Poetry Youth: Poetry Campus

Water Cycle: Helen Long

vapours of the voice
formation and reflection
understanding parcels crystallise

kaleidoscopic patterns
of milieu emerge
memories and faith its self repeats

sustainable inconstancy
as particles spin partners
receptors to be tickled in the flux

the cloud is non material
and mounting in tactility
It lets steam

Rains sovereignless in sight
Sipping a lightning strike

Helen Long: Poet in Residence at the 3rd London Poetry Festival 2007

Poetry Youth is the Youth voice organ of the London Poetry Festival that will focus its works in the following areas:

Primary School Children

Working with primary schools, school teachers and parents/guardians in publishing the best children's poetry being written in London and UK schools and taking the Festival to at least  2 primary schools in London at the 6th London Poetry Festival before the schools break for summer holiday. And at the same time promote works of young and emerging poets' works who write for children.

Secondary School Youth

Working with secondary schools, school teachers and parents/guardians in publishing the best poetry being written by the secondary school youth in London and UK schools and taking the Festival to at least in 2 secondary schools in London at the 6th London Poetry Festival 2010 before the schools break for summer holiday.

Uniyouth

To seek, identify and publish poetry written by the youth attending all UK universities and make one London University a London Poetry Festival University Campus and hold a campus London Poetry Festival event where Uniyouth poets will perform their works.

Youth Work Settings

To work with the Youth Services of maintained, voluntary and faith based youth settings and the youth they work with and bring the best poetry written by the young people into the London Poetry Festival and have a London Youth Setting to hold a Festival event in 2010

Youth Campus

And all the above is going to be housed in the format of The London Poetry Festival Online publication Youth Campus that will publish poetry of all these young poets and poets who write for young people.

Poetry Youth Poetry Campus Team

This is a small team of volunteers who will work with the whole Festival Team in promoting the works of the Festival. Poetry Youth and Poetry Campus will have two members:

Kathleen Van Geete: Poetry Youth Co-ordinator

Poetry Campus Editor: Soon to take office.

To make primary contact with this team please write to contact@londonpoetryfestival.com

You Breathe: Briony Dennis
 

I breathe,
milky and warm, I take it in.
It feels like home.

The way that you need to be held—
not just held but contained, as if you still were.
You breathe,
insecure little gusts of reproach are you close enough?

I look
you are not fragile—as you look
defiantly existing.
You are at home in this chaos of worry and work.


After nights and nights on fast forward, I realise you will continue to breathe.
So I breathe
new warmth, perfumed with everything of you…
it is beyond description, I cannot try to…

Slowly you begin to unfurl
testing each day suspiciously, then you realise slowly
very slowly
all is as it should be—
except are you close enough?

I am humbled, ashamed that I could forget
the simplest pleasures,
a hand opening and closing
a chest rising and falling.

I breathe
because you breathe.

Briony Dennis: Poet in Residence at the 3rd London Poetry Festival 2007

 

Key: Malgorzata Kitowski:

In fragments and mystery they gathered, murmuring
of a fissure breaking in and out, tearing eclipses.
Dice clack in the ludo-cup; deciduous hide peels back.

The name I repeat I repeat, the name I repeat
took me close to the light, so close
it singed the edges of my dream -
twisting wire into a silhouette and pinbursting eyes.

On pavements beige they gathered, whispering
of consuming chronology, alphabets and analogies of shapes.
The dice are already loaded yet we rattle-mix with fingers crossed.

The percussionist hurriedly moves about:
drums, glockenspiel (with two different kinds of stick), triangle.
Three notes in quick succession; trombone and violin. Gong.
Adagio. Moderato. Fonts of music dance.
Consciousness was the art of connecting, once.

In dreams and days they gathered, singing
of the game of transparency untuning the earth
in mirth and music, surrendering to the new cuneiform.

We know this draught of time's rude hand and hymnody
because we have been a conversation,
disclosing ourselves to a realm where the words were
suddenly spoken, there, free in the air
as if they were solid metal blocks of print,
then bronze pagodas, then guardians, then cutlery,
then water and lung and drowning.

This must be read in the dark, next the speech burned.
This must be read to no audience.

You turn the door, the key remains.
You turn the locks, you turn the wall,
You turn the handle, the key remains.

Malgorzata Kitowski: Poet in Residence at the 2nd London Poetry Festival 2006