Paris, France,
The macabre dance
Of death is performed
By three men.
Each dancing
To the tune
Of their master,
The great tutor
The choreographer
Of supreme misery
The teacher of
The obscene dream.
The blind visionary,
Leading his troupe
Onwards to the edge,
And their inevitable
And eternal return
To oblivion.

What do you want of us, we give you blood
Over satire, our crimson heartbeats are
Bawling bassoons, our lungs pant like faulty
Bellows and our ink hands are stained with a
Weeping prophet in a globe of matches,
Tinder sticks that light with everybody
Talking at once and then stillness… Are our
Names being called in the Parisian streets?
Georges, Stephane, Bernard, Jean. Pages ripped,
All the sea sick books burnt for their own good,
Should auld acquaintance be forgot je suis
Charlie. The bells of Notre Dame will sound,
Flags will fly like a firefly because of
A pen’s power to disrupt the mouse hole.

Grant Tarbard is the editor of The Screech Owl and co-founder of Resurgant Press. His first collection Yellow Wolf is out now from WK Press. 

I’ve spent some time lately with poetry journal editors – and also with the poor poetic beggars who, like me, send off work to them. It’s struck me anew that many people, especially those at the beginning of their poetry career, don’t have much idea of how submission works and what time span is realistic for an editor to consider a poem. Also, they’re wondering how to keep tabs on the seventeen different poems that they’ve sent out, in order to avoid the no-no of simultaneous submission.

What follows is the Jo Bell Method; the method of an immensely, award-winningly disorganised poet who nonetheless has managed to win awards. My vast and lofty experience teaches me that the key part of winning any prize or getting into a journal is this:

SEND THE BUGGERS OFF.

This is the only area of my life where such a streamlined system exists, but…

je suis charlie / breathing by Reuben Woolley.

The Retired Doctor’s Allotment

Look at that necklace of cherry tomatoes bright as
hedgerow berries strung along vines of bryony
his harvest festival of marrows and tasselled sweetcorn
a wealth, a diverse burgeoning abundance.

How different it is from the wrecked soil of the farmed fields –
panned earth, a wide waste of dead stalks,
the hedge, flailed low, barren of bird food;
unloved, the land worked for money only.

Sarah Watkinson is a plant scientist with a 2012 degree in creative writing from Oxford University. Her poetry has appeared in print in Pennine Platform, Tips for Writers and in anthologies, and online at the Poet’s House, Oxford, The Stare’s Nest, Fake Poems and Waterlines. In 2014 she was second in the Swindon Poetry Festival Competition and shortlisted at the Ilkley Literature Festival Poetry competition.

Some of the time you feel that your obvious talent is being ignored. Your ego pounds the table and shouts ‘not fair’ as you watch other (obviously less talented people) parading their successes. But your monstrous ego won’t always win out. You will feel genuinely pleased for other people too. The poet you met at a reading and had a good chat with, the poet who you went on a course with, the poet whose work you love, whose kindness and humility you remember. You will seek feedback.

Some of the feedback will annoy or upset you. The poem will be fatally wounded. You will abandon it. You will seek more feedback. You will ignore it. You will learn to listen. The poem full of holes is patched up. It floats. It is magical. You float in it. You begin to recognise and accept good advice. You know what to reject and…

MEETING SHIVA AND PARVATI
In The British Museum

Meandering like a river
among the exhibits I encounter
Shiva and Parvati engrossed in each other
holding the universe between their eyes.

Startled to find an offering of flowers
nestling at their feet where
Nandi, Shiva’s bull, and Parvati’s lion
gaze bashfully at each other,

this statue from Orissa, the place of my birth
carved between AD 1100-1300
on gleaming black schist demands my attention.

I am in the presence of God
conceived as a couple, male and female,
on the point of becoming One.

Over two centuries have elapsed
since the divine pair –
dressed lavishly in decorated loin cloths
their naked bodies adorned with ornaments
earrings, necklaces, headdresses, anklets –

were taken from their home in an ornate temple,
perhaps in Bhubaneswar, the abode of gods,
where worshippers thronged for a darshan
offering gifts and prayers
holding conversations with gods…