of your automatic elegy kettle,
read by a gramophonic mouse
as six hearse-tricycles wheel
you to the musical incinerator.
Rest in peace, and axle grease.
Thursday 21 December 2023
Wilf Lunn – d. December 13th 2023
of your automatic elegy kettle,
read by a gramophonic mouse
as six hearse-tricycles wheel
you to the musical incinerator.
Rest in peace, and axle grease.
Ryan O’Neal – d. December 8th 2023
it would seem, but maybe a story
of a handsome lead who loses
everything he is except his looks,
but never has to say he is sorry.
Thursday 7 December 2023
Sheila Templeton - d. November 26th 2023
wi thunner an honey,
wrocht wi a giggle
and a tear in thi een.
Ye had a Makar’s haund
an a fechter’s hert.
Benjamin Zephaniah – d. December 7th 2023
of language are never just white/
black. To read is to understand,
to understand is to change. Culture
breathed you in, breathed light
out; you were the pen in its hand.
Denny Laine – d. December 5th 2023
the canon of overlooked songs
as if they were all number one. Now
I wonder: didn’t we already say
goodbye? You hung around so long,
but life is blue; here a while, gone now.
Glenys Kinnock – d. December 3rd 2023
gweithredoedd da a wneir o'r golwg
Nid yw'r chwith yn golygu gadael ar ôl,
ac yn iawn yw'r hyn y gwyddoch sy'n iawn.
Beyond dogma is conviction
and good deeds done out of sight.
Left does not mean left behind,
and right is what you know is right.
Read about Glenys Kinnock here
Saturday 2 December 2023
Brigit Forsyth – d. December 1st 2023
in every blighted neighbourhood,
prim and precious,
studies of love strained into dishes
of cold disapproval,
choosing husbands as if choosing
a pair of curtains.
John Byrne – d. November 30th 2023
writes likenesses of people too large
to be inventions. He looks down on the
city looking back up at him, dancing
with colour while black and white sleep.
Shane MacGowan – d. November 30th 2023
toothless, leathered but lucid,
singing about the ould country,
two shots of punk and one of poetry,
new songs for old men, all going
where streams of whiskey are flowing.
Henry Kissinger – d. November 29th 2023
who would greet you? Paddy fields
stagnate, despots toy with brittle
peace and nothing’s really healed.
Rivalries of birds gather above,
unsure if you are hawk, or dove.
Terry Venables – d. November 25th 2023
than wheeling celebration. Like the days,
it rolls past, rattles obstinate posts, leaves us
out in the semis, and out of the door.
Wednesday 22 November 2023
Joss Ackland – d. November 19th 2023
like an articulated lorry, resonant
in its bulk, commanding the ear
and eye to follow as it swallows
the stage, the line, the language.
Frank Borman – d. November 7th 2023
brightest blessing; to be condemned
to perpetual low orbit, suspended
between the moon’s dead orb and
the rising halo of the good Earth.
David Berglas – d. November 3rd 2023
the pack one last time, holds
the illusion of life in his hand.
Deck spills a diamond: the ace.
Was this the card you chose?
Wednesday 25 October 2023
Richard Roundtree - d. October 24th 2023
that won't cop out and won't be
nothin but badass. You're uptown,
kickin on a door on a ghetto backlot,
a door into consciousness and style.
You're gonna have to close it yourself.
Bill Kenwright - d. October 23rd 2023
others build the stage, seed
the pitch, lead the songs, feed
their passions, do something
with a dream, and let it breed.
Bobby Charlton - d. October 21st 2023
of goalhangers, how much
we cherish those who burst
from midfield with the ball,
a humble juggernaut; a touch,
SHOOT! Unlikely, unstoppable.
Tony Husband - d. October 18th 2023
breathless with mediocrity.
The streets are full of yobs
swaggering into conscious print.
And yet, one stroke of a pen
and this, all of this, is pricked.
Piper Laurie - d. October 14th 2023
actors wade through blood
for men and their lenses.
I came home to a dark house
to find you lighting candles
to me and my teenage horror.
Pippa Latour - d. October 7th 2023
the sky you fell from; the
unlit lanes and assignations
under a war-torn moon; the
family who never guessed
how you set Europe ablaze.
Terence Davies - d. October 7th 2023
nursing a black-and-tan, sodden
with song, looking for little victories,
stolen notes of pleasure that come
only once every Preston Guild.
Francis Lee - d. October 2nd 2023
you get to smash in from the spot,
chest bulging like a keg of lager,
sky blue blood, face in the mud,
one foul away from a fistfight.
Pat Arrowsmith - d. September 27th 2023
and we will follow. We number 100
and more, marching to a place with
no bombs, no cells, the struggle won,
where the only thing mutually assured
is love.
Michael Gambon - d. September 27th 2023
the world actors create; real, whole,
a plotting of dreams. Your character
sings from gramophones of the soul
as your skin shrivels, cracks, falls away
to reveal the role beneath the role.
David McCallum - d. September 25th 2023
beams in from a million sighing teens to
their agent of cool. Escape is not an option;
the mission calls. Medium atomic weights
are available: he has been reassigned.
Lou Deprijck - d. September 19th 2023
vu à travers un filtre dayglo,
fanfaronner sans cracher, pogo
sans polémique, anarchie
caricaturale, et pourtant,
et pourtant, ça plane pour moi.
seen through a dayglo filter,
swagger without spit, pogo
without polemic, cartoon anarchy,
and yet, and yet, it's ok by me.
Roger Whitaker - d. September 13th 2023
for bearded folk dreamers,
troubadours in hush puppies,
cheerful whistlers in the prows
of boats that are always leaving
but never reach their destination.
Gayle Hunnicutt - d. August 31st 2023
almost certainly misspelt.
Your face on the screen,
almost certainly misplaced.
Your life on the credits,
almost certainly misremembered.
Monday 18 September 2023
Jean Boht - d. September 12th 2023
with shibboleths of cartoon scouse,
where everyone is scrounger, tart,
dreamer, schemer. Your open house
was a closed book, and you at its head,
the unbridled scold who baked the bread.
Ian Wilmut - d. September 10th 2023
From new process, new cell.
From new cell, new life.
From new life, new proof.
From new proof, new science.
From new science, new thought.
Lisa Lyon - d. September 8th 2023
knots on cotton but now
like moons of steel, gibbous
under the skin. See this form,
bulking, building to true power,
a flexing of more than flesh.
Mike Yarwood - d. September 8th 2023
prop and twitch of eye, a weekly cast
of unpersons we can barely recall,
impressions clinging to the ledge of
light entertainment, proof that imitation
was the sincerest form of Saturday.
Jimmy Buffett - d. September 1st 2023
heartbreak, smiling at the thought of
a woman long gone into summer haze.
Somebody poured us both a Margarita;
I’ll down mine, and yours, for old times.
Thursday 17 August 2023
Michael Parkinson - d. August 16th 2023
not to ask but to leave the door open.
The breeze of jazz blows one last time
and you step from the wings to talk
with titans, where boxer and emu wait.
Robbie Shepherd - d. August 1st 2023
Come
awa an daunce wi us eence mair
birl
oot aa the pattrens o the leidin yer mither tongue, that wull niver dee
gin you an yer like keep it in mait.
The fleer is yer ain. The wird is oors.
(Doric translation by Sheila Templeton)
Come
and dance with us again,
birl those sequences of language
in a tongue that cannot die
while such as you are feeding it.
The floor is yours. The word is ours.
birl those sequences of language
in a tongue that cannot die
while such as you are feeding it.
The floor is yours. The word is ours.
Robbie Robertson - d. August 9th 2023
feeling half past dead,
yet you are jamming still,
rags and shuffles, no frills,
just rock’s blank canvas:
saturated pinks and blues.
Jamie Reid - d. August 8th 2023
Didn’t you design the
rebellion? More than a
page, a record label,
all that bollocks,
it was gob and wit and
razor blades. Oh yes,
I knew your type.
rebellion? More than a
page, a record label,
all that bollocks,
it was gob and wit and
razor blades. Oh yes,
I knew your type.
Wednesday 9 August 2023
William Friedkin - d. August 7th 2023
directed by a voice behind the lens.
It is bloody and profane, demanding
my eyes, my ears, my imagination.
I need only see it once to know
it will possess me till I too am dead.
Carl Davis - d. August 3rd 2023
pitching the anguish of war,
the machinery of heartbreak,
quaint delicacies of manners,
seeking subtleties of the lens
to score sound direct from light.
Monday 31 July 2023
Adrian Street - d. July 24th 2023
the glamourous and the grotesque,
the menace and the mince, kissing
a foe’s forehead, half-man, half-nelson,
your whole life a public warning.
Sinéad O'Connor - d. July 26th 2023
turns the unsayable into art.
Sing it now; they cannot silence
what was truth from the start,
the tenderness and defiance
that made you thief of my heart.
Trevor Francis - d. July 24th 2023
almost disbelieving in himself
as the goal sucks in man and ball
and spits both out. The game goes
from simple to complicated in a
moment, and for a million reasons.
George Alagiah - d. July 24th 2023
in another place I cannot pronounce.
Channels jostle - Fox, Bloomberg,
CNN - and there you are, at ease
in an awkward moment, speaking
like sunshine in service of the world.
Vince Hill - d. July 22nd 2023
the Talk of the Town, cuffed and ruffed
and smooth as velour. Maybe your songs
don’t matter now, but they are the sound
of stage lights dimming, clean and bright,
almost ready to be forgotten, but not quite.
Tony Bennett - d. July 21st 2023
a voice like brandy and cigars,
jolting standards out of sleep
with jazz, and the unexpected.
That world passes, but not before
you climb halfway to the stars.
Jane Birkin - d. July 16th 2023
an ecstatic song. Love is a fever
with no cure except a little death,
but we loved you…me neither.
Sunday 2 July 2023
Alan Arkin - d. June 29th 2023
these days; a look like milk turning.
You open your mouth and I never know
if it’s going to be filth or
philosophy,
little murders of language and light.
little murders of language and light.
Ann Leslie - d. June 25th 2023
using drunken hacks for cover, running
with warlords and rebels, keeping men
out of a job with unspikeable stories.
Monday 19 June 2023
Barry Newman - d. June 11th 2023
acquittals, legal escapology,
but let me tell the whole truth:
you were the sum of bricks,
a screen dream of a house,
a career, a vanishing point.
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