Andy Skitt's Poetry and Poetry Writing

I've been writing and performing poetry for about 20 years. Before I got into poetry I wrote a few plays and started fewer novels. The plays got performed but the novels never got finished. The poems mostly have a strong narrative running through them, I like to tell stories, or at least, part of a story. There aren't any poems here about daffodils or the russet colours of autumn.

 Many of the poems on these pages were published in my second collection Untepid Days. This is available from the publisher or even from amazon.co.uk if you look hard enough! My first collection After the Jazz Age is now so out of print I don't think even I have a copy.

So have a read of some poems and I hope you enjoy them. If you have any comments then visit the Guestbook and leave me a message.

                                                                     Artwork by Louisa Harvey

Untepid Days - Published by Flarestack Publishing.                     (See contact page)

ISBN - 1 900397 49 8

Untepid days 

 

she brought him back to life

one minute he was leaning on the pier rail

and the next …

              sand in his ear

wet clothes clinging to him

and her breath in his lungs

 

she brought him back to life

   visited him on the piss-smelling ward

offered to feed his cats

drove him home

            opened up the windows

let the new air in

 

she brought him back to life

  shared her bed

held him until the sun

            sent them to work

cooked exotic suppers

   then led him outside to eat

 

she brought him back to life

taught him about where

           passion lies

bumped him out of his tepidity

  asked him if he believed in angels

or fate or coincidence

 

she brought him back to life

          released him

ensured he could balance

  on the path of his history

and accept where it would meander

into all those other days

                                               (from Untepid Days)

The trouble with Mary 

 

Using the stainless steel spade

she gave me two Christmases ago

 

I scrape off the leaf mulch

and wonder about filling a bin liner or two,

 

something organic for the borders,

but I realise that the only black bags

 

in the boot,

are duck-taped around her,

 

and anyway

the sun has begun to do things

 

pre-dawn-like

to this forested sky.

 

So I shovel,

sweat,

 

take off my anorak and worry

about the oddballs,

 

those early morning dog walkers

or twitchers with a tip-off

 

and hope that I’m deep enough

in undergrowth and earth.

 

I stop when the roots make me cuss

then drag out the polythene chrysalis,

 

tumble it into the  hole

and try to think of an appropriate benediction,

 

but mutter something

about Cleethorpes instead.

 

I push back the soil,

scatter leaves, move logs,

 

step aside, half smile

and shudder.

                                       (from Untepid Days)

Jewellery

 

Apart from the ones God gave her –

she had twelve holes in her body

 

If she stood

naked in the sunshine

 
she would sparkle

in unexpected places

 

Occasionally

 

when she turned in her sleep

she would jingle

 

waking him

from feathered dreams

 

so he’d try to blink

away darkness

 

and pray for moonbeams

 

On their wedding night

she showed him number thirteen

 

which he kissed


feeling the cool titanium

against honeymoon flesh                                                                                                               
 

(Obsessed with Pipework)

(And also read on the 4th Plinth by Carolyn Brooke on 31st July 2009)