It has been a good year for me, in regards to my poetry. I feel as though my work has continued to improve, and the number of acceptances I’ve received from publications has helped my confidence and willingness to continue.
In light of this, I’ve been trying to put together a simple website to act as something of a portfolio. It can be found here, for now: http://bnorris12345.wix.com/benjaminnorrispoetry although this obviously isn’t the finished site.
I’m delighted and honoured to be included in this important and ambitious project, organised by the Human Rights Commission and including work by leading poets from around the world.
Written for Zymbol Magazine, read by Benjamin Norris (and Anthoine).
First video.
1.
The heat in here stays constant, netted
kept unmoving, billowed down.
Down all, all the leaves to
lethargic rubbered limbs – I can only
ascertain who comes or goes by read-
-ing the peaks in this dim but varied
show of slanting white-wet lights
2.
wrought iron corridors
this swelling, lead crystal-
-ised sweat rises and
congregates in old fields
obese lungs, panting.
A stamen paralyzes the
hacking of mists. Some-
where, damp leaves
a shattering.
3.
We grow inside houses.
It may be easier
to find us – look inside
there’s a space where you can see
a battle with the urge
to simply orbit one another
swinging around a larger mass
we haven’t found a word for
yet. The days drop off,
we spend one moment
seeking ways to wound,
the next lost in grasses with
blades splitting skies, and these
useless links are what birth us
to ensure we never really move
4.
You spoke of long-gloved hands: you claim to not
see where the climbers stretch to, only spaces:
the leaves are powder. Distance swells, unorganic
a beating through the lead-lined frames: afterthoughts
assume your shape: you remember that before we burst
husks, there was a minute when we were not
5.
What happened here?
the window lining pulled away – just
an inch, a curve allowing
different airs
to penetrate
the sticky mass, the bulb
heaving with humidity
so all clamour to the splitting
shock grows out from the glass –
the vapour’s fit for breathing
the vapour’s fit for breathing
though fast closed up again:
enthusiasm soon resembles
panic: grassy hysteria gums
and tramples underfoot while
Here returns a sky of broken clay pots clamouring for my attention amid the memories of snow. Our prayers for a crack in the clouds above answer me in realisations that all of these are moving south, and soon you will see them too. A new bird breaks my sight.
Summers
A pause chased my lip: it seems you weigh your heat with consequence when all has bloomed, and starts to dry:
you said something else too: you chose to remove the sunlight on your tongue, that thing which formed a family, you pulled us close:
still life streams and we become you: an image, too: there were once days like this – our mouths moved and music came:
Autumns
these feet, bridging
something gone and something not so –
all roots return. The trees do their trick,
pretending to die.
Days to come, unseen, we get on our knees and curl
before the mists descend with all their clatter.
Winters
January slid through her fingers, weeks ago. Soon there was