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CALEB PARKIN

Poetry. Play. Possibilities.

A Recipe for Martian Happiness

Aug 4, 2017
2 min

A Recipe for Martian Happiness

Marvin could do with a bit of this recipe, I reckon. Last Thursday 27th July, I compered an event as part of at-Bristol’s Festival of What If-? As part of the evening – with its excellent provocations on the theme of living on Mars – I crowd-sourced a poem: A Recipe for Martian Happiness. That poem is now disappeared forever (though someone might have been filming it on their phone, I think) – but I’ve used the components to generate another… **NB contains a single, heroicall

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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 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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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 4.22: 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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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 4.13: 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 4.8: 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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NaPoWriMo 2015.3: My Fellow Ministers

Apr 4, 2015
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2015.3: My Fellow Ministers

My Fellow Ministers? Day three’s poem, which I didn’t get around to yesterday…I’ve had a go at a sort of mixed-metaphor vaguely-political poem, after the Leaders’ Debate on Thursday, with the ‘Fourteener’ 14-syllable form. It starts with a little quote from The Tempest that had been bouncing around my head, for some reason, before going on to do something with the image of churches in scaffolding. I don’t know why and I’m not sure it works. It’s sort of a call to arms to vote

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2.28: Big Deal

Apr 28, 2014
1 min

2.28: Big Deal

The Sloth: A Big Deal (for real) Here’s my news story-based poem (using pretty much just words from the article itself). The story was from the BBC Science & Environment site and you can read it here and concerns new discoveries about the energy-saving anatomy of sloths. So I felt any sloth poem demanded to be quite short and minimal. And noticed the scientists had used the phrase ‘Big Deal’ twice. Which, for an animal so energy-conscious – many things must be… Big Deal There

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NaPoWriMo 2.24: Skag-Afforder

Apr 24, 2014
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2.24: Skag-Afforder

“Egg raining aloe vera” I loved doing the homophonic translation last year – which produced this vulgar thing from a Danish poem. As I seemed to do well with Nordic languages I don’t know, this year I ventured to Iceland and vandalised this poem into English. It is, of course, utterly ridiculous and – like last year – quite vulgar. This probably says something about the juvenile translation words, lurking in my subconscious, but I’m OK with that. No, I don’t think it has much

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NaPoWriMo 2.21: Low Angle – a ‘New York’ poem…?

Apr 23, 2014
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2.21: Low Angle – a ‘New York’ poem…?

Maybe that’s how New York would want it: rude and random. I’m not sure – but here it is, anyway: Low Angle Monday 21st April, 17.59. ‘The moon is waning gibbous. There is no interesting historical fact for today.’ Your Suzuki engine is stuck in slow reverse while you systematically, starting at A, one-way sext your contacts. Jonny Cash rumbles on, dead: ‘I hung my head, I hung my head, I hurt myself’. A one track mind one minute, ‘We’ll meet again’ the next. Fuck you, Japan,

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NaPoWriMo 2.20: Sparse

Apr 20, 2014
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2.20: Sparse

Caught up! Here’s my take on the shell name, ‘The Sparse Dove’…This one was rather fun to write. Sparse I realise there’s a lot riding on these delicate feathers, but what few of you get – well, those few that are left – is how hard it is to remain this pure, white and pristine during a global apocalypse. It’s quite a few furlongs across the flotsam and jetsam of what you fondly thought of as civilisation. (That’s not to mention those without arks, without wings this untainte

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NaPoWriMo 2.19: Stopping Above Huddersfield on a Sunny Afternoon

Apr 20, 2014
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2.19: Stopping Above Huddersfield on a Sunny Afternoon

The view from Castle Hill above Huddersfield Here’s my rubaiyat (though I think I lost the rhyme scheme in the last two stanzas – gah!), inspired by how sound carries on a bright day, above an urban setting…The title is a nod, of course, to the Robert Frost poem mentioned on the NaPoWriMo site. Stopping Above Huddersfield on a Sunny Afternoon From the great lawn below, sounds shine up: each dandelion instant, each buttercup that dots the afternoon, this warm air’s stave wi

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NaPoWriMo 2.18: Good Friday 2009

Apr 20, 2014
1 min

NaPoWriMo 2.18: Good Friday 2009

a tall empty form... Something that started as a sort of ‘mock poem’ but I thought I’d turn it into a slightly less mock-poem…Based on a little moment five years ago: Good Friday, 2009 I’ll straighten my tie, press the shaking red icon to hang up, glide a straight line towards the light coming through the door. It will knock twice only – slowly, precisely. A back-lit cut-out, a tall empty form: “Do you want any fish?” he’ll enquire. “I’m sorry,” I’ll reply, “this i

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NaPoWriMo 2.16: Pet Shop Boy

Apr 17, 2014
2 min

NaPoWriMo 2.16: Pet Shop Boy

“She’s the actual one, you know, who hooted through the hall of Hogwarts. In the film. Really.” Up to Wednesday! The prompt/challenge was to write a ten line poem in which every line is a lie. Here’s my poem, which seems to be part of the same ‘range’ of weird shopkeepers as last year’s The Pies of Awareness (a sinister existential baker) or this year’s A Charm Against Losing It As Spoken by Debonair Metapharmasista Crisby LeFross (who is, as it sounds, an eccentric pharmacis

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NaPoWriMo 2.7: Love Song of the Goblin

Apr 8, 2014
2 min

NaPoWriMo 2.7: Love Song of the Goblin

The dream home of Tomorrow, in which you might find the Goblin… It’s a two-poem day as my brain was too fried yesterday…The other (today’s) will appear later. So, catching up with yesterday’s prompt to write a love poem to a thing, here’s my offering. It ended up quite long, so if you can stick it out – thank you, there is a ‘pay off’ and I appreciate any constructive suggestions for cuts or other edits! 🙂 Love Song of the Goblin Such Integration: where before, we poor human

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