Skip to main content

FOCUS ON RHYS MILSOM

LETHARGY, DRINK, DRUGS... THE TOPICS OF A LOT OF GOOD MODERN POETRY - AND THEMES MILSOM EXPLORES
 
Rhys Milsom is a poet, writer, reviewer, creative writing tutor and workshop facilitator based in Cardiff. He has a BA in Creative Writing from the University of South Wales and an MA in Creative Writing from the University of Wales: Trinity Saint David.
His fiction and poetry has been widely published, including in Wales Arts ReviewLitro Magazine,The Lonely Crowd and The Lampeter Review, amongst others. His debut poetry collection, Amnesia, is published by Onion Custard Publishing and has been described as ‘…a frank comment on increasingly important conversations:

youth lethargy, drink, drugs and notions of masculinity’ and states ‘the voice of the poems is a raw, transparent and open one throughout.’
Rhys has spoken and read at various literary spaces, including Dylan Thomas Day. He was awarded The Short Story’s International Writers Award in February 2016, a revered worldwide competition.
 
 
 
A View: Thomas Street;
Broadfield Close; Sleep



Getting in at

2

a.m.

stinking of other

people’s lies and

a mouth with tinges

of an hour-old

cigarette

knowing that tomorrow’s

going to be

no different sort of

makes it

easier

to understand why some

dissolve out of it all

perhaps they’re not

so

cowardly after all

perhaps they’re the

realists



my father’s snores

remind me of

when I was

younger

in my grandparents

house with

the

T.V so loud

& the horses

racing for the needs

of the desperate

with my granddad sat

in his chair

a cigarette burning

away between

his fingertips

shouting at the screen

cigarette ash flicking &

blemishing the carpet



I’m on that

carpet

watching with a

golden Labrador polishing

my fingers clean

when the race is over it’s quiet

and the Labrador

sighs and lies down

my head falls on

her softly

breathing

body

golden splinters sewing into

my hair and

creased clothes


my granddad gets another smoke

10 minutes later

he’s

asleep

snoring like my father

the cat settles

curls onto my lap

tiny claws pin-

pricking

my skin

the sound of a car passing on the bypass

my father’s snores

I now know why

Sleep

comes so easily
 
 

 
 
 

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...".