The Sunday Poem 3 – Roy Marshall

This Sunday poem is again slightly late, Sunday being very close to turning into Monday.  However, I’m hoping that it will have been worth waiting for… Today’s Sunday poem is from Roy Marshall, a poet from Leicester, my home town, who I met, rather confusingly on a Sheffield Poetry Business Writing Day.  He has just had his first pamphlet published by Crystal Clear Creators (www.crystalclearcreators.org.uk).   Roy’s pamphlet was one of a series of six pamphlets published at the same time – the other poets published alongside him were Jessica Mayhew, Charles G Lauder Jr, Andrew ‘Mulletproof’ Graves, Hannah Stevens and Aly Stoneman.  You can order Roy’s pamphlet or any of the others from the Crystal Clear Creators website. 

I’ve read through the pamphlet quite a few times now, and it is full of poems you will want to come back to.  This is what I call ‘quiet’ poetry, in that it is not flashy, it does not shout, it is very self-contained, poised and graceful writing, as you can see from one of my favourites from the pamphlet, which I’ve posted below, with permission from Roy.  I would definately recommend ordering the pamphlet – it’s called Gopagilla, which is a word that Roy’s son made up, and at four pounds you’ve got nothing to lose!  Anyway, here is Roy’s poem – please feel free to comment and tell me if you have enjoyed reading or not!  I have the sneaking suspicion this blog is becoming like the diary I kept when I was 14 i.e nobody reads it apart from my mum when I leave it lying around!

I Dreamt of Smoking – Roy Marshall

the long abandoned sense of time
measured and slowed to a cigarette’s length;
necessity and luxury, the sparked up camaraderie
of bus shelter, fire-escape, a doorway in the rain.

My dream was not a pining for breath given substance,
for jellyfish pulsing in a projector’s beam,
nor for rituals of unwrapping, tapping and rolling,
or buried addiction, risen again.

But I know the source; it was you of course,
it was the two of us, smoking.