Alan Bergman – d. July 27th 2025

The lyricist's legerdemain: to conspire
with the senses, to summon rhyme
to do the job of memory, to light a fire,
to be the voice heard above the choir,
words jangling, to fix in us a place, a time. 

Read about Alan (and Marilyn) Bergman here

Tom Lehrer – d. July 26th 2025

There’s comedy and parody and levity and melody,
alacrity, sagacity and mockery and repartee,
There’s plenty of absurdists and they come at ten-a-penny.
There may be one as sharp as him but I can’t think of any.

Read about Tom Lehrer here

Cleo Laine – d. July 24th 2025

The band are asking after you,
afraid they might taste of vanilla
without your drizzle of hot honey,
that easy contralto into glissando
up through four octaves to a trill
like an insistent lover’s tongue.

Read about Cleo Laine here

Hulk Hogan – d. July 24th 2025

Maybe this was a kind of art:
brutality as a trompe l’oeil,
muscle tears and dislocations
mere Grand Guignol. You were
the bronzed heel/hero dying of
surprise in every bout, only
to be resurrected as a cartoon.

Reda about Hulk Hogan here

Ozzy Osbourne – d. July 22nd 2025

I knew a man made of iron,
born from a cauldron of riffs,
who duetted with the Devil.
Happiness he could not feel;
he breathed sulphur, and
when he bled, he bled metal. 

Read about Ozzy Osbourne here

Kenneth Calman – d. July 21st 2025

Sometimes science
takes a scalpel to itself,
yields its uncertainties,
admits the things
it does not yet know:
what dreams are for,
where poems come from,
how the heart
chooses its disguise.

Read about Kenneth Calman here

Connie Francis – d. July 16th 2025

Among my souvenirs,
and they are few, is an ideal:
my swoonsome parents
queuing outside The Broadway,
their love as pure as your voice.
They, like you, had their day;
now I, over the years, must pay.

Read about Connie Francis here

Shunsaku Tamiya – d. July 11th 2025

I pressed the pieces of my life from a sprue,
but couldn’t hold them in place without glue.
It was never the same as the picture on the lid.
I tried to finish what I started; I never did. 

Read about Shunsaku Tamiya here

David Kaff – d. July 11th 2025

After the power chords of youth,
the follow spot settles on me,
more than half way through
my brief solo, spaced out
and smiling, finally having
a    good    time    all    the    time.

Read about David Kaff here

Norman Tebbit – d. July 7th 2025

I took to my father’s bicycle today,
to search for the sleeping Grandees
of Little England, those cadaverous
few, still mumbling articles of faith
in their deathless slumber, still
wondering why we cannot forgive.

Read about Norman Tebbit here

Luís Jardim– d. July 4th 2025

Beyond the core of the band
are curious ornamentations
of conga and clave, supple
fingers picking out a pulse in a
register somewhere between
heartbeat and wingbeat.

Read about Luis Jardim here

Michael Madsen – d. July 3rd 2025

When a man has eyes so narrow

that you cannot tell their colour,

when a dog barks in the alley

and it sounds like a gun, when

he asks you ‘what did you say?’

and you know they heard you:

Something’s going to happen,

isn’t it?

Read about Michael Madsen here

Gerald Harper – d. July 2nd 2025

The actor is plucked from real life,
lifted from one time and dropped
into another. Each performance
is a frozen hour, each character
a mere imitation of life in 625 lines.

Read about Gerald Harper here

Jimmy Swaggart – d. July 1st 2025

Saints will claim they were born
between torrid tent revival and
threadbare motel. Sinners look
so small from the pulpit, willing
to pay for an absolution, even
a hollow fraudster’s blessing.

Read about Jimmy Swaggart here

Sandy Gall – d. June 29th 2025

These are tonight’s headlines:
Mau-Mau, Kabul, Kampala, Saigon,
burning vehicles on the skyline.
Not all copy respects deadlines;
sometimes we need to hang on
for straight words from the frontline.

Read about Sandy Gall here

Lalo Schifrin – d. June 26th 2025

Your score is the sputtering fuse,
the scream of rubber on boulevard,
Broadsword crackling on the radio,
the .357 magnum emptying into my
imagination, chamber by chamber.

Read about Lalo Schifrin here

Wincey Willis – d. December 19th 2024

It’s morning, and here is sunshine, or,
because this is changeable England,
showers turning to cats-and-dogs,
remaining cloudy later on. Weather
does not follow its own forecasts,
and we must all make our own rain.

Read about Wincey Willis here

Brian Wilson – d. June 11th 2025

Followed a trail of footprints along the
beach today. I could hear music far out
in the depths; a siren with hair of gold,
calling me to follow to a place that few
could ever go, not waving but singing.

Read about Brian Wilson here

Sly Stone – d. June 9th 2025

Who perfected the funk? I think I know;
a stoned prince high on his own supply
of uncut soul, wearing euphoria as a robe.
Here you come with mud in your veins;
thank you (falettinme dance again).

Read about Sly Stone here

Frederick Forsyth – d. June 9th 2025

I found this poem in a dead man’s papers
beside a photo of my credulous teenage alias,
too young to uncover your conspiracy of word
and shadow. I filed it away, marking it Eyes Only,
not suspecting those eyes would be mine.

Read about Frederick Forsyth here