Milestone

This week will see us reach 1,000 posts on the Dead Good Blog.  In celebration of that fact, the current bloggers will be creating found poetry using snippets from our favourite past posts. 

It goes without saying that I am just as proud of this blog today as I was in June 2011 when the first post went live.  Since then, we have seen an abundant variety of inspiring and surprising posts on poetry, for the most part, and writing in general.  I want to take this opportunity to say thank you to everyone who has ever written, or commented, for us and express my desire that the blog should stretch on for another 1,000 posts as it continues to engage readers and writers across the world.

Here is my found poem.  If you click on any line you will find yourself transported to a piece of imaginative blogging.  Enjoy!

 

One Thousand

Something to a few,
a woman whose life was a mess

before the bitterness

do I starve this year?

Come hold me now
come see the sun
come stand with me

lay down the tracks

From a wild sky painted furious

crumpled metal objects

the brass blasts of the Salvation band

hear the horses coming closer, see the gallons of blood

twisting grey

tunnels, stale urine light and a voice

like dandelion seeds

that warns of gaps

This is the light to live in

Thinking

I could bring him to life with nothing more than hope

and the power of my own mind

religion and fecking psychics

they weren’t my first choice
not my intention

You will be left wearing pants

being trodden underfoot

Rabbit holes lead to burrows
and gardens aren’t a secret

The place we lay when no more days to give

it won’t be sad.

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and it's goodnight from him

 by Ashley Lister

 This will be my last post on the Dead Good Blog. I just want to note here that it’s been a pleasure working with so many professional writers. I’ve met writers through this blog whom I admire, and I've made friends here who I hope will remain in my life for a long time into the future.

This has been a fun and exciting learning experience. Thank you all for all that you’ve taught me.

Best,

Ash

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The Naming of Dogs - NSFW

 by Ashley Lister

 This week's theme is questions. One of the questions people often ask me is, "What are you doing in my garden?" One of the other questions they often ask is, "How did you name your dogs?"

Because T S Eliot has already explained about the naming of cats, I thought I could appropriate his original verse to explain the process behind the naming of dogs.

THE NAMING OF DOGS

The naming of dogs is no difficult matter,
Whatever you call them, they’ll drive you insane;
You may think at first I’m as mad as a hatter 
When I tell you, a dog must have three different names.

First of all, there’s the name that the family use often, 
Such as STOP IT, BE QUIET, or IT SMELLS LIKE BLOCKED DRAINS, 
Such as SHUT UP, DON’T CHEW THAT, IT STINKS SOMETHING ROTTEN—
All of them daily-use everyday names.

There are fancier names if you think they sound sweeter,
Some for the male dogs, some for the dames: 
Such as ARSE BISCUIT, FUCK NUGGET, YOU-LITTLE-TIT-YOU-ARE—
But all of them sensible everyday names. 

But I tell you, a dog needs a name that’s particular,
A name that’s peculiar, and more dignified,
Else how can he eat up his own steaming sick that’s there?
Or lick his own anus, starting inside?
Of names of this kind, I can give you a quorum,
Such as DIMWIT, CLUNGE SNIFFER, or DRINK FROM THE BOG,
Such as CRAP-EATING-CANINE, or FOUL-FURRY-MORON —
Names that are often for more than one dog.

But above and beyond there’s still one name left over,
And that is the name that you probably can guess;
Most of us call him FIDO or ROVER —
But the dog just ignores that plain form of address.

When you notice a dog in profound meditation,
Just licking its balls with no sense of shame:
his mind is engaged in inept contemplation
Of the thought, of the thought, of his unheeded name:
His ignored and unnoticed,
Effing neglectable
Heard but unheeded, singular name.

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Purplified Prose

 by Ashley Lister

 This is my current idea for a writing exercise. Take an existing line of fiction and purplify it. I might need a better word than purplify. The idea is to take a piece that’s been published and then add all the ornate bells and trimmings of typical purple prose to show how artificial these affectations can appear on the printed page. The exercise will show how an abundance of adjectives can make a piece of work stand out as being too heavily textual or show that the writer is not skilled in their craft.

To illustrate the point I'm trying to make, this is from Orwell’s 1984:

The thought police would get him just the same

This is the same idea coloured purple –

The thought police – cruel, omnipotent, overpowering, bullying, mindless, manipulative, Machiavellian, monstrosity that they were, would track him down like a rabid dog and then cage him and torture him and rob him of all that he considered to be dear as part of his own personal self, just the same.

This from Stoker’s Dracula:

"I am here to do your bidding, Master. I am your slave..."

This is the same idea coloured purple –

"I am here, in the present, in this moment, living and breathing at your service, intent only doing your bidding my most wonderful, beloved and beautiful master. For whatever purpose you need, in whatever way I can be of service, I am destined to be your slave..."

This is from Fifty Shades of Grey

His tone is so... so directorial, his usual control freak. I imagine him as an old-time movie director wearing jodhpurs, holding an old-fashioned megaphone and a riding crop. The image makes me laugh out loud.

This is the same idea coloured purple –

His tone is so... so directorial, his usual control freak. I imagine him as an old-time movie director wearing jodhpurs, holding an old-fashioned megaphone and a riding crop. The image makes me laugh out loud.

On a serious note, if you’d like to share your purple prose in the comments box, it would be fun to read it.

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The Dead Good Poetry Show

on air now!


Just a reminder that tonight's edition of the Dead Good Poetry Show will be playing for two hours from 8pm on Fylde Coast Community Radio.

Tonight's show follows the themes of connections. Poetry will come from various writers - new and old. As always, there will be some great music and lots and lots of fun.

If you want to participate can tweet poems to @deadgoodpoets  on Twitter, or share poems through the Lancashire Dead Good Poets FaceBook page, or send mail direct to ashleyrlister@gmail.com.

As always, we'll read the best stuff out live on air.

To be a part of the experience find Fylde Coast Community Radio on any one of the links below.

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The Necrophilia Love Poem - probably not safe for work

 by Ashley Lister

 I need to preface this with an introduction as to how and why this poem relates to this week's theme. 

Last week I was chatting with Michelle about the Dead Good Poets workshops at Blackpool Central Library.  The workshops are always good and Michelle mentioned that some of the poets had (as always) contributed some exciting and innovative work, despite working with material outside their comfort zone. I made a comment about my admiration for one particular poet's ability to rise to every challenge presented, regardless of how extreme or bizarre, and this is the poem I came up with inspired by that poet's persistent resourcefulness.

So, that's the connection. This is the poem. 

The Necrophilia Love Poem

Nothing could be sillier 

than a bout of necrophilia

But I always get the bone

When I’m reading your headstone

I could be plundering your tomb

Then maybe plundering your womb

Cos you’re the one I truly crave

Whilst you’re lying in your grave

We’ll try a kinky new position

I don’t mind decomposition

In fact I think you’re really hot

And you’ve got a sexy plot

There’ll be lots of midnight boffin’

Whilst you’re lying in your coffin

I think it’s great you weren’t cremated

Your remains can be inseminated…

Nothing could be sillier

Than a bout of necrophilia

But I’ve thought on this for hours

And at least I’d bring you flowers

My soul might be damned and could be cursed

But it won’t matter that I finish first

And maybe you might turn cold to me

Or be coated with some mould I’d see

But our love’s not misbegotten

Though your flesh turns stale and rotten

If I gave your corpse a face full

You’d know that I was being faithful

Because one thing above all would still be true

Even in death, I’d still love you...

Regularly.

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The Dead Good Poetry Show

on air now!


Just a reminder that tonight's edition of the Dead Good Poetry Show will be playing for two hours from 8pm on Fylde Coast Community Radio.

Tonight's show follows the themes of apples. Poetry will come from various writers - new and old including Laurie Lee, Emily Dickinson, Pablo Neruda, Robert Frost and many others. As always, there will be some great music and lots and lots of fun.

If you want to participate can tweet poems to @deadgoodpoets  on Twitter, or share poems through the Lancashire Dead Good Poets FaceBook page, or send mail direct to ashleyrlister@gmail.com.

As always, we'll read the best stuff out live on air.

To be a part of the experience find Fylde Coast Community Radio on any one of the links below.

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How about Twilight apples?

 by Ashley Lister

 At the start of this month I was ill. There’s been talk that I was bitten by Aragog. Personally I think it was more like that creature from the alien films: Sigourney Weaver.

Anyway, I’m still on antibiotics. The infection has subsided and I no longer need the stick. But do you want to know how bad the illness got? Can you keep a secret? OK. Just between you and I, I got so sick at one point I even sat through the first of those godawful Twilight movies.

Obviously, because I was floating in and out of a delirium of narcotic-fuelled unhappiness, I might have missed some key plot points, so if anyone is familiar with Twilight, could you please help provide answers to the following questions?

When did vampires start to sparkle? Is that really pertinent to anything? They sparkle in sunlight, so they live somewhere rainy? Was that what they were saying? Or were my meds too strong? Are sparkly vampires really a thing? Why would menacing creatures of the night sparkle like some jewel-encrusted shit from the shopping channel?

Did no one else think it sinister that a character who is 100+ years old is hanging around a high school? Do Operation Yewtree know about this concept? Did that not strike anyone else as being a little bit creepy? If we don’t start worrying about things like that, the Jimmy Saviles and Gary Glitters of this world will forever remain unobserved.

Dante Alleghieri’s death mask has a better range of facial expression than Kirstin Stewart. Is she an animatronic? And, if so, why didn’t they get a working one for this film? I’ve seen the Mona Lisa do better acting. Even Roger Moore could raise an eyebrow. Kirstin Stewart can’t even raise a sparkly vampire’s bloodlust.

There’s a saying that, an apple a day keeps the doctor away. It’s somewhat telling that, after making myself endure the Twilight apple, I revisited my doctor and demanded more tablets. 

Anyone with answers to the above, please share your wisdom below.

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Dead Good Poetry Show - Live on air!

 on air now!


Just a reminder that tonight's edition of the Dead Good Poetry Show will be playing for two hours from 8pm on Fylde Coast Community Radio.

Tonight's show will focus on a theme of "The End of the World." Poetry will come from various writers - new and old. And, as always, there will be some great music and lots and lots of fun.

If you want to participate can tweet poems to @deadgoodpoets  on Twitter, or share poems through the Lancashire Dead Good Poets FaceBook page, or send mail direct to ashleyrlister@gmail.com.

As always, we'll read the best stuff out live on air.

To be a part of the experience find Fylde Coast Community Radio on any one of the links below.

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Love song for George Osborne

 By Ashley Lister

"I just heard that another poor person froze to death this winter!"

 If the world was going to end

I’d want to be with you

It’s not because you are a friend

In truth you make me spew

You’re slimy and too privileged

You’re a humanoid lump of poo

But if the world was going to end

I’d want to be with you.

If the world was going to end

I wouldn’t be forlorn

Yes, we might lose all humanity

But we’d be rid of George Osborne.

I know that it’s not really cool

To joke about Armageddon

But I’m not the only one who thinks

The only good Tory’s a dead ‘un.

So if the world was going to end

I’d want to be with you

Your politics drove me round the bend

You didn’t have a clue

But being with you at end of the world

Is a thought that gives me wood

Cos knowing that George Osborne’s dead

Would make any apocalypse good.

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Dead Good Poetry Show - Live on Air

 on air now!


Just a reminder that tonight's edition of the Dead Good Poetry Show will be playing for two hours from 8pm on Fylde Coast Community Radio.

Tonight's show will be mainly themeless due to the interruption of the last week. Nevertheless, poetry will come from various writers - new and old.

And, as always, there will be some great music, related poetry and lots and lots of fun.

If you want to participate can tweet poems to @deadgoodpoets  on Twitter, or share poems through the Lancashire Dead Good Poets FaceBook page, or send mail direct to ashleyrlister@gmail.com.

As always, we'll read the best stuff out live on air.

To be a part of the experience find Fylde Coast Community Radio on any one of the links below.

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One hand? Try doing it with one leg

 By Ashley Lister

 The Ballad of the Blackpool Spiderman

 I’ll tell you a tale of a man who can write

But he got stricken down by a rogue spider’s bite

And it bit on his leg, which swelled up like a blimp

And made walking so painful he’s been left with a limp.

On the first day he saw a small zit on his calf

And it itched like a bitch for a day and a half

By which time it swelled bigger than any man’s legs

And he wondered if his wound was filled with spider eggs

The thought was quite scary – a nightmare tormentor

So he took himself off to the town’s Walk-In Centre.

And he showed off his boo-boo to the nurse there on call

And she prescribed antibiotics but they did chuff all.

It was big and so swollen and so hard as a rock

He thought it a pity it hadn’t bitten him [somewhere else].

Two days later the leg was a raw stump of pain

So he went back to the Walk-in Centre again.

And another nurse said, “Ooh!” and she said he looked sick

And suggested he’d better go to Blackpool Vic

So he did as instructed and his meds got uprated

Which seemed necessary, because his leg was inflated

When the bite burst the stuff that came out looked like custard

But the truth is it actually tasted like mustard

And long story short, the swelling started to shrink

They said he could go home – he was off in a blink.

And now he’s recovering, still resting in bed.

And when he sees spiders: he stamps them ‘til they’re dead.

True story

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Living in Dystopia

 by Ashley Lister

 The thing that I always find fascinating about our interpretation of the future is that most of us believe it will be better. To my mind, this indicates two things about the majority of people:

1. They are optimists.

2. They are stupid.

Take politics, as an example. We assume that future politicians will lead us to a better world of flying cars and social equality (at least for those pigs that deserve equality – a related point that we might get back to at another time). We have always believed that future politicians would help make our world a better place.

And yet we’ve ended up with Cameron and Clegg in Downing Street. How in the name of Santa’s foreskin were those two the best options available?

Take food, as another example. I was brought up to believe that future food would be like the protein pills they gave to astronauts: as tasty as a three course meal but the size of an Aspirin.

Instead we’ve ended up with horse-meat burgers from Tesco and Kentucky Fried torture birds. One of our most celebrated chefs, Heston Blumenthal, serves snail porridge at his Michelin-starred restaurant. Is this really a sign that we’ve progressed into a brighter future?

Take entertainment, as yet another example. Shakespeare died 498 years ago. We keep telling ourselves that another storyteller of equal or better ability will come along and wow us with their literary genius.

And then everyone rushes out to buy E L James and Dan Brown.

My point here is: carpe diem; carpe the day; seize the diem; do whatever it takes to live in the now and not dwell on the past or stare miserably toward a future that isn’t going to happen.

The past never really lived up to our rose-tinted retrospectives. The future we face in 2014 is likely to be as meh as all our previously imagined futures.

But TODAY will only be here this once. 

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Dead Good Poetry Show - Live on Air!

 on air now!


Just a reminder that tonight's edition of the Dead Good Poetry Show will be playing for two hours from 8pm on Fylde Coast Community Radio.

Tonight's show will be following a theme of love. Poetry will come from various writers - new and old.

And, as always, there will be some great music, related poetry and lots and lots of fun.

If you want to participate can tweet poems to @deadgoodpoets  on Twitter, or share poems through the Lancashire Dead Good Poets FaceBook page, or send mail direct to ashleyrlister@gmail.com.

As always, we'll read the best stuff out live on air.

To be a part of the experience find Fylde Coast Community Radio on any one of the links below.

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Belated Greetings

 by Ashley Lister

I'm typing this direct into blogger. I'm really short on time this week having bitten off more than I can chew (or promised to write more than I can physically write). Instead of blogging properly, assume I'm overdosing on mince pies and turkey sandwiches.

Or imagine I'm the comedy genius who wrote the genius tweet you see below.

Hopefully I'll have more next week but there's little I can say about the season of capitalism without coming across as irreligious, grumpy or plain mean-spirited. I do hope you're all enjoying the festivities and if you really get pleasure from seeing pure delight splashed across the face of young children at this time of year, perhaps your name ought to be on a register ;-)

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Word Counts

 by Ashley Lister

 I was going to be arsey about this week’s theme. I was going to moan about my working with words – not numbers. I was going to pretend that I have little to do with numbers because I’m a writer and writers work with words.

To evidence this, I looked at the book titles that currently sit on my reading list:

The Seven Basic Plots, Christopher Booker.

Twenty Master Plots, Ronald B Tobias

36 Dramatic Situations, Georges Polti,

The Five Minute Writer, Margaret Gerharty

Obviously, I told myself, these titles weren’t indicative of all my books. Those titles were texts and more prone to the regimented values of numeracy. Literature doesn’t have such a dependency on numerical values. I went through a list of typical fiction titles from my personal bookshelves:

Five on a Treasure Island, Enid Blyton.

1001 Arabian Nights, Anonymous

’48, James Herbert

Three men in a Boat, Jerome K Jerome.

Fifty Shades of Grey, E L James

The Life of Pi, Yann Martel

The precedent for numbers in literature was possibly set by Shakespeare with Edward III, Richard II, Henry IV, (Part 1), Henry IV, (Part 2), Henry V, Henry VI, (Part 1), Henry VI, (Part 2), Henry VI, (Part 3), Richard III and Henry VIII.

Of course, the numbers in classic literature aren’t solely down to Shakespeare. Joseph Heller wrote Catch 22, George Orwell wrote 1984, Bram Stoker wrote Count Dracula and Dickens wrote A Tale of Two Cities.

This is a trend that’s carried over to graphic novels and comic books, 30 Days of Night, The Fantastic Four and 21 (The Story of Robert Clemente). It’s a trend that is endemic in films, not just with the annoying sequels (Titanic II, High School Musical 3, Friday the 13^th Part 4) but in the body of the title itself: 101 Dalmatians, Fifty first dates, 51^st State, 28 Days Later, 8 Mile etc…

So, whilst I could have been arsey about numbers, and claimed they have nothing to do with writing and words, I would have been wrong and the chances are, I would have made myself look like a right one.

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Dead Good Poetry Show - LIVE ON AIR NOW

 on air now!

Just a reminder that tonight's edition of the Dead Good Poetry Show will be playing for the next two hours on Fylde Coast Community Radio.

Tonight's show will be following a theme of Oscar Wilde. Poetry will come from TS Elliot, Oscar Wilde and many, many others.

And, as always, there will be some great music, related poetry and lots and lots of fun. The theme this week relates to Oscar Wilde so we'll be hearing some of his poetry.


We'll also be chatting with celebrated author Mitzi Szereto about her latest release - Wilde Passions of Dorian Gray.
Mitzi Szereto website: http://mitziszereto.com
Mitzi Szereto on Twitter: https://twitter.com/mitziszereto
Mitzi Szereto Facebook fan page: https://www.facebook.com/mitziszereto.fanpage
Mitzi TV: http://mitziszereto.com/tv
Errant Ramblings: Mitzi Szereto’s Weblog: http://mitziszereto.com/blog
Mitzi Szereto Google+ Fan Page: https://plus.google.com/u/0/b/105002950509883985630/+Mitziszereto/posts
Mitzi Szereto on Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/72445.Mitzi_Szereto
Mitzi Szereto on Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Mitzi-Szereto/e/B001JS3YLE/
The Wilde Passions of Dorian Gray website: http://mitziszereto.com/wildepassionsofdoriangray/

If you want to participate can tweet poems to @deadgoodpoets  on Twitter, or share poems through the Lancashire Dead Good Poets FaceBook page, or send mail direct to ashleyrlister@gmail.com.

As always, we'll read the best stuff out live on air.

To be a part of the experience find Fylde Coast Community Radio on any one of the links below.

Read More