Two Christmas presents from my husband this year, a bottle of Tullibardine, and this beautiful book, Patti Smith’s A Book of Days. When we saw her perform at The Bearded Theory festival last May, she began her set by reciting the footnote to Alen Ginsberg’s Howl, ‘Holy, holy, holy’, and she spoke it with such conviction the poem could have been hers. Everything is holy … ‘Holy the supernatural extra brilliant intelligent kindness of the soul!’
photos and micropoetry
Some coffee, a keyboard and my soul! My first true friends!
A collective of poems and photos. All photos taken by me unless stated otherwise.
Haiku + Tanka, Haibun, Rengay, Shahai, & More
pages from an unbound book
a dose of micropoetry
the view from my precarious perch
breathing through our bones
poetry in video form
news and views on poetry film, videopoetry, and related genres
Poetry and what-not
Essential poems for hard times
multimedia poet from the sticks
Adventuring the Med in a small yacht
poet and songmaker
Writing, Poetry & Creativity | Angela T Carr, Dublin, Ireland
Writer, Creative Writing Tutor
poems and other things by Natalie Shaw
Julie Mellor - poet 
My wife’s cousin and lifelong best friend was hooked on Patti Smith. Looked like her in later years. Someone bought us a book of Patti Smith photographs this Xmas. So here’s Julie to celebrate the synergy.
Julie
According to the specialists you died six months ago
and I like sitting with you, proving there’s an afterlife
as we roll cigarettes, you perched like a wire bird
up on your kitchen top beside the angel
that I made for you before I knew you weren’t alive.
Your fridge’s crusted like a wreck, with magnets
and pictures of BobDylan, and you show me
that programme that Patti Smith had signed, for you,
not knowing you’d been applauding from the Underworld.
You make me laugh each time you tell the phone
it can get stuffed because it’s your mad mother
who will not believe that you’re not with us any more.
Your eyes grow bright in your dead woman’s face,
then sink, then glow like cigarettes, like the ironworks
up the coast, or the small lights on the cobles
tied up and tilted on the mud; like the strange flares
from the stack high up on Boulby Cliff, where the shaft
goes down a whole dark mile of ammonites, and heads off
far away beneath the weight of oil rigs, and sunken ships,
and shoals of cod, and all the grey North sea.
LikeLike
Hi John,
I feel like this is your signature poem, the one that I know you by (although there are many of course). What’s wonderful is that it’s even more powerful than I remember. Thank you so much for sharing. I’m not sure I’ll be quite as productive after today – back to work tomorrow. Anyway, enjoy the Patti Smith photographs. They’re so true. You’ll lose yourself in them I promise. X
LikeLiked by 1 person