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.
Wednesday, 30 July 2025
Alan Bergman – d. July 27th 2025
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.
Tom Lehrer – d. July 26th 2025
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.
Cleo Laine – d. July 24th 2025
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.
Hulk Hogan – d. July 24th 2025
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.
Ozzy Osbourne – d. July 22nd 2025
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.
Kenneth Calman – d. July 21st 2025
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.
Connie Francis – d. July 16th 2025
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.
Shunsaku Tamiya – d. July 11th 2025
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.
David Kaff – d. July 11th 2025
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.
Norman Tebbit – d. July 7th 2025
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.
Luís Jardim– d. July 4th 2025
are curious ornamentations
of conga and clave, supple
fingers picking out a pulse in a
register somewhere between
heartbeat and wingbeat.
Michael Madsen – d. July 3rd 2025
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?
Gerald Harper – d. July 2nd 2025
lifted from one time and dropped
into another. Each performance
is a frozen hour, each character
a mere imitation of life in 625 lines.
Jimmy Swaggart – d. July 1st 2025
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.
Sandy Gall – d. June 29th 2025
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.
Lalo Schifrin – d. June 26th 2025
the scream of rubber on boulevard,
Broadsword crackling on the radio,
the .357 magnum emptying into my
imagination, chamber by chamber.
Wincey Willis – d. December 19th 2024
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.
Wednesday, 25 June 2025
Brian Wilson – d. June 11th 2025
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.
Sly Stone – d. June 9th 2025
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).
Frederick Forsyth – d. June 9th 2025
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.
Prentis Hancock – d. May 30th 2025
in the orbit of a fading satellite,
sometimes aligning with my own.
I grow more distant every year,
a displaced moon spinning away
in the empty and eternal dark.
Loretta Swit – d. May 30th 2025
an instrument of sanity in the madness
of operations gone wrong, in a show
we would like to forget but cannot,
a tragedy wearing comedy’s scrubs.
Alan Yentob – d. May 24th 2025
pressed my face against the pane
to glimpse art and word, a strain
of song. A man of easy gravitas
said I curate what genius knows:
Arthur Hamilton – d. May 20th 2025
who cry the whole night through,
who see only black where others
see purple and orange and blue.
The rainbow drowns in that river
we cried to bring a song to you.
Thursday, 22 May 2025
Michael B. Tretow - d. May 20th 2025
of youth - European doggerel.
Now I hear through your ears;
the joy of satin and sunshine,
the anguish of love gone cold,
the rustle of glitter falling on
the dancefloor of your dreams.
Barry Fantoni – d. May 20th 2025
‘So, farewell then’, that was your
catchphrase. Not very catchy,
though Keith’s mum liked it,
as did all your readers, who now
will not know when someone
has died.
George Wendt – d. May 20th 2025
The worst day. Pour me a beer.
What’s the story, Norm?
Man orders beer. Repeat.
What’s going down, Norm?
We are. Six feet under.
Brian Glanville – d. May 16th 2025
from you; the game expressed
as form and image, its tactical
shifts like the turn of a sonnet,
its canon of artists and artisans
the ink of the pitch and the page.
Junior Byles – d. May 15th 2025
to the left a twilit path, clouded
by dub and collie weed; right,
the road to consciousness, the
sweet harvest of your own voice.
Whichever you choose, both end here.
Joe Don Baker – d. May 7th 2025
it helps to have a face like
a side of bacon, a voice to
silence any room, a tough-guy
smile delivering a lethal dose
to anyone within ten yards.
Mike Peters – d. April 29th 2025
it’s smart to steal from the best:
Strummer’s stance, polemic,
power chords from punk’s cadaver,
hair by Bono, voice by Rod, but
fire, flesh and fight by dragons.
Philip Lowrie – d. April 25th 2025
in the conurbation of pathos
and humdrum, you playing your
scenes like they were my own
memories, those old friends
I have learned never to trust.
***This was the 1000th Otwituary***
Roy Thomas Baker – d. April 12th 2025
no effects, no overdubs, but still,
there are days where everything
sounds like you intended: 48-track,
big sound, no bum notes, producer
saying Great, I think that’s the one.
David Thomas – d. April 23rd 2025
as if rehearsing the apocalypse,
arms flailing like we didn’t know if this
was punk or bebop, and all serenaded
by a man talking not to us but himself.
Monday, 21 April 2025
Barry Hoban – d. April 19th 2025
a mythical beast, half-man,
half-bike, from an age of
steel frames and iron men,
falling off the pace, swallowed
by the broom wagon of time.
Clodagh Rodgers – d. April 18th 2025
in a borderless continent,
saw you there in hot pants
and chiffon, swinging
and shaking, bouncing up
from the nostalgia slot
whenever love knocked.
Colin Berry – d. April 16th 2025
Too many stations on the dial:
Strasbourg, Stockholm, Hilversum.
I trawl exotic ether for the comfort,
of a friendly ident. Then, a voice
like the top of the milk, telling me
who and where I am: London calling.
Read about Colin Berry here
Strasbourg, Stockholm, Hilversum.
I trawl exotic ether for the comfort,
of a friendly ident. Then, a voice
like the top of the milk, telling me
who and where I am: London calling.
Read about Colin Berry here
Wink Martindale – d. April 15th 2025
I see the Deuce I think of this life
and the next; the Trey for yesterday,
today and no tomorrow; the Seven
for the seven letters of ‘mawkish’.
And I know, because
I was that Otwituarist.
Paddy Higson – d. April 13th 2025
by its ain faces in thi mirror:
thi girl fae thi schemes in thi
fitba strip; thi copper, dour as
a Glesca doonpour, thi Laird in
thir heilan' hame. We wha ken
oorsels ken yir unkent name.
Jean Marsh – d. April 13th 2025
the surrogate screen,
its shifting cast lists
like a lost-and-found,
a repertory of upstairs lives
in my downstairs world.
Mike Berry – d. April 11th 2025
of outmoded comedy
to distant choruses
of mournful melody,
Ten Acres of fame
sometimes yields only
a modest harvest,
and sometimes
none at all.
Max Romeo – d. April 11th 2025
in a dream, talking of Babylon,
forcing from you a song you
didn’t want to sing. Sing it now,
sing that Devil into outer space.
Robert McGinnis – d. March 10th 2025
flecked with pale pigments
mixed from male fantasies.
I am no artist, and yet I know
that I am not a movie poster
but a novel, shortly to be pulped.
Tuesday, 8 April 2025
Clem Burke – d. April 6th 2025
there's blood on the snare.
Every roll alternates hot and cool,
and every fill is a symphony.
Let every skin shudder,
let the backbeat sing one last time.
Dave Allen – d. April 5th 2025
you will find that essence rare:
the throb of steel-wound strings,
their slap like sinews snapping.
And oh, are we not entertained?
Johnny Tillotson – d. April 1st 2025
short 45s and a long fade-out,
swoonsome girls and misty-eyed
lenses on American Bandstand.
Sing through tremblin’ lips while
you can; Elvis is marching home.
Val Kilmer – d. April 1st 2025
they melt in the Hollywood heat
drain away into backlot sewers.
Life turns down its own sequel,
and for every saint
there are a million sinners.
Trevor Lock – d. March 2025
of an interposing hand
in the presence of
berserkers, the coolness
of an inside pocket
while a hot gun is held
to my unbowed head.
Richard Chamberlain – d. March 29th 2025
to play the tall man in the
tallest of tales, to conceal
the pain of forbidden love,
yet show each moment of it
in each glance, each stance.
Andy Peebles – d. March 22nd 2025
tune the frequency out of time
to wavelengths of a life now gone,
to hear the stations of the mind;
Piccadilly 261,
1053 and 1089.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)