It started with a hunt through my poetry books to see if I could locate a poem I loved for each letter of the alphabet. This kept me amused for quite some time and I enjoyed finding poems I could quickly bring to mind and then a renewed search when the letter I needed had already been allocated!
I then thought that if I was going to share them then ideally they should already be freely available on the internet.
So, there was lots of searching before I began to share the Z to A and I was keen to set it down. I imagined doing the same a year from now without checking back to this list and then comparing the two lists. Unfortunately a negative comment threw me a curve ball and put me in a period of pause halting the daily share.
This time of waiting led to an evolution where I re-read the poems and used some to create erasure poems. From this the following list evolved. Some whole poems, some erasure poems as tribute, some quotes from poems. Perhaps you too would have chosen some of these for your Z to A. Perhaps you would not! Maybe you know most of them, maybe you will discover a new poem.
Z
popcorn/shrouded in cloud/a woman’s whistlelassos a yellow cab/the zebra squints and brays/trots to the pedestrian crossing/waits for walk and vanishes.
Y
You/I
X
some prowl/some hurtle/some obsessed open graves/dreams/I am half afraid/a perished mouse/mother/My eyes look/but I still don’t want to know.
W
'what my mother (a poet) might say' Mary Jean Chan
V
I am wedded to the sky/Candles are forbidden/I shall write my poems/eat lemons in my park/
U
bumping Mondays/neither of look/dream of being knocked/briefest touch shared/lovers stretching/taste/smell/take/love prone flesh/
T
S
call me princess/ask me something/stroke my cheek/my dad is dead/you reach for
a shotgun
spot a crow and kill it/
R
not quite my father’s voice/I hear/tales eternal in their repeating/I smile/a bear cub on his chest/reverberation/his voice against my cheek/
Q
P
'Prize Photograph' Pascale Petit
O
'On the Fifth Day' Jane Hirshfield
N
You clench yourself into a ball/your unborn child held deep inside/the wind a lullaby/
M
L
the pianist’s fierce contemplation/scorched the score/the
elephant lowered
her terrible head/as if she might charge/but fanned her ears and listened/
K
I poured one dollop, gleaming genie,/into the bowl with my sister’s goldfish/just because they were alive and she liked them/
J
I
In the asylum they shave off my fur/so they can electric me.
H
I dreamt of plane crashes/two days after I got engaged—/full holds, a woman screaming,/hundreds of wrists clutching/at seat belt clasps/
G
Girls are coming out of the woods,/wrapped in cloaks and hoods,/
F
E
Like people in their nineties shovelling snow
side by side on a dark night,
we're hoping that an evening out together
is saying what we want it to say!
D
not enough oxygen in / old kisses
C
B
A
In the backyard the shadow of a man mocked me/I sang at the top of my lungs/birds flew away/neighbours pounded on their windows/
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