Showcase: Thursday 14th November 2024
Headliner: Richard Maxwell.

Richard Maxwell was the Nottingham born, featured poet. His poems stem from observing the everyday sights and sounds. He interspersed his poems – with haikus all about stars and our place in the Universe and vignettes about an intriguing character called De Cleric. Richard's first poem was based on doomsday and was very rhythmic with good tight rhymes and fascinating imagery.

Another poem was about an existential crisis at bus stop – and included stunning lines and phrases such as - “4,54 billion years for me to say cheese” ….”only infinity is love when it is found”. Then we had a poem about Richard's ambition - to steal a steam punk show...but the poem listed lots of reasons why this wasn't possible for him to do.

After another star related haiku, Richard noted he had so far only looked at the past – and asked what will the future look like? Questioning amongst other thoughts... “Will an AI robot be born with an umbilical cord?” A while into his act, Richard felt comfortable enough to invite us all to his flat – we were asked to imagine him sitting on his sofa when his friend Bensa sent him some music – and “Bensa's bass poem” was born including the lines …..”the 4th wall feels broken “, “is my apathy contentment?”...” I'm just an arrogant beast” .... “force, force, force my fingers in to my eyes and remove my cataracts”. ...which conjured up some vivid imagery! Later ,we went out to Richard's balcony with him and learnt about life 6 floors up –with lines like - “constant rumbling from below, flight path above”.... “would the world remember ?”.. and “ I will have known living!” After which were treated to another Haiku, then still at his flat....we looked out over the city scape – admiring the sky line and all the cranes – as he asked “are we all not connected in this way? Connected for support? “ Then to end De cleric reappeared with some intriguingly mystic activity in the woods.

Richard's set certainly set the imagination racing and piqued interest in hidden worlds beyond the mundaneness of our every day lives. The sprinklings of haikus and De Cleric pieces added to the entertainment and Richard was well received by the DIY quarterly showcase audience! By Rose Harvey. (With thanks to Joy who offered to do the write up since I was unable to join by Zoom. Seems like a missed a real treat. Thanks for the write up Rose. I must get braver with my haikus!)

Events mentioned during the monthly meeting that are still to be performed: 21st November, event from Hothouse Theatre at the Lincolnshire Poacher, asking for help with reading. 16/18 December an evening of Christmas Yarns at The Place, Sherwood

Zine

Frank told me that we are on issue 65. We produce 400 copies per zine and it’s quarterly. I've been producing the zine since 2003. Issue 66 is due in February 2025.

Interview with Clare Stewart

Whereabouts in Nottingham are you from and have you lived there all your life?
I live in Lenton Abbey and I’ve lived there for about 34, 35 years? I’m from south London, first a leafy suburb and later, in a more urban place, working in central London. I got really tired of the commute and lack of green, and when my partner at the time said he wanted to go to uni, I said Only if we go somewhere else. I sort of wanted the adventure, I guess. And so we arrived Nottingham. I only meant to be here the three years of his degree! But somehow I kept staying here. I didn’t settle for ages, feeling I was always about to move on, I’d always thought of myself as peripatetic, a bit of a wanderer. But then I found John and Frank and DIY, and realised this was my tribe, so I decided I need to settle.

When did you start writing poetry?
I wrote the usual lovelorn over-sharing emotional poetry when I was a teenager. Then came back to it when I was in my forties.

Who are your poetic influences? Who do you admire?
Well. Big question. I don’t really know, my tastes change all the time, and I read widely and I kind of forget which poets I’ve read! Number one, I’d have to say William Blake, really love his Songs of Innocence and Experience, though I still haven’t really tackled any of his more complex stuff. I immersed myself in the Wasteland, TS Eliot when I was a teenager. Also Shakespeare, love the poetry in his plays. In the last ten years or so, I’ve been researching and reading more women poets, as I co-run the workshop at the Women’s Centre. It’s part of this movement across the arts to rescue the work of women that mysteriously disappears after they die. I love Christina Rossetti’s Goblin Market (though her work was never in danger of being lost). I like the work of Amy Clampitt, Joelle Taylor, Seamus Heaney, Benjamin Zephaniah, Kae Tempest, John Agard and Grace Nichols, Gillian Clarke, Jackie Kay - oh, loads!. Also very influenced by poets on the local scene, I think there are some really wonderful poets in Nottingham and Derby. And it’s great to know people and their poetry, watch how it develops over years of knowing them.

What made you start writing poetry?
I’m kind of crazy, or I can be. And I really need to express stuff! Words are my go-to form of expression. Poetry (and art and printmaking and embroidery and knitting and all creative stuff, including cooking) keeps me sort of sane.

Do you have a short poem to share that you have written and that you are especially proud of?
I like this poem. I think about dreams quite a lot, and I feel there’s something of the dream-state when you get into poetry-writing mode, a bit like the meditation bit at the end of a yoga class.

Dreamscape

Three birds
robins
sing through the wind

Far away up the mountain
a train on tracks
Sounds mingle

Three birds
robins
sing about the wind

The far-off train
heads for the tunnel
I sleep in the wind

Three birds
robins
sing of the wind

All this drifting
through a windy dreamscape
I miss her.

Three birds
robins
sing close by the wind

This drifting
through windy dream space
The train threads round the hillside

Three birds
robins
sing near the wind

A narrative arc is flattened
along the mountainside
traces the treeline

Directionless
I lean back against the tree
Sleep through the wind

Three birds
robins
sing in the wind.

The breeze ruffles my hair affectionately.

Clare Stewart
May 2021

Please will you nominate the next poet for this?
Frank Mc

Thank you, Clare!