Jinny Fisher lives in Somerset and is a member of Taunton’s Juncture 25 and Wells Fountain Poets. Her poems have been published in The Interpreter’s House, Under the Radar, The Broadsheet and Prole. She also gained Highly Commended in York Mix Competition and 2nd Prize in Interpreter’s House Competition (2016).
Henry’s Mum was making tea
when the Headmaster telephoned:
‘There’s been an accident in Biology –
I’m afraid your son’s been cloned.
‘We wouldn’t normally bother you
(except in case of disease)
but from a practical point of view,
we’re concerned about the fees.’
Henry’s Mum became quite grim,
and her voice was filled with dread.
‘How will I cope with two like him?’
‘It’s … worse than that,’ he said,
‘We didn’t notice what was wrong
till it was far too late.
You began today with just one son,
but you finished it with eight.’
Next morning there was quite a crop:
thirty-two from just one mould,
and when the process finally stopped,
five hundred and twelve, all told.
After that appalling day,
the school went to the wall.
The other pupils moved away,
so they renamed it Henry Hall.
Group activities in class
suffered less from indecision,
but games became a total farce:
they all played the same position.
Exam results were uniform,
both first time and re-takes.
They stuck to a consistent norm,
including the mistakes.
Careers were trivial to fix:
some took command of tanks,
a few went into politics,
the rest into merchant banks.
And Henry’s Mum still makes the tea,
when called on by a son,
each time wondering wistfully
if he’s the proper one.
(Originally published in Every Day Poets)
Jonathan Pinnock runs this place.
Choose any animal, the teacher said,
maybe one you don’t like
and listen to his point of view.
Mary chose a rat, Fred a spider,
Jack a duck-billed platypus
but I thought of the rudest word I knew
and picked a dung beetle
not because I don’t like them
but so I could say poo.
Miss wasn’t amused and sent me
to stand outside the door
where there was nothing to do
so I pulled faces at the others
when her back was turned.
Jack laughed. She threw him out too.
We listed animals we didn’t like:
crocodiles, bulls, woodlice, sharks,
wasps, rhinos, the kangaroo.
I said ‘What about seagulls
when they snatch your chips?’
and Jack said ‘What about you?’
So I said he was an ape anyway
like the king of the swingers.
He belonged in a zoo.
But just then the head walked by,
looked in at the class writing poems,
said ‘What have you been up to?’
So Jack looked a litle bit sheepish
and I said ‘We’ve been acting daft.’
And he said ‘So what should you do?’
And I said ‘Say sorry to miss, Sir’
and Jack said ‘Not do it again’
and he said ‘Gentlemen, after you,’
and opened the door to the classroom
where Jack managed two lines about seagulls
and I did a dead good haiku.
Carole Bromley lives in York where she is the stanza rep and runs poetry surgeries. Winner of a number of first prizes including the Bridport. Two collections with Smith/Doorstop, the most recent being The Stonegate Devil, October 2015.
And we’re almost ready to go. I spent this morning going through submissions and we seem to have a rather splendid and varied programme for you coming up, starting on May 1st. There will be free verse and rhymes, along with a triolet and a villanelle, and the whole spectrum of humour will be explored, including one or two of the dodgier fringes.
The standard of submissions was remarkably high and I had no problem in filling the schedule. It will, of course, be interesting to see if the readership of the site agree with me, and I shall be watching the star ratings with interest.
I hope that all the poets I suggested tweaks to will forgive my impudence. I did feel rather like Robert Webb’s character here at times:
See you all on Sunday.
Well, this is all very gratifying. We’ve been in business for less than a week and we already have a substantial number of excellent submissions. So here’s the plan. I’m going to start publishing poems on May 1st. On present form, it looks like we can afford to be a bit more ambitious than my original idea of a weekly poem and go for a daily poem instead. Some time next week I’ll take a look at what we’ve got and start sending out acceptances and rejections, before deciding on a running order.
One thing that has come up is the question of whether your editor is permitted to publish any of his own stuff here. I wasn’t intending to do so, because conventionally editors don’t do that. However, one or two people on Twitter suggested that I might put one or two up, just to give an idea of the kind of thing I’m looking for. I’d be interested to read anyone’s views on this.
Put the date in your diaries, anyway: Spilling Cocoa will go live on Sunday May 1st. Get ready with your Twitters and Facebooks!
And in the meantime, if there’s anything you fancy submitting, get in there now while there’s still room.
A week or so ago I wrote a poem – the first one I’d written for over a year, as it happens. Like most of my poems, it had a vaguely humorous slant, although – initially at least – it didn’t rhyme or have any sort of regular metre. Then I took a look at it and thought that a spot of rhyme and metre wouldn’t actually go amiss, and I came up with something that I felt worked pretty well. I could read that out in one of the local folk clubs where I sometimes bag a floor spot and it would probably get a few laughs.
But first, I thought it would be nice to get it published somewhere. I like having stuff published by someone else, because it means that I’ve managed to smuggle it past a gatekeeper. I know it’s not just me who thinks it has merit.
However, I struggled to think who might publish this one. The late, much-lamented Every Day Poets would certainly have given it consideration. The Pygmy Giant might also have taken a look, but they’re not taking poetry any more. But I couldn’t really think of anyone else.
Round about the same time, I was watching in admiration as Brian Bilston’s Unbound campaign was roaring to its triumphant end and I wondered which poetry magazine might have published his stuff. I’m not claiming any parity of talent, by the way – BB is, quite frankly, a God among poets. The only thing we have remotely in common is that (I think) we both prioritise humour in our work.
At this point, I was going to go off on a rant about how poetry (and, probably, the whole literary establishment) has a problem with humour, but I realised that I was going to end up exposing myself to endless arguments about the nature of comedy (“What about so-and-so? We published a comic poem by him once” “Well, I didn’t think it was funny”) and I had a life to get on with.
So.
TL;DR I’ve set up this new site as a place to publish humorous poetry. Read the guidelines and send me your best stuff. Then tell the whole world about it. This is just the beginning.
Jonathan Pinnock (ed)
