Editor: George Simmers
Dry your tears. Snakeskin is back online. The firm that looks after the site tells me that there were ‘issues’ with the server. These now seem to be resolved.
Make sure you take a look at the SHORT POEMS issue, which will arrive on July 1st. There’s some brilliant stuff in it.
In a distant country, years ago
A cruel illness made a slow
But nasty progress through the land
And threatened to get out of hand.
The king and his advisors, shaken,
Declared firm measures must be taken
To stop the plague from taking hold.
They issued diktats firm and bold.
No citizen must ever roam,
But all must always stay at home,
And must stay six long feet apart,
Even from the darlings of their heart.
But, fearing he’d be disobeyed,
The king said: ‘Make the plebs afraid.’
His men drew graphs and uttered lectures
About how wickedly infectious
The illness was, and they so hyped
It up that almost no-one griped –
No, most were most obedient, fleeing
The touch of any human being.
They washed their hands obsessively
And took delight especially
In letting the police force know
If any deviant dared to go
To visit with his family.
The plebs deplored this, virtuously.
Four years ago this blog enthusiastically reviewed Infinite in All Perfections by Snakeskin poet Annie Fisher. The Deal, her follow-up pamphlet, also published by Happenstance, is even better.
Typically, Annie’s are poems that contain lives; sometimes content that might fill a whole novel is compressed into a few lines. The father-daughter relationship in ‘Perhaps’, for example, or the childhood of ‘In Hiding’.
Annie Fisher is drawn to writing about people whose lives are unsatisfactory, like the anorexic girl of ‘Ghost’:
She watches
as her shadow on the ground
grows more obese
with every passing hour.
Or the man whose whole life is a catalogue of disappointments:
Let-downs ambushed him throughout his life –
the taste of fresh-perked coffee; aubergines;
live albums; picnics; Camembert; his wife.
Several poems are about childhood: some, I, think, about her own childhood, and her relationship with her father. ‘His Face in my Mirror’ was in Snakeskin a few years ago:
The little lazy eye he gave to me
Winks back unmistakably.
Try all you like, it seems to say
You can’t escape your DNA.
For me, the sign of a good poetry book is that when reviewing it I want to keep on quoting and quoting. That’s the case with The Deal. The language is so clear, and yet so rich, and a few lines can suggest a world of implications.
But I’ll stop now, and just tell you to do yourself a favour and buy a copy. The title poem is especially beautiful.
You can order The Deal at: https://www.happenstancepress.com/index.php/shop/product/47801-the-deal-%E2%88%92-annie-fisher
This Guardian critic does not give much cred
To poets who are male and white and dead.
Which leaves me feeling very slightly wan,
Since I am white and male, and getting on.
In April Snakeskin, Sharon Phillips has rather a good poem (‘Looking Good’) which references a seventies book, The Young British Poets, edited by Jeremy Robson.
Here is a scan of the book’s cover. I wonder how many of the poets readers can recognise. I think I score half a dozen definites, plus a couple of possibles.
No prizes – but how many can you identify?
Bruce Bentzman, Snakeskin’s roving reporter and noter of curiosities, saw and snapped this view in Swansea, of a poster proclaiming a great truth.
Read the rest of this entry »
The editorial inbox for November Snakeskin has been the fullest in the magazine’s history. There was a cornucopia of short verse to choose from.
This made the task of editing the hardest it’s ever been. From the hundreds of poems submitted, there were a very large number with merit, a solid phalanx of the worthy. How to choose?
I had started with the idea that I would present an issue with just twenty poems. That idea went by the board. A lot more squeezed in, and there are still poems that I regret not using.
Were the poems I chose ‘the best’? That’s always a bit subjective. They were the ones that struck a chord with me. Many because of what they were saying, some because of their use of words or their use of form. Some because they were funny.
Many thanks to everyone who sent us poems. I’ll try to write a note to all who offered poems, but it’s going to take a while.
Meanwhile – enjoy the issue.
(By the way, the next two Snakeskins will be standard issues. Any length, any subject, any style. Send your poems to the usual address.)
There has recently been something of a craze, on Instagram and elsewhere, for wrapper rhymes – that is, short poem written on the wrappers of sweets and other food.
It began , apparently, with the discovery that Ted Hughes, a fan of Tunnock’s Caramel Wafers, had taken to writing short pieces in praise of them on the wrappers.
To have swallowed a crocodile
Would make anybody smile
But to swallow a Caramel Wafer
is safer
Someone who has taken to the craze with gusto is Helena Nelson. I’ve just received Branded, a nicely published pamphlet, containing over thirty of the pieces she has written on wrappers. She must have spent a fortune on confectionery, it strikes me – but then, I reflect, money spent on chocolate is rarely money wasted.
Read the rest of this entry »I scan the faces on the train.
Did she vote Leave? Was he Remain?
But each one’s in a private world,
And gives no hint what thoughts are curled
And dreaming darkly in their brains.
British people packed in trains
Will by instinct always take
Some pains to make their masks opaque.
That grumpy-looking man for sure
Seems a Leaver caricature,
Whilst she there with the hardback book
Has maybe a Remainer look.
Or maybe doesn’t – I can not
Do more than guess who voted what.
Nor can I know what made them choose,
And how far they’re impelled by views
Perhaps known to themselves alone
And incoherent as my own.
November Snakeskin will be a Short Poems special issue. Any subject, any style – but nothing over nine lines.
Send your minuscule efforts to editor@snakeskin.org.uk
 | It’s (almost)… on Twenty-Five Years |
 | John Wood on Twenty-Five Years |
 | George Simmers on Don’t |
