“A service like any other,
But don’t tell your mother
As she
Is not like you and me.
We see
The truth plain
(which many distain)
That for the right price
He Can frequently have the She
Of his choosing
And vice
Is a call
Or click away.
How easy ‘tis to fall
Off a log, and oft we lack
The will to climb back”.
An interesting article by poet Wendy Cope entitled “You like my poems? So pay for them”, https://www.theguardian.com/books/2007/dec/08/featuresreviews.guardianreview14. In her article, Cope bemoans the tendency of people to copy and circulate poems that are in copyright without obtaining the permission of the poet in question.
Cope’s piece reminds me of an incident involving an acquaintance. The gentleman in question told me how much he had enjoyed reading one of my poems (on my website) and how it was now on his phone so he could refer to it more easily. On the one hand, I was flattered to hear that my work had brought so much pleasure to someone who I liked and respected. However, on the other I wished that my acquaintance had asked my permission or maybe even bought one of my books! Rather than embarking on a potentially embarrassing exchange, I smiled and said how delighted I was that my poem gave him so much pleasure.
Of course many of my poems are available online (on this website) and I have no issue with people using the reblog facility to share portions of them with their followers. Likewise I’m delighted when people share links to my work on Twitter and other social media. There is, however a difference between such sharing and copying whole poems without the poet’s permission. Many people copying and/or reproducing poems without permission mean no harm. It is none the less wrong for them to do so without the express permission of their creator.
There was a young lady called Leigh
Who wrote a book all about me.
When she asked “do you mind?”
I replied “you will find
A letter from my lawyer named Magee!”
The internet is a place of impermanence. Now you see content, now you don’t.
In 2016 I was privileged to be interviewed by Tom Cannon of Croydon Radio, regarding my collection of poetry “Lost in the Labyrinth of My Mind”. A podcast of my interview subsequently appeared on Croydon Radio’s website and I linked to it as a permanent record of the event. Sadly anyone who visits Croydon Radio’s website today will receive the following message
“Croydon Radio has now closed. Thanks for listening.
Fortunately my interview still exists and can be found on my publisher’s website, http://moyhill.com/lost/assets/km-interview-croydon-radio-2016-04-09-16-00-53-edited-64k.mp3. However there will, I am sure be many others who did not obtain edited copies of their podcasts, who’s broadcasts are forever lost.
Authors and other creatives put considerable time and effort into obtaining radio interviews and it is a feather in one’s cap when a broadcaster agrees to interview you. However, as demonstrated above nothing is forever. Consequently (if you possibly can) its well worth obtaining your own copy of that interview of which you are so proud as it may not be where you think it should be (on the broadcaster’s website).
He watches from the bed.
There is nothing to be said,
For the mirror that reflects
Neither accepts
Nor rejects
There was a young lady called Glitter
Who spent all her time on Twitter.
Her boyfriend named Jack
Said “your love I lack.
I feel so incredibly bitter!”
—
There was a young lady called Glitter
Who spent all her time on Twitter.
Her boyfriend named Luke
Was obsessed with Facebook.
It made Glitter incredibly bitter!”
Listening to myself reading poetry on the radio,
I ponder on “what will people think?”
Will they wink
And shake their head?
Best go
To bed
And worry not, about the words said,
For I am tired
And need my sleep
England is ticking grandfather clocks
And country cots,
Their doors still without locks.
It is a place of church choirs
And open pub fires,
Where dogs lie
While their owner’s sigh
Or laugh
Over an article in the Daily Telegraph.
England is young men full of testosterone
Who refuse to leave it alone,
And draw their knives,
With no concern for mothers or wives.
England is a tower block
Where people lock
Their doors
Against thieves and hoares.
England is a place of country houses,
Where spouses
Sit at oak tables
Cherishing half fables
Of a past
That is vanishing fast
The below poems are reproduced with the kind permission of Alice Guile and are copyright Alice Guile. Alice’s work may not be reproduced or copied in any manner without her express written permission. To find out more about Alice’s work please visit, https://www.facebook.com/houseofmarvelsdesign/.
—
The Stable Boy’s sister
You swapped the stamping of hooves
For mud thicker than Mother’s passion fruit jam
Sucking at your boots, sucking you in
Until you could hold out no longer.
The starched linen of my nightdress
Wound the world around me
Like a fly wrapped in spider’s silk
I would emerge in a darker land.
I struggled in the web, eyes fluttering,
Alice. My name travelled across the ocean
From parched lips disciplined by the shudder
Of machines. I never thought you would call.
I hauled the whole household back from a place
Where there is no King’s Shilling, no war
To end all wars. Bob is not gone.
Nightmare. Go back to sleep child.
Three days later the telegram comes, delivered
By a granite faced postman, his fourth that day.
I am already wearing black, I knew the hour.
Death cannot make a brother’s love lose its power.
—
A Kestrel on Christmas Eve
We floundered in a swirling ploughed field
Dragging up sole after tired sole
From the gulping of earth’s whitening jaws.
The sticky Buckinghamshire sod grappled
With our footfalls in the tireless habit
Of a scorned woman. Out to the far right
We saw a Kestrel effortlessly glide among stars
Her little wings held all the world in a weightless silence,
A feathered atlas above the phantom of a wheat field,
Steadfast as a mirage in the white confetti air.
I took the ring from my pocket as a sparkling wind
Bullied and beat those stubborn hedges.
Snow-flakes caressed our suffering fingertips
As the Kestrel hovered eternal like a sapphire
Cloaked in deep indigo twilight, Orion’s consort
Her obsidian eyes watched us drown each other’s lips.
Dazed and angelic, we were swallowed by the moon
As Kestrel hung still, sheltering us from the weather.
That field is gone. Stiff houses in pedantic rows
Clinical tarmac and town planners have now sanitised
That wild magical place where a Kestrel once hunted
Like a fulcrum of violence, a savage priestess of the moor
Just under the North Star. But they can never destroy
The memory of that moment in time, of nature’s blessing
On the Christmas Eve that I made you mine.
—
The Rose Garden
A bone crunching noise proceeds
The sudden silence, the smell of acrid smoke
Enveloping a blackened child’s car seat,
An abandoned suitcase or a single shoe,
Hot twisted spires of metal seem
Like something from a disaster film
But more solid, pulsating, unfolding in real time
In front of dewy bovine eyes that stare at the shell,
Faces white and hard as bone china, but with a fascination
Like that of hyenas at the sight of a carcass
But somewhere, far away from blood and tears
There is an empty corridor in an old house
Where a clock ticks unfeelingly,
Carefully tidying away the moment like a relic,
A used wedding dress or yellowing lace
Folded back and back into history.
Through the window, there is a quiet rose garden
Where a butterfly perches on an oak twig
And a sundial echoes with the laughter
Of long grown children.
All the pain that has ever been felt
Is sinking to the bottom of a bottomless pool,
Until all that can be seen are ripples
On the surface of a calm pond.
