The Poetry Edit - June 19th 2024
This week's newsletter gives you a physics lesson and talks in two ways about bicycles.
Afternoon all! As the days roll into each other I find sharing this space with you to be a wonderful haven - I hope you feel that way reading it, but if you have any suggestions or ideas for improvement, as ever any feedback is gratefully received. I am always looking for new poems to feature (the weeks come around quickly!) so please do send in your work (email up to 3 poems a week to thepoetryedit@substack.com - at the moment you need to be a paid subscriber to do so but perhaps not forever). I was asked yesterday by a lovely subscriber what my thoughts about prose poetry are as they had not seen any featured in The Poetry Edit, and the main reason for that is because I have never been sent any! As ever, all styles are welcome - I’m excited to see your work in whichever form it takes.
Thank you so much to those who participated in The Poetry Edit and The Poetry’s Dead Podcast Competition - submissions are now closed and shortlisted poets will be contacted later today. Shortlist voting will go live on The Poetry’s Dead Podcast Patreon at midday on June 20th and close at midday on June 27th, and the winning poem will be featured on The Poetry’s Dead Podcast on July 1st!
I am working on a fabulous new collaboration, more details to come next week. In light of the superb submissions I receive, I believe more passionately than ever that poets should be rewarded for their work, and you are the ones helping to make that a reality. I hope you feel like you can shout about The Poetry Edit from the rooftops and if you want to direct all and sundry to this button to become a free or paid subscriber, then so much the better!
Right, on with the show.
For a brief and ludicrous time I wanted to be an astronaut. I can offer very little explanation for this, given that I expressed zero interest in the idea beforehand and nor have I since. Perhaps it was the wordsmith in me looking for subjects to explore - imagine the poetry you could write looking back at the earth, watching it hang in the vast opportunity of space?
Ordinarily this hankering for exospherical travel would not have mattered a jot, but unfortunately it coincided with when I had to choose my A-level subjects. A few months later I found myself sitting in a physics lesson, despite having little to no natural aptitude for the subject - or indeed, science in general - because I felt this would be a crucial precursor to my space training (oh to be young and mad with dreams!). Despite my best efforts, I failed to understand a good 50% of the classes and have forgotten most of the content (fortunately this absurdity lasted less than a year, at which point the school and I decided to draw a decisive and relieved line under it), but I do remember the teacher bringing in a bicycle one day to help illustrate Newton’s Laws of Motion. I’m fairly certain there are three laws but don’t ask me to tell you about the first two. It was the third law that always stayed with me - “for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction”. The teacher used the bicycle to explain to us that when the wheels turn, they “grip” the ground, pushing the ground backwards (but because the earth is so large we don’t see the ground moving). This action causes a reaction which is a “push” from the ground, pushing the bicycle forwards.
For some reason, I loved this idea - opposing forces, always resulting from the interaction of two things, not cancelling each other out but propelling each other along their separate ways. It seemed to be a creative, energetic idea, and it came to mind when reading the two featured poems this week. There was a wonderful serendipity in receiving them within minutes of each other, both thematically connected and yet completely opposite in terms of tone. The result (for me at least) is that, interacting together, each one pushes the other further in it’s own particular direction - Newton’s Third Law doing its best work.
The warm, dreamy tone of The Wee Bikes By Toni De Luca is at once nostalgic and full of hope for the future, while Bicycle Enthusiast by Michael Mersinis is darkly arresting, spilling over with looming threat. Interestingly, both start out in a similar way, inviting the reader in to a secret. In The Wee Bikes, there is immediate immersion into a partnership and an escape, (“We are already cycling”). You can’t fail to imagine the wind in your hair and a happy pairing of people riding alongside each other. The language is full of abandon and simple pleasures - “our faces pink”, “meandering along the coastline", “we fill the air with laughter” - and the nod to the tedium of everyday life (“the agenda”) is deftly swept away by memories of a carefree youth. The phrase, “We zig-zag peddle our way into the unfolding day” billows with rose-tinted opportunity and I love the use of “whin” and “wind” in close succession which feels like a breeze blowing back and forth across the lines. The echo of the word “high” in the first and last verses encourages a birds eye view on the contentedness below and the last line captures beautifully how anticipation of such a dream is almost as good as (or even better than?) the fulfillment.
In Bicycle Enthusiast, there is a confiding, almost beseeching tone to the first few lines, drawing the reader closer, so that we are pulled down with the words “long and heavy”, and wrapped up in the chain hanging at the end of the line and all the connotation that this word bears. The matter-of-fact-delivery and quiet resignation in the explanation, “for protection”, is both shocking and deeply moving, and the description of the two locks at each end is at odds with the isolation expressed by the “me” vs “them” in the following lines. “The length of an arm” skillfully describes not only the chain but also how the protagonist appears to be keeping the world at arms length in an act of self-preservation, and the whole poem seems to centre around the horrifying image of “centrifuge to crush”, made all the more vivid by the nonchalant delivery of possible excuses in the last lines.
It turns out I never needed to do physics A-level - I now understand the power of equal and opposite forces better than ever.
The Wee Bikes By Toni De Luca
In our imaginary world where we store our treasure trove of plans and dreams, We are already cycling On the wee folding bikes that we have spoken of buying, Our faces pink under the high sun of the fine summer’s day. Meandering along the coastline, On the cycle paths of your pairts, further east, We fill the air with laughter and made-up songs as we go, Our agenda for the day devolved to A younger you and a younger me. We zig-zag peddle our way into the unfolding day. Enticing us on, the ebb and flow of the cool blue sea. Our senses flooded With flashes of vibrant yellow whin, The smell of sea salt on the tail of the wind, And the call of gulls following us from up on high, eager companions to our journey, The cold sweetness of the ice cream we anticipate buying already on our tongues.
Toni De Luca was born and raised in Glasgow and is a proud Scot of Italian origin. She speaks several languages and has lived and worked in many countries including India. She has an interest in the human experience and how people process difficult experiences and heal from them. This is a central theme in her work as is the healing power of nature. Toni does most of her writing outdoors 'on the go', by hand in a notebook. She finds going for long walks and immersing herself in nature grounding and inspiring. @toni_she_writes
Bicycle Enthusiast By Michael Mersinis
friend I am telling you it is true going around the city I have a long and heavy chain for protection with two locks attached one for me one for the rest of them the length of an arm centrifuge to crush and short enough to be inconspicuous I could be a cyclist or a bicycle enthusiast
As you all know by now, I ascribe a value to all poems featured in The Poetry Edit. You may love this idea, or hate it, or just think it’s totally pointless, but I want to begin to familiarise people with the idea that poetry is worth something. How much would I pay for these poems if I were to buy one, in the same way that someone buys a piece of art to put on the wall? This is obviously deeply subjective and I in no way expect you to agree with my valuations, but I do encourage you to ask yourself the same question – how much would you pay?
The Wee Bikes by Toni De Luca and Bicycle Enthusiast by Michael Mersinis : £100 combined - I would buy the two as a pair and hang them on the wall next to each other!
The Poetry Edit Roundup
Opportunities and Competitions
Channel magazine are accepting submissions until June 20th. They are looking for previously unpublished work that engages with the natural world, written in English or Irish.
The Brilliant Poetry competition is open until June 21st. They are looking for poems that find inspiration in science, whether it's the mystery of the cosmos, the intricacy of cellular structures, or the elegance of mathematical equations. It is free to enter (limited to one poem per person) and the first prize is £1,000.
The 2024 National Poetry Competition is now open for entries. First prize, £5,000. Enter by 31st October, 2024.
In my shopping basket
The Strongbox - by Sasha Dugdale, published by Carcanet Poetry. “In her new collection, Dugdale draws on elements of Greek mythology and classical epic literature, exploring and reinventing narratives and characters from Homer’s Iliad and Ovid’s Metamorphoses and incorporating distorted fragments of Heraclitus, to create fourteen new, long poems which come together as a cry of distress for the modern world.”
The featured poets in this newsletter will be paid £100. Want to submit for the next issue of The Poetry Edit newsletter? Please email submissions to thepoetryedit@substack.com before midnight on Friday (21st June) UK time, for publication on June 25th. NB You need to be a paid subscriber in order to submit poetry, which is £4/month (or equivalent USD/EUR/CAD etc!) or £3.33/month if paid annually. The Poetry Edit does not receive external funding or participate in affiliate marketing so subscriptions are currently the only to keep the engine running!
Please also consider following The Poetry Edit on Instagram. Thanks and have a great week! Fi x
Thanks so much for featuring my work. ❤️
A pleasure! Thank you for sharing your poetry with The Poetry Edit!