First poem in a book
You are commissioned by a publisher to write a first poem in a book. The publisher has already decided the reader and/or the design of the book and you have to write a poem that is suitable for their idea. Pick one of the paintings and look at the book and/or the reader there. Write a poem which you think will convey the concept the publisher has in mind. Remember if the publisher is impressed by your work, they are more likely to commission you to write more poems in the book. Yuko Adams on 31 May 2007


T.C’s Office
by Kim Simmons-Hurn
based on Reading with Globe by Michael Craig-Martin

It wasn’t the tax pages torn from loose-leaf files
that got to me…
the business books, fading letterheads,
your stationary–
nor the black brief cases
I’d emptied a year before,
or your bobbled fleece and raincoat
hanging by the storeroom door.

It wasn’t the certificates still on the wall,
the desk drawer that never would close,
or the photo frames you chose
for pictures of the kids…
but the notelet that unexpected fell–
a hurried memo to yourself
dated May 2000… when you were well.

THE PIERROT’S PROLOGUE
by Ann Copeland
based on Pierrot with Book by Juan Gris

Welcome reader to our medley of delight,
We have pages for both old and young.
Sip at our words whether rude or polite,
Let them dance in your throat and cartwheel on your tongue.

Sample our fancies whether solemn or light,
Let them nestle in your head till they’re grown.
Suffer our passions born in love or in spite,
Let them sweep through your body, take root in your bone,

So that when you close this book, each song it sung
Stays with you on the journey of your life.
With our poems for friends you need never feel alone
But have joy in the day and comfort through the night.


Dennis Tomlinson
based on Cecil Court, London W.C.2. (The Refugees) by R.B. Kitaj

Cloud like a grey house:
red roof and white walls exhale
their evening spirit.

Ceiling
by Yuko Adams
based on The Basket of Fruit by Mark Gertler

The ceiling in my bedroom can easily be opened
as long as nothing is left on top.
People are careless.
They don't mind about putting things over my head.
They sometimes leave bananas, apples
and a tea cup.
I'm not strong enough to push them up.
I cannot get out.
Scent of an apple comes through the gap.
I breathe it in.
I want to breathe it out to the open air.
But the apple rigidly sits on the ceiling.

The Female Reader
by Sue Aldred
based on The Lovers Surprised by John Flaxman

The female reader turns away
from the young man's ardour;
leans like a crocus to the light
of the book. For she was reading
of Eloise and Abelard: their bodies joined,
and both were shamed.

The female reader feels desire
like Eloise; desire only in words.
Her lover's breath, his searching gaze, his voice
makes discord out of music.
His sighs, "my own, my own,"
speak of the bargain. "Just be mine.
What need then of the book?"

The female reader knows that if
he wins her, even before her eyelids close
his dream will wilt her.

A Portrait of Philip Larkin
by Richard J. N. Copeland
based on The Ring: Tim Thomas 2000 by Thomas Kilpper


A hard one to please in a bookish world
with authors stacked from Mao to Marx
(stuff that he would not have read)
like that Bible with its fustian words
of thou shalt do and thou shalt not;
a mumbo-jumbo paradox
of contradictions, meaningless
to one with no religion.

Books are a load of crap, he wrote
while living with them, stacked above
his balding head and impish grin;
the stuff of life in his closed world
of printed words - the London train
that took him South, some scribbled lines,
a poem born on wheels of steel
past grimy bricks and cooling towers.

His inspiration dwelt within
the commonplace, the corner pub
with pints and chat and overheard
mosaics of the mundane lives
that he would elvevate to art
upon those pages, drawn in verse,
life portraits of the ones he met
that never could have known him.