January by William Carlos Williams

Again I reply to the triple winds
running chromatic fifths of derision
outside my window:
Play louder.
You will not succeed. I am
bound more to my sentences
the more you batter at me
to follow you.
And the wind,
as before, fingers perfectly
its derisive music.

The year kicked off with the poem Midlands Kids by Jane Commane. This took me back to my home town of Coventry where we ‘grew up on the back seats of the long-gone marques of British manufacturing‘ and those who worked in their factories didn’t end up with jobs for life and  vanished from view like ‘the legendary square steering wheel of a paintshop-fresh Allegro.’ (more…)