1. ‘a sigh, a sorrow, a suspicious mind’
A Woman Learns
A woman learns when she is young
That all of her is a weapon
Against a world that is determined
To mould her softness into something
Convenient, hard, eventually,
a disappearance.
Nottingham-born Henry Normal co-wrote the Royle Family, Mrs Merton and many other television comedies, was a co-director with Steve Coogan of Baby Cow Productions and Executive Producer of ‘I Believe in Miracles’, the real life story of Nottingham Forest’s European Cup triumph. As it turns, we share educational, musical tastes and neurology – although Henry has made far better use of his – and it was a pleasure to interview him about his influences, autism, family and future plans, particularly his return to his first love, poetry.
– Trevor Wright.
You’ve recently left Baby Cow and started to re-engage with poetry. What was the thinking behind that?
I worked in television for about thirty years. I’ve always loved comedy, I think there’s something akin with comedy and poetry and it comes down to truth. I think you’re searching for truth in poetry and there are certain things you only laugh at if they’re true. Comedy is a bit like playing a musical instrument, you know when it’s off tune and you know when it’s right. Comedy is exact, whereas poetry requires a little bit more imagination, and a little bit more interpretation. Continue reading “‘Find A Way Of Saying It’ – A Burning House Press Interview With Nottingham’s Henry Normal”
Look Up
I
Sovereign fires
Crane their necks thin
Hovering upon faultless feet
Weary scythes drop eaves
Overlook brothers of sleep,
Taking age to the face of day
Above brilliant margins
Drowsing sentinels
Illuminate the mainstream Continue reading “‘Look Up’ by Adam Steiner”
Light Buried Underground
1
Weeping woman, look up here.
It seems a beautiful day.
Ovals lay eggs. We have flowers.
Even a simple call can turn into a racket,
self-reflection in bright yellow.
2
You are different now.
But not bad different.
Just, you know, not like 1999.
Go die, come back, I’ll love you.
Love will save us, love will save us.
Violet hearts run crimson tides. Continue reading “5 Assemblages by Howie Good”
hostage
red-tailed hawk, I unfurl
my Refrains,
flexing towards the bend in the shadow
crouched,
my beak
I grip, taste iron in my talons (trap set low)
my four offenses lining up the prey Continue reading “3 Poems by Cindy Savett”
Until Tomorrow
i light a quick cig & have a seat while the rain slowly sets in. a woman begins citing the new words of her god,
the new sunken scripture:
“it’s a new age on planet earth!” before pacing her step & clapping her hands “it’s the eighth day! june tenth, twenty-sixteen. june tenth, twenty-sixteen. i grew up in…”
then she vanishes. Continue reading “‘Until Tomorrow’ by Jordan Lucien Pansky”
THE BURN OF YOUTH
I stand tall
like the charred silhouette
of a tree that has lasted
through fire, and
I long for the burn of youth. Continue reading “4 Poems by Beate Sigriddaughter”
Snakehill
We grind keys on sandstone sacraments
(names dates loves and was eres)
Territorially recorded, awaiting time’s erosion
Through nights and days this hide away
For anyone escaping
Something Continue reading “3 Poems by Jim Gibson”
Funeral Of The Inside
My heart died inside
my chest last night
I said my goodbyes
while I carved
its initials in a tree.
I buried the remnants
in a hole
deeper than my regret. Continue reading “3 Poems by Adam Levon Brown”
Five-Fold Symmetries
If I present myself to them
What of their measurement and their avoidance?
It is a survival, a learning to live
A pellicle thin as skin on black tea.
Few poets don’t wear the mask. Continue reading “‘Five-Fold Symmetries’ by Liz Zumin”
BREXIT
“I don’t want peoples’ change mate I want a change for people like me who people like you write poems about that no fucker will read because it makes em feel bad. People want happy endings and I ain’t it”
– Lou, Ring Road, Cov
In full view she slept in shrink-wrap popping like a real fire
And she was, she was a real fire petering out in the ghost grey blitz.
In full view she slept presenting a problem in the Al-Fresco wonderland
It’s not good for business bringing your problems from home into our work? Continue reading “3 Poems by Antony Owen”
It must have been around Summer 2013. I had just had my first collection of poems published. It was the culmination of many years of continuous writing. A searing, intense, daily practice of generating language. I had begun writing in the first instance as a means to save my life, and now I had no room left to contain the word. I was emotionally, mentally, physically, and spiritually exhausted.
It was around this period that I discovered the poetry of Cindy Savett. Continue reading “We Disturb The Air – an interview with Cindy Savett”
Urban Decay
This is the dark side of town, there’s no glitz and glamour here
Smack-needles and pimps in BMW’s: windows blacked-out,
The cherry of the Spliff shines through the gap like a star
Prostitutes and crack-addicts fight for the same fag-nubs on the floor outside a bar Continue reading “2 Poems by Jamie Thrasivoulou”
overheard, at a Pittsburgh bus stop
her voice has the lisp of the tooth-poor or toothless and the soft silver edge of exhaustion, he goin under that bridge there to score with that trick, Rebecca, with the red hair, she’s a trick, she doesn’t clean her pussy, none of’m do, they all smell like their pussies Continue reading “‘overheard, at a Pittsburgh bus stop’ by Patrick Thomson”
144 Meadowbank Lane
It was not so much the murder
and amount of body’s there
but the scale of the mutilation
and torture that took place
before the point of death
had actually occurred. Continue reading “2 Poems by Paul Tristram”
A passionate and tender love scene between two lovers
Comma
Burnt photographs. Burning memoirs. Scattered fragments. Scattering endings.
Stay, we’ll blaze through in smoke and coke, or break away, since there’s nothing left
Nothing left to frame in wisps of her, nothing left to distill through drops of dark Continue reading “3 Poems by Siddharth Dasgupta”
Smoke Signals
I rouse reluctantly, my home aflame,
The reek of burning stoppered by the door,
But infiltrating cracks and dreams the same,
Uneasily unconscious of our war. Continue reading “‘Smoke Signals’ by Griffin Sierra”
BURNING HOUSE PRESS 