Skip to main content

THE MELITA HUME SHORTLIST 2014: AMY BLAKEMORE (1 of 11)

The Melita Hume Poetry Prize is for the best first unpublished poetry collection by a poet based in Ireland or the UK, and 35 years of age or under, at time of entry.  The work must be original, and in English. 50% can have appeared previously as a pamphlet.  The prize is £1,400 and a publishing deal with Eyewear.

This year we received many impressive submissions, and our award-winning Faber poet, Emily Berry (Dear Boy, 2013, Forward winner), has made a shortlist of the best 11.  Over the next few weeks, before we announce the winner on the 7th of May, this blog will be featuring a poem by each of the shortlisted poets.  We start today with Amy Blakemore.

Amy Blakemore (pictured) was born in Deptford, London in 1991. She started writing poetry at the age of fifteen. She was named a Foyle Young Poet of the Year twice, in 2006 and 2007, and read English Language & Literature at St Edmund Hall, Oxford.

Her work has been published in a number of magazines and zines, and is featured in Bloodaxe’s Voice Recognition: 21 Poets for the 21st Century (2009), edited by James Byrne and Clare Pollard. A pamphlet of her poems was published by Nasty Little Press in 2012, as part of the Nasty Little Intros series. She currently lives in East London. Her work can be read at www.amy-blakemore.co.uk.


she’s a star


remember brother
heated pools, youth dismembered
in bright colloidal silver
 

for lunch, honeydew melon
holding it in her hands
like a slice of daybreak

her nails bright important spikes.
 
 
poem COPYRIGHT THE POET 2014.


Comments

Popular posts from this blog

CLIVE WILMER'S THOM GUNN SELECTED POEMS IS A MUST-READ

THAT HANDSOME MAN  A PERSONAL BRIEF REVIEW BY TODD SWIFT I could lie and claim Larkin, Yeats , or Dylan Thomas most excited me as a young poet, or even Pound or FT Prince - but the truth be told, it was Thom Gunn I first and most loved when I was young. Precisely, I fell in love with his first two collections, written under a formalist, Elizabethan ( Fulke Greville mainly), Yvor Winters triad of influences - uniquely fused with an interest in homerotica, pop culture ( Brando, Elvis , motorcycles). His best poem 'On The Move' is oddly presented here without the quote that began it usually - Man, you gotta go - which I loved. Gunn was - and remains - so thrilling, to me at least, because so odd. His elegance, poise, and intelligence is all about display, about surface - but the surface of a panther, who ripples with strength beneath the skin. With Gunn, you dressed to have sex. Or so I thought.  Because I was queer (I maintain the right to lay claim to that

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart?  A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional.  Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were.  For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ?  Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets.  But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ?  How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular.  John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se.  What do I mean by smart?

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and  Silence of the Lambs .  I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".