Poetry Focus On: JANET ROGERSON

Janet Rogerson

Janet Rogerson has a pamphlet A Bad Influence Girl with The Rialto, which was published in 2012. Her qualifications include an MA in creative writing and a Postgraduate Diploma in Education (PGDE). At the moment she teaches Creative Writing in the community and is also doing a PhD at the University of Manchester.  The poem below is from this highly-recommended collection, which will be reviewed here in September.

The sun is a guillotine

dropping its blade,

an arbitrary executioner.

It makes us followers of ourselves

and has us emerge around corners before us.

One afternoon, walking down

a parched avenue, you slip

into a bar named Hopper’s.

The trees across the way

are fidgeting on the barroom floor.

You sit in a booth, your glass drips

and shimmers like a cave crystal.

You sit in black and white

as the jukebox plays a song

then the shadow of a song.

The trees do this and that

just leaves on the dance floor.

She wants to lie down in your shadow,

she’s so in love with you

that night-time brings an irrational

fear of what shadows can do.

The sun beheaded three men

in the bar that day

and shadows grew

to ridiculous lengths.

poem by Janet Rogerson, online with the author's permission.