Canterbury Poets for local writers of poetry
An Online Resource for Writers and Readers of Poetry in and around the City of Canterbury      ~      mail@canterburypoets.co.uk

chrisChristopher Hobday
Biography: Chris was born in Preston, Lancashire in 1979. A graduate of UKC, where he studied English & American Literature, he helped to edit Logos, the University’s prose and poetry journal, and Conversation Quarterly, a free poetry journal with David Nettleingham and Juha Virtanen. He has just released a collection of material with Gary Studley and Luigi Marchini called Stubborn Mule Orchestra and is the editor of Canterbury Poets.

Sonnet to Darkness

At night I cannot see the walls.
There may as well be trees and flowers,
lakes and lovers, waterfalls,
songs and games to fill the hours.
Here is no caged man who calls
for help, or weeps alone and cowers,
imagines huge prison halls
box upon box, which hidden powers
filled up in the dead of night,
chained and locked and bolted shut,
secret and unknown to friends
who meet and frown, can't comprehend
how their loved ones vanished from
and never once returned to home.

Written during Hubert Moore's workshop as part of Write to Life, June 14th 2008



Tamworth

Just so. Your mouth,
shaping, like a blooming flower caught on camera
and played back high speed,
the transition between the syllables
in Tamworth. We’re at the station,
and you, a stranger,
are kissing me through the window.

I board the train, seek you out,
recognise the gold belcher
and the blue eye make-up,
scoop you up like ice-cream.
You fit to me, and say, mouth to mouth,
Tamworth. Tamworth. Tamworth.

The train pulls away from the platform.
Another man picks up my luggage.



Time's Butterfly

Can we talk of Time like Lord Dunsany did
or Keith Douglas? That eater of the dead
who even in his roughest greed creates
as much as he devours, and at an equal rate

or should we even talk of time at all
when to talk of it is to ignore its passing
as something parallel, collateral

and not quite real? And do we even trust
our dim animal brains to grasp a thing
that cannot be eaten or fucked?

No; far better just to keep an eye on it,
the eye of an angel or a communist,
ready to inform and persecute.
Time’s butterfly is in the hands of brutes.



Flowers

Her mother has no Latin name to identify her.
She is perpetually-by-the-window.
The pane is one huge spectacle lens
that squeezes the world into a square map.

The outfit is an orchestra of restrained cougar,
netted sea-nymph, hint of the preposterous.
That dress belonged to a dead woman once.
So did the shoes, hence the price.

Without looking at the girl on the sofa
she wrings her hands and shakes her head,
mutters something about diminishing returns
and how the flowers are taking over the garden.



One Dark Night

One dark night you lock the door
to keep out fear, death and sin.
One bright day you have a fall.
The doctor can't get in.

Written during Hubert Moore's workshop as part of Write to Life, June 14th 2008


The Duty

When there is a locked door,
write it unlocked.
When there is an empty larder,
write it fully stocked.
When there is a prison wall,
write it flat.
When there is a written lie,
write nothing. Act.

Written during Hubert Moore's workshop as part of Write to Life, June 14th 2008

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