading –
they are drawn to the urban pocket park
growing its metal lamp-posts,
their bark-chip playground a citadel
with its towers and plastic slides.
Ice-cream charms are spangling the planet
with rusted atonal clangs –
and elephantine, a delivery van
goes nosing the tarmacked streets, a liner at the dock:
petrol in the freighted atmosphere,
a curtain-wall of windows
from the clamorous 19th century
with arterial plumbing clung to its sides
like tied mountaineers, but frozen.

The following brief poem appears in Jongleur (2021) which is a set of versions from the 12th century performance poetry repertoire. In it, Garsenda laments her reluctant suitor; a typical conceit from the courtly love tradition. The book was reviewed by The Friday Poem online journal in early 2022.

Garsenda de Forcalquier:   Vos que.m semblatz dels corals amadors

You seem to have the heart of a lover
But I wish you were not so hesitant.
It pleases me greatly when we embrace in love                                                         
Otherwise I would be embarrassed for you,
Having so much shame in your cowardice
Because no one dares to ask for more boldness –
It would bring great shame on both of us
Since no woman dares to reveal
Above all that she wants these fears and misgivings.

The next example is from Candleshoe (2014) which uses landscape and the folk tradition as its starting-point. A mysterious Fool character appears and disappears, linking one poem to the next. I did quite a lot of fieldwork for this book, going to small rural towns and noting down what happened. Burrow Mump is in Somerset, and I went there on what felt like the hottest day of the year.

BURROW MUMP, DEADENED BY THE SUN

Windows are open to let the badness out.
Hummocked cattle slump on the seething green.

The school bus arrives. It is packed full of chairs.
A taxi leaps over the bridge and disappears.

No no no says the butterfly’s flight
Doddering over banked-up nettles —

Traffic lights scream STOP at the empty road,
Angles of buildings cut everyone’s voices down.

COLLECTIONS LIST

I’m published mostly by Shoestring Press, and the books are for sale on www.rennieparker.bigcartel.com (my site, selling direct) or www.centralbooks.com. Central Books are the distributor for Shoestring Press, where you can also check out my stablemates like Robert Etty, Lynne Wycherley, and Roy Marshall.  Secret Villages featured in the Forward Poetry awards for 2002, and helped me to define a style where I felt confident as a poet. Borderville is still in print, available from the distributor.

Newborough County  (Shoestring, 2001)

Secret Villages  (Flambard Press, 2001)

Borderville  (Shoestring, 2011)

Candleshoe  (Shoestring, 2014)

The Complete Electric Artisan (Shoestring, 2017)

Jongleur: versions from the troubadours (Shoestring, 2021).