Seven Dials Festival 30 Poetry Trail

SEVEN DIALS FESTIVAL 30

POETRY TRAIL In partnership with the Seven Dials Festival 30, held on Saturday 29 June 2019, The Poetry Society created a poetry trail of poems from the world’s best poetry quarterly, The Poetry Review. Poems were displayed in a series of eleven outlets in the Seven Dials area of Covent Garden, London, culminating in The Poetry Café at 22 Betterton Street.

We asked visitors to follow the trail and collect one highlighted word from each poem to uncover a secret line of poetry. A winner was selected at random from correct entries posted at the end of the trail.

Thanks to our partners: Arthur Beale, 194 Shaftesbury Avenue; Choosing Keeping, 21 Tower Street; Gudrun Sjödén, 65-67 Monmouth Street; Inner Space, 36 Shorts Gardens; Miller Harris, 14 Monmouth Street; Pride Pop Up, 53a Neal Street; St John Bakery, 3 Neal’s Yard; Skinny Dip, 29 Neal Street; Tatty Devine, 44 Monmouth Street; and The Cambridge Satchel Company, 37 Neal Street. poetrysociety.org.uk

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Festival 30 Poetry Trail Exhibited at Tatty Devine

Allis Hamilton

Winding her “Cornfields breathed in the darkness”– Norman MacCaig From the minute Clementine turns into the adjacent field, a-bob with its swollen thistles and rose-pink poppies standing tall among panting, caramel grass, the wind taunts her.

It caresses her whisky cheeks, sets her russet hair a-tangle with its long invisible claws; snoops in the contents of her basket, flicking through pages of her diary, cooling the scones she had so carefully wrapped in sky-blue cloth.

It slides along her bare thighs, lifting the ruffles of her pale peach skirt.

With not-so-gentle nudges it shoves her, impatiently, along the ant-worn track by the sluggish green creek.

When she comes to the crest of the hill it turns against her, forcing her to lean into it – her brown eyes blown dry.

Her feet anchor her to the hill as far below a witness takes it she is preparing to fly.

All Clementine can do is wait until the wind grows limp and then she tumbles down the hill, her scones a-jumble in the velvety red dust.

First published in The Poetry Review, Volume 107, No 2, Summer 2017. © The author & The Poetry Society.

Festival 30 Poetry Trail Exhibited at Gudrun Sjödén

Katharine Towers

Dog Rose – a remedy for those whose lives lack direction

I have a ravelled mind where my thoughts go round and round.

I’d love to talk out loud but I can only ramble under my breath along an old brick wall – except in summer when I blurt out things I don’t mean in brilliant pink.

First published in The Poetry Review, Volume 104, No 3, Autumn 2014. © The author & The Poetry Society.

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Festival 30 Poetry Trail Exhibited at Choosing Keeping

Lucy Tunstall

Torch Song Anoint your dead poems.

Put them in a little boat called She Who Must Be Obeyed – our little joke.

Invite the Molotovs for cocktails on deck.

Tell them to wear all their gold.

First published in The Poetry Review, Volume 107, No 1, Spring 2017. Š The author & The Poetry Society.

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Festival 30 Poetry Trail Exhibited at Miller Harris

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Hydrangea silk bodice Ballet slipper bow choker Doily choker

Camellia Stafford

Notes on Liotard

Naked eyelid Carnation crown Rabbit fur lapel Sugar bag blue 3 piece suit Smallpox death Forget me not forehead Person of grandeur condensed into miniature oval frame Jade pastel sleeve and jade eyes Earl dressed in garment resembling frilly 1960s nighty inhabits inside lid of ivory snuffbox Child princes with deathly pallor and highly coloured sashes Watermark sash Ash grey poodle coiffure White coat drained of its original red Pastel masterpiece Princess of 5 to die at 19 Sky bell sleeve

First published in The Poetry Review, Volume 106, No 3, Autumn 2016. © The author & The Poetry Society.

Lace shadow on décolleté Trader’s daughter wears husband in watch face Thick loaf hair plait Genevan banker displays bride in pearls on pinky ring 19 year old widow bows to bust Artist’s pre-marital beard shaved off in deference to wife Laughter with missing tooth and gun hand Artist’s youngest daughter holds sleeping doll of herself Quill as anchor

Festival 30 Poetry Trail Exhibited at St John Bakery

Mary Ruefle

The Butter Festival You can have all the other sadnesses, the yellow leaf on the burnt path, the silverware hopelessly scratched, the evening news and the morning news, the funeral, the rotgut, the crappy tag sale, the dead fish seasoning the shore, the memorial, the wake, the Ono no Komachi poems, all of April 1998, the lunar new year murder, English as she is spoke, and the attempt to resist an inevitability that you yourself created.

The fourteenth way of looking at a blackbird is mine, and a couple of other sad experiences rolled into a ball of pie dough as an object lesson in fragility for the butter festival.

First published in The Poetry Review, Volume 109, No 2, Summer 2019. Š The author & The Poetry Society.

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Festival 30 Poetry Trail Exhibited at Pride Pop Up

Ian Humphreys

touch-me-not

First published in The Poetry Review, Volume 107, No 4, Winter 2017. Š The author & The Poetry Society.

this flower doesn’t belong on the canal hiding in an airless tunnel where no one goes before dark rooted to a thin layer of dirt head bowed butter bloom an open mouth that faint smell of sherbet when someone passes it brushes a thigh springs back against the wall careful just one touch triggers a scattering of seed into the night

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Festival 30 Poetry Trail Exhibited at Arthur Beale

A.B. Jackson

The Sea Leaf With calloused hands the monks row hard their hearts mouse-hearts their minds glamoured It is Brendan who cries and points north-east a cricket-sized man afloat on a leaf In his left hand a cup in his right hand a quill the ocean his ink-pot his work cell The quill is dipped then drip by drop he fills to the brim his thimble-cup

First published in The Poetry Review, Volume 106, No 1, Spring 2016. © The author & The Poetry Society.

Each full cup he tips and empties Brendan he whispers I measure the seas I measure the seas the crew sit pop-eyed their faculties flipped and lightly fried I measure the seas tara-loo tara-lay by quill and by cup I’ll finish by doomsday Says Brendan O speck! you soft nugget! this aim is a nonsense away and forget it The tiny reply This world’s wonders are infinitely more than you and your brothers

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Festival 30 Poetry Trail Exhibited at Inner Space

Clara Janés Translated by Louis Bourne

No Truce This is the crystal ball that hides everything, but you toss in the equation.

The cloud chamber’s walls will say something.

The little goats draw near.

I am as much a sphere as an angle, and I will give you no truce.

Where is that rabbit that knows all by not knowing it?

A serpent comes out of the sea, comes out, comes out of the sea.

First published in The Poetry Review, Volume 108, No 2, Summer 2018. © The author & The Poetry Society.

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Festival 30 Poetry Trail Exhibited at Skinny Dip

Sam Willetts

Stone Childhood, seaside: we picked along the shore, treading intent as wading birds.

Wet, some stones were treasurable, until the air ordinaried them, and their allure was gone.

Sometimes I think that when you found me I was dried dull and your love covered me like water and I shone.

First published in The Poetry Review, Volume 103, No 2, Summer 2013. Š The author & The Poetry Society.

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Festival 30 Poetry Trail Exhibited at The Cambridge Satchel Company

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Miles Burrows

The Crocodile-skin Handbag Thick scales glisten below the Adam’s apple And on the arms. I’m slowly changing Into a crocodile. Like something out of Ovid.

I am changing into Mum’s crocodile-skin handbag, Expensive but completely out of fashion, Always upstairs when it should be downstairs (‘It must be downstairs darling, could you look?’)

Impossible to find at the last moment. (‘Maddening.

I must have left it upstairs – it’s too hectic.’)

I longed to be that handbag Centre of perpetual attention So elusive and effortlessly maddening Able to be upstairs and downstairs at once And suddenly to manifest on Mum’s lap all the time.

In old age, the crocodile-skin handbag Waits hiding on her lap beneath the table.

And at supper, with an actor’s smile, She slips fresh scampi into its open mouth To give later to the cat.

First published in The Poetry Review, Volume 105, No 2, Summer 2015. © The author & The Poetry Society.

Festival 30 Poetry Trail Exhibited at The Poetry Café

Beverley Bie Brahic

Palimpsest Dear — This evening I walked to the grocery store twelve blocks down twelve blocks home I bought two slices of the wild salmon sweet butter to seize it in and a basket of the local berries.

Under every message another message.

First published in The Poetry Review, Volume 107, No 3, Autumn 2017. © The author & The Poetry Society.

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