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CALEB PARKIN

Poetry. Play. Possibilities.

National Poetry Competition 2nd Prize!

Apr 6, 2017
2 min

National Poetry Competition 2nd Prize!

or, Putting on Your Proper Poet Hat It’s with huge delight I can now celebrate that I was awarded second prize in The Poetry Society’s National Poetry Competition (NPC) 2016, with my poem The Desktop Metaphor. Last Wednesday, we went to a prize-giving at the Savile Club in Mayfair – which was also the announcement for the Ted Hughes prize, which was originated and officiated by the Poet Laureate, Carol Ann Duffy – and won this year by the brilliant Holly McNish, for Nobody To

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The Pact

Jun 13, 2016
3 min

The Pact

One of the goaty references in my goaty piece… I put a piece of writing into the View from the Pen event at Windmill Hill City Farm – which (alas) wasn’t selected for performance. But that’s very much part of the process (and far more go in than ever get selected!) – so I thought I’d post it up here now, as I wrote it during NaPoWriMo but kept it offline until I heard back. It was written – as I’m sure some really great pieces were – with the goats in mind…There are so many c

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May 3, 2016
2 min

NaPoWriMo 4.30 – Ate Night Moat

This is my day 30 (final one for the year) effort for National Poetry Writing Month. It’s a homophonic translation (according to sound, not meaning – I don’t know Norwegian!) of this Norwegian poem by Jan Erik Vold. And as a final flourish, I decided to have a go at an experimental ‘quick and dirty’ video poem (having recently bought a new laptop and some editing sofware). The purposes of the exercise was mainly having a go at one of my own, using bits and pieces I happened t

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NaPoWriMo 2.29: The Bristol Queen

Apr 29, 2016
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2.29: The Bristol Queen

The Bristol Queen… I’ve been travelling to Weston-super-Mare the last couple of weeks to run a course – and have noticed a boat on blocks, in a car park near the train station… It’s this one – The Bristol Queen…And there was something about it being there among all those cars that was so incongruous, I thought it deserved a sonnet. So that’s what I’m writing today, though it’s one I’m going to keep back for potential polishing… Just as The Queen herself seems to need quite a

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NaPoWriMo 4.28: Ideas

Apr 29, 2016
1 min

NaPoWriMo 4.28: Ideas

A zoo sign from Bristol Zoo – and a wonderful artistic intervention. Something from today, for yesterday…I ran a group today and we worked on the theme of animals – involving writing kennings and also some information signs for The Great Zoo – inspired by Cuban poet Nicholas Guillen. The idea is that you can put anything into an enclosure in the zoo – and I think this is a really helpful way of getting people to consider and externalise things about oneself, or things that yo

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NaPoWriMo 2.27: Tele

Apr 27, 2016
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2.27: Tele

Very long lines was today’s prompt from NaPoWriMo – I’m not sure mine are quite long enough, but I don’t have much time today – and have written something…Here it is! Tele That ridiculous tele, the size of it, spreading at the edges of the Panasonic black.; it got so big it wasn’t cinema it was more than a window, a wall even. It spread out so far it encompassed the whole of the town, even though you couldn’t usually see it all from that house. It got so big that it coul

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Apr 26, 2016
1 min

NaPoWriMo 4.26: Views From the Pen

There was something I really wanted to write for a submission this week – so I duly have (and am treating it as my daily poem – though maybe I’ll write another later)… It’s for the Show of Strength event ‘View from the Pen’ at Windmill Hill City Farm (just across the road from us here at BV Studios)…Where they’ll be choosing pieces of writing for actors to perform, in the animal’s pens – as the animals. I’m not going to say which animal mine is, in case it gets selected, but

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NaPoWriMo 4.25: La Belle Dame…

Apr 25, 2016
1 min

NaPoWriMo 4.25: La Belle Dame…

La Belle Dame Sans Merci by Frank Dicksee And so I’m up to date, with two ekphrastic poems… This second one inspired by the above painting, itself inspired by this Keats poem of the same name, which means, ‘The Beautiful Lady Without Mercy’. My poem is entitled The Beautiful Lady With or, Horrid Warning – and allows the lady without mercy her right to reply. She doesn’t mess about. (I’m afraid I keeping this one too as it’s bawdy and fun, so should be sent out to appropriate

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NaPoWriMo 4.24: The Wild Beast Show

Apr 25, 2016
1 min

NaPoWriMo 4.24: The Wild Beast Show

The Wild Beast Show (1932) by Edward Seago Having just been up to the Bristol City Museum and Art Gallery, I’ve written a couple of ekphrastic poems for today and yesterday… For #24, I wrote something based on The Wild Beast Show by Edward Seago – which you can see (most of) above. It’s caught my eye before and I wonder if it’s something to do with the bright composition, with all those yellows and greens, yet with the mass of caged tigers, climbing on top of one another, acr

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Apr 23, 2016
1 min

NaPoWriMo 4.23: My Hitman

A quick and very-first-draft one today (which may remain so) – written in response to a prompt in Helena Nelson’s book How (not) To Get Your Poetry Published. I won’t share what the (clever) prompt is, because you’ll have to buy the book too 😉 My Hitman We meet somewhere outside, somewhere not-an-office and drink fancy coffees. She (for they are unlikely to be ‘male’) will ask difficult questions, smilingly – a disagreeable helper – challenging my choices, to move the wor

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NaPoWriMo 4.22: The Thereminist Hails a Bus

Apr 22, 2016
1 min

NaPoWriMo 4.22: The Thereminist Hails a Bus

Lydia Kavina played some wonderful contemporary classical for theremin, as well as some marvellous sci-fi and mystery classics, like Mars Attacks! and The Day The Earth Stood Still (which I must rewatch – no, NOT the Keanu Reeves one, which was awful – the 1951 film). We went to St George’s in Bristol last night (who it appears are fundraising for a rather splendid extension), to see this musician: It was delightful and mesmerising. I particularly enjoyed the Mars Attacks! th

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NaPoWriMo 4.21: Entrance Only

Apr 21, 2016
1 min

NaPoWriMo 4.21: Entrance Only

We were at a funeral yesterday and I wrote something about waiting to go to such a ceremony at a crematorium – and also touching on them as spaces (hence the title above). There’s certainly something there I’d like to develop: funerals are of course an intense, shared, human experience – but there’s also the curious nature of the edge-of-town hinterland quality of crematoria. It’s a peculiarly Victorian industrial process, even though this one was very well designed (much les

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Apr 21, 2016
1 min

NaPoWriMo 4.20: An Omission in the City

It appears I’m writing more that I might submit elsewhere this year – which makes for a less interesting blog, but a more hopeful prospect of publication… I wrote something on Tuesday about a ‘gap’ near me, which I pass every day: it’s a square of brick, with a couple of small trees in, which has – for the year we’ve lived here – also had a ragged chair in one corner, and an unplugged TV in the other. It’s a very strange image (not unlike an art installation), and one which I

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NaPoWriMo 4.17: Midnight

Apr 18, 2016
1 min

NaPoWriMo 4.17: Midnight

Catching up with some blackout poems – which are really great fun to do…(Sorry that on the scan you can see the original text if you look hard!) Midnight Christmas the gawping vivid voodoo transvestite gets time #blackoutpoems #midnight #NaPoWriMo #poem

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NaPoWriMo 4.16: Nut Milk

Apr 18, 2016
1 min

NaPoWriMo 4.16: Nut Milk

If you’d like an actual, not silly, article about this subject, go here. Inspired by a rum-punch hangover conversation: SCRIPT FOR A VERY SHORT DOCUMENTARY FILM ABOUT NUT MILK PRODUCTION Mid-shot carton on green screen, labelled NUT MILK. Narrator: Nut Milk. A common everyday product for many vegans. But just how is it made and is it humane? Cut to wide shot, pastures, slow zoom, accelerating into individual blades of grass. Narrator: Here on the Great Pastures Of Al-mo

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NaPoWriMo 4.15: The Turnspit

Apr 15, 2016
1 min

NaPoWriMo 4.15: The Turnspit

It’s very late and I have to work tomorrow, so this is a piece of Uncreative Writing, by turning this article content into a not-yet-very-good pantoum… (The thing I liked the most about this rather hasty process was learning the word ‘lumpenproletariat’…) The Turnspit The downtrodden, lumpenproletariat, turnspit: Small, low bodied, short crooked front legs Darwin said, Look at that. That’s an example Because they were useful as foot warmers. Small, low bodied, short crooke

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NaPoWriMo 4.13: The Desktop Metaphor

Apr 13, 2016
1 min

NaPoWriMo 4.13: The Desktop Metaphor

So then: I’m making the decision to only title this here and post it to private groups on Facebook. Because it might be one that gets competition-ed or journal’d. BUT KNOW THIS: I wrote a poem. Thank you. Over & out. #creativewriting #NaPoWriMo #poem #Writing

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NaPoWriMo 4.11: Looking Through the Patio Doors at Dusk, April 2016

Apr 11, 2016
1 min

NaPoWriMo 4.11: Looking Through the Patio Doors at Dusk, April 2016

“In a terracotta pot, day-/glo plastic pegs cling to the edge…” I liked the NaPoWriMo prompt today – the idea of the last, abstracted line in an otherwise concretely descriptive poem is really useful as an approach…Here’s mine: Looking Through the Patio Doors at Dusk, April 2016 On the ledge by the fence the rosemary is thin the lavender long-unfragranced all just pricey twigs.In a terracotta pot, day- glo pegs cling to the edge, some snapped, some twisted. A lantern with st

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NaPoWriMo 4.9: Drag Queen Bingo

Apr 11, 2016
1 min

NaPoWriMo 4.9: Drag Queen Bingo

Well then: I’ve written something based on Drag Queen Bingo on Saturday night. But I’ve decided it’s probably too offensive to put on here (such is the joy of Drag humour). The poem takes the form of a Bingo Card, of course – with some very interesting rhymes (some adapted from the calls, some entirely new). I might spruce it up to submit it, should the right publication arise… The numbers on the card were as follows – so I set you the challenge of coming up with your own ris

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NaPoWriMo 4.8: Operation

Apr 8, 2016
1 min

NaPoWriMo 4.8: Operation

The skill game where you’re the doctor! A tritina, from yesterday’s prompt, and without an introduction… **NB Taken this one down as I might well tweak and submit it around** #creativewriting #operation #medicine #POETRY #poem #NaPoWriMo

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