Giles Turnbull
Giles

I am a blind poet living in south Wales, UK. I lost my sight 9 years ago, so have written poetry as both a sighted and blind poet. I've been writing since high school and have started taking it more seriously in the last 5 years. My debut pamphlet, Dressing Up, was published by Cinnamon Press earlier this year. I used to play piano and am trying to re-learn it now I'm blind. You can find me on Twitter at @Bix_cool

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Hour 14: Showtime

I managed to squeeze 7 of the 10 words into my poem, which is set at a movie awards ceremony. The lines about the evening of a thousand stars, and the suitcase in another hall, are transplants from songs in the movie Evita, which hopefully is sufficient to imply that Kermit and Miss Piggy played Juan and Eva Peron. I want to tighten some rhymes that don't really rhyme at the moment — such as stars and sprinklers, but that'll just be a bit of playing round with alternatives

Showtime

It was a mystery
how Kermit won best leading frog
while Piggy went overlooked.

On this evening of a thousand stars
where suitcases are never left in another hall
the steam escaping her ears triggered the sprinklers.

“Froggy,” she demanded, “give me your raincoat,”
(peculating the award like butter wouldn't melt)
“Quick, Froggy, those children are escaping with your cup!”

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Hour 13: Changing Places

My poem this hour hasn't really got beyond the rough sketching of ideas. I want to feature a world in which ghosts and humans swap places, with very few of the former ghosts believing in the human ghosts, except for one or two who cannot convince the other former ghosts that there are human-ghosts. I like the idea of this twist, but it will need quite a bit of work after the marathon to make it stand up. The TV program mentioned, Corrie, is Coronation Street, set in the UK city of Manchester, home of the soccer teams. It's been a weekly show on British TV for years and years.

Changing Places

I walked through the door
more accurately floated
like a bad odor

I recognise the lady sitting in the reclining chair,
from photos in the purple album,

kept in the cupboard under the stairs.

it's Aunt Agatha,
great great great aunt Agatha,
feet up in front of Corrie

Drifting in through the fireplace
Alex spies Agatha,
“Hey dad, is this cool or what! Who on earth's that?”

“have you put the water
on for my bath, Maud dearest?
“I can't find a tin bath.”

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The Morning Story

I try not to write poems directly online, lest my shaky internet connection dies and I lose all I've written! Vut Word also has a word count feature, and this poem clocks in at 97 words, including the title, and there aren't any overly repeated ones.

The Morning Story

It's loud outside,
birds are yammering
nine-to-the-dozen.
A snub-nosed bee
unrushed,
makes working hard sound like a lazy sloop.
If I listen hard
I can hear an ant
Sneeze, ashoooooo
as pollen tickles its nose.
An asthmatic worm
pokes its bald head
into the light of this April morning
and sleepily blinks.
A spontaneous shower
revitalises sun-angled stems
with its Niagara jolt
that will gradually seep through to the roots.

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Magic in the Garden

I haven't got the second stanza anywhere near right yet, but I like the idea in this poem, which would probably have a multitude of colourful butterflies dancing the jig.

Magic in the Garden

Splodges and blodges
a phantasmagoria of hues
decorate the toadstool caps
spider thread strands
hang from the eves
where raindrops dangle
captivated, scared to drop

A gentle breeze teases
tinkles from the bells of flowers
as glamourous butterfly Lady Lucile
demonstrates dancing

The Swallowtail Jig.

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Hour 10: Colours

You may not realise this, but blind people, even those who've been blind since birth, still have favourite colours. In this poem I try to give an insight into how a blind person can relate to colour. My favourite colour is red. The last colour I remember seeing was the yellow of some daffodils / jonquils in a planter outside my family doctor's office in Decatur, GA :)

Colours

The tickle under barefoot feet
is green, emerald in the sun, viridian in the shade.
The skies are blue
singing with birds and be-anything clouds.
Grey are the paths and brown the park benches
on which linger the people you've never met,
the conversations you'll one day have.

Yellow is the warmth that wraps an arm around
your shoulders, quiet and happy,
simple, and simultaneously profound.

Black is the unknown
the emptiness of someone gone
the fears we do not like to own.

Pink is a birthday, immediately unwrapped
giddy with ribbons and party friends
the kind of day that runs until we're super tired, then ends,
collapsing into purple shades and closing eyes.

The stories and the dreams, white
the sheet of paper, the field of snow
waiting for footprints to bite.

This heart, red like nothing else
the essence of danger, love and life.

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Drumsticks

I've actually written two poems about spiders before, and I'll preface this new one with one of them — a haiku.

Drumsticks

Raindrop snared in web
believes it should fear spider
while death comes from sun</p

Q: How many knees does a spider have?
A: eight six-segmented legs = forty eight

The temperatures climbed
driving humans underground.
all livestock left behind

Michelin starred chef Jacques La Jambe
will stuff you a tarantuala
with cave mushrooms and snails

A plate of teriyaki drumsticks
is today's chef's choice
for those in need of a litle meat.

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Hour 8: Solitary

I love writing poems that use this sort of framework technique, requiring a particular word, or a word starting with a particular letter, in pre-determined positions. I've changed the end word of my last but one line to 'your way', because I couldn't get the last line to work if the penultimate line ended with 'the'. With more time I'll figure out a way to do this with the correct word.

Solitary

Using the first two lines from ORIGINS AND HISTORY OF CONSCIOUSNESS (1972-74) by Adrienne Rich
Night-life. Letters, journals, bourbon
sloshed in the glass. Poems crucified on the wall

I fear the city cnight-life,
its neon letters
featuring in morning journals,
with tales of violence fuelled by bourbon.

You were too sloshed

to persuade me to let you in,
your mouth could not form the
words you wanted, and I left you staring at the glass.

I'll mention you in my poems
your arms wide, crucified
like you were holding on
to the belief you could scale your way
back over the prison wall.

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Looking from the Inside

This poem stems from a memory I have from my sighted days. On a small patch of wasteland in the city of Swansea, Wales, there was a shopping trolley / cart, upside down with flames from some odds and ends that had been set alight, licking at its metal mesh.

Looking from the Inside

I cannot begin to describe
to you, the misery of the burning bars -
vainly striving to contain the fire.

Created to contain, but deceived — not told
of the blistering commodity to be their charge;
summer flames biting at the vapours of a winter night.

I could have seen the dawn
but for the darkness
clouding my eyes.

Ssitting by this memory
I evoke a cup of tea
and the wrapping

from a coffee cream,
and I construct reality,
from what used to be
a dream.

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A Pastoral Scene

A Pastoral Scene

Though I know not their names
nor the colour of their wings,
I hear their songs
brighten up every morn —
trills and echoes
amid the trees.

The vegetable terace,
beloved of slugs and snails,
flush with runner beans and onions,
raspberries and blackcurrants
garlic in the greenhouse
blackberries behind the shed.

Cows in the field,
black and white choir of tenor voice,
glaring at the Usk Way walkers

traipsing up the track
as they listen to my poems
and keep an eye

on my father
trimming the hedge
from their side.

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The Ivory Tower

I enjoyed my English classes at high school, but found the lure of the music rooms, all of which had pianos begging to be played, too great. I went from being ‘a delight to teach’ in my first year of A-levels (age 17) to ‘despite considerable absences’ in the second year — most of the time I was playing the piano. Happy to report that I got an A in my English lang/lit exams, and failed my grade 8 piano, go figure! ;)

The Ivory Tower

I was in love
with a man
who tinkled his last ivory
in eighteen forty nine.

Waltzing through the afternoon,
mazurkaing in the morning
defeated by the G minor Ballad
swooning to every nocturne.

Duetting in Hedges' Hornpipe Rondo
rampant in Beethoven's Pathétique,
the C minor opening salvo,
flirting with the delicate flows.

Knocking out a Mozart Fantasy,
cavorting with Camilieri's Folkloristica,
rescuing Princess Natalie,
who demanded I teach her to play.

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