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Underground > Creation >

Anthologised

12:39 / 16.11.01

Am doing work-style things (you don't want to know, I assure you) with a book of poems and the titles are EXECRABLE.

Being a Student.
Turning Sixteen.
Sweet Sixteen.
A Woman's Work.
Thirteen.
For an Unborn Baby.
A Happy Childhood.
Unravelling.

And so on... can you guess what it is yet? Yes, an anthology of women's poetry. And moreover, you can tell exactly what the pomes are about from the titles.

So: titles of poems for a thematic anthology. Off you go.

Regrettable Juvenilia

13:09 / 16.11.01

Mud
Gas
Cannons
The Sound Of The Cannons
Ardenne
Christmas Day
Snow On Trenches
Good Old Tommy
We Are The 43rd Light-armoured Dragoons
For Our King
Rat-A-Tat-TAT!
Cannons In May
One For Fritz
Rat-A-Tat-TAT-TAT-TAT!
The Bombs
The Sound Of The Bombs
Flanders
I Have No Legs Or Penis But I Still Love My Country

[ 16-11-2001: Message edited by: Flyboy ]

13:19 / 16.11.01

Unconsolable
Morpheus's Tears
Black Velvet
Your Spiderweb
Death and the Mavens
Black Bird
The Dark Abyss
The Black Embrace
My Black Parasol
I Hurt Myself
Beautiful Scars
The Smell of Clove Cigarettes
Delerium's Song
Shadows of the Past

13:20 / 16.11.01

Flyboy, that was fucking genius

13:37 / 16.11.01

Across A Room
The First Date
Your Place Or Mine?
Fireworks
On The Common We Found So Much In Common
Flat-hunting
So, Young Man, What Are Your Prospects?
A Ring on her Finger, A Ring on Mine
All Inclusive
The Patter of Tiny Feet
First Words
The School Runl
Sorry Love, I'm A Bit Tired
Working Late
Of Course There's No-one Else - When Do I Have The Time?
Look, It's Not You, It's Me
I'm Sure That Toploader CD Was Mine

14:47 / 16.11.01

Irony is golden
Now we are funny
Superiority cha cha
More equal
Paternalism in sheep's clothing
What is art
This is my truth, yours is inferior but valid
Wittier if you've read Nietsche
False consciousness is your problem
Enlightenment in one body
101 is all I need
Love me pious

Whisky Priestess

15:02 / 16.11.01

One Day My Prince Will Come
Behind the Bike Sheds
Trembling Uncertainty
My First Wank
Fucking Fun
Fucking Off
Trade
Glory to the Glory Holes
My Best Friend Falls in Love with Me
Shopping And Fisting
I Love your Shoes
My Best Friend Falls in Love with Me Again
Solipsism is So Simple
On being self-righteous
On being right
On being sensitive
Nobody understands me (except Oscar and he's dead)
Fisting and Crying
It's an Issue, but I see it more as a Gravy Train
Oh my God I can't believe what she's wearing
My Night with Veg (and honey-glazed lamb)
In Which I write a Trendy West-End Play Without Really Trying
My Legions of Adoring Jailbait Groupies Hell
Cocks and Canapes
In Which I Finally write a half-decent Play by dint of Trying a Bit Harder

Clue: it's by one particular person - more of a collection than an anthology)

15:05 / 16.11.01

Um... Ernie Wise?

Whisky Priestess

15:59 / 16.11.01

Nice try Sax. Keep going. In the mean time:

Now We Are Forty-Six
Ode to an Undescended Testicle
Girl on a Train (Will Never Be Mine)
Putting on Weight
Why am I so bad at Squash?
She wants me (she knows she does)
Creative Writing Courses
How to Write a Poem
Going Bald
What's wrong with Y-fronts?
Literary parties
Smoked Salmon with Salman
OUP are a Bunch of Bastards
Impotence
Staring out of the window
Why can't I get a proper job?
Sitting at home in a cardigan (isn't all it's cracked up to be)
Alimony (is a wonderful name for a girl)
Visitation Rights
Maudlin Songs 1-56
Premature ejaculation
Hairy Back Blues
I love you for your mind, darling
Nasty Porn Wrist-ache blues
Self-pity (is feeling sorry for someone you love)

21:51 / 20.11.01

The first one isn't that Ravenhill bloke, is it?

Right, my effort - see if you can guess who's being hinted at here:

The English are All Bastards
I Printed This Myself
The Scottish Are All Bastards
Five-hundred Different Typefaces
Leather and Literature
The Night of a Million Fonts
The Upper Class are Bastards
Look, It's Me, I'm In The Book
The Working Class Are Bastards
I Know More About Socialism Than Anyone Else In The World
The Middle Class Are Bastards
Leather Apocalypse
Byron and Ball-gags
Artists Are Bastards
Who Are You Again?
Writers Are Bastards
Greetin' & Boakin'
Slang You Don't Get
God Is A Bastard
Bondage Sonnets 1-69
I Am A Bastard

Whisky Priestess

13:00 / 21.11.01

Irvine Welsh?

or is it Patience Strong?

11:27 / 22.11.01

It is...

the actually rather good Alasdair Gray. Just lampooning the fact that he tends to use the same tropes in all his books, really.

ONLY NICE THINGS

12:22 / 22.11.01

quote:Originally posted by Whisky Priestess:
Nice try Sax. Keep going. In the mean time:

Now We Are Forty-Six
Ode to an Undescended Testicle
Girl on a Train (Will Never Be Mine)
Putting on Weight
Why am I so bad at Squash?
She wants me (she knows she does)
Creative Writing Courses
How to Write a Poem
Going Bald
What's wrong with Y-fronts?
Literary parties
Smoked Salmon with Salman
OUP are a Bunch of Bastards
Impotence
Staring out of the window
Why can't I get a proper job?
Sitting at home in a cardigan (isn't all it's cracked up to be)
Alimony (is a wonderful name for a girl)
Visitation Rights
Maudlin Songs 1-56
Premature ejaculation
Hairy Back Blues
I love you for your mind, darling
Nasty Porn Wrist-ache blues
Self-pity (is feeling sorry for someone you love)

Hugo Williams. Obviously.

Mud
More Mud
A pig's skull
Let's skip the lecture and go blackberrying
Head like a loaf, heart like an oven
Bleeding face? Bleeding Hell?
Lay
Betray
A sheep's skull with a dog's cock in one of the eye sockets.
Innocent Poem about dolphins for children.
My cock, not her face.
An ecstasy of fumbling.
It's not my fault, it is my fox.
Always the Garfunkel.
God bless you ma'am.

[ 22-11-2001: Message edited by: The Haus of I.Ds ]

12:39 / 22.11.01

Em . . . got to be Ted Hughes, surely?
And I don't know about Hugo Williams (who he?) but the self-pitying midlifecrisis list sounds like most of the fortysomething male poets I've bothered to read. Which is why I don't bother to read them any more.

A little e.p. of poetry from the imitator of a particular female poet:

Moon Womb
Thoughts of Death
Fuck me, Father
Resentment
I'd take Prozac, but it would Compromise my Creativity
Uterine Dreams
I think I Left the Oven On
Womynhood
Ted's Dead (and was Rubbish in Bed)

NB KIt-Cat - are the poems execrable as well? Can you post the worst one so that we can all point and laugh?

Rant: I deplore the ghettoisation of women's poetry. Any special pleading is ultimately detrimental to the quality of the work accepted. Positive discrimination is not right and not necessary. It's such a patronising pat on the head for the little ladies, and often results in small publishers printing crap.

What about Carol Ann Duffy? UA Fanthorpe? Satyamurti, Binta Breeze, Selima Hill? It's not like women are under-represented in poetry these days.

12:07 / 23.11.01

Seamus Heaney and Sylvia Plath?