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Featured Poet: Angela Readman

Eyewear is very glad to welcome Angela Readman (pictured) this first Friday of sultry July, poised as it is on the tip of potential Andy Murray victory at Wimbledon, and the verge of World Cup loss and triumph tonight and this weekend.  London is buzzing under the relatively pounding, neo-LA sun of this past week.  Readman's (what an ideal name for a poet!) poetry collection Strip is published by Salt Publishing.


Following her MA, she won The Biscuit International Poetry Competition and The Ragged Raven sequence competition. Her work has been published in pamphlets by Diamond Twig, Iron and Ek Zuban (translated into Finnish) and in magazines including Ambit, Envoi, Dreamcatcher, Mslexia, Laura Hird's site and Freida Hughes' poetry column in The Times.  Yet another compelling member of the YBP generation, Readman is a talent to keep watching.


How to Make Love Not Like a Porn Star


Teach me to not make love like a porn star,
make me a bed that has nothing to prove. Let’s laugh
at unscripted noises; let’s not care what it looks like.
Make my body forget what it knows.
Let me breathe in and out to the fit of your hands.
Let me let myself not always be camera ready.
Show me a picture of me not ‘doing a Marilyn Monroe.’
Let me see that your eyes are not apertures.
Let’s sink to cliché, let your eyes be rock pools;
I hitch up my skirt and wade in, reach down to return
dirty finger-nailed, with a fistful of small shiny stones.
Teach me to close my eyes without making them.
Teach me to expect no result, zoom in for no reason
on the cleavage of your chin my pinkie fits in.
Let us not talk about the size of anything.
Teach me to listen, find a gasp in your hello,
how you make it sound like the first line in a tall tale.
Let your tongue be a silver river. Teach me to sail.
Let there be hair. Let’s mention things that aren’t hard.
Let my breasts look unlikely in your fisherman’s hands,
the blister from toast like snow globes I find myself in.
Let us wake with limbs tangled as Chinese puzzles,
and garlic bread by the bed. Open your eyes, lashes
like footprints of snow-laden birds; let me pull off the sleep.

poem by Angela Readman


Comments

Anonymous said…
So glad to see Angela featured here. She is a remarkable poet. Strip is a fascinating and richly pattered text.Her language is always exciting. I look forward to her second book.
Thank you for posting this. Angela needs to be more widely read. She is original, fearless and brilliant.
Harvey Molloy said…
Wicked! So much energy and vitality. Love it.

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