NaPoWriMo: Dan Holloway

April is National Poetry Writing Month. In celebration of poets everywhere, and to encourage those who are just embarking on their literary journey, I will be posting poetry (not mine) each day for the month of April. Please take a look and enjoy this special art.

Dan Holloway

My poetry roots come from a mix of the Beat poets, certain strands of contemporary performance poetry and to a certain extent the Brutalists. In other words it’s a bit of a mish mash though the emphasis is on lyricality and emotional honesty and rawness. It would be truest of all though to say that my main influence is the confessional wing of Young British Art, in particular Tracey Emin. I like art that reaches deep down inside the artist, wriggling under every layer of artifice to get to the red raw truth whatever that may be.

My solo show “Some Of These Things Are Beautiful” will be premiering at Cheltenham Poetry Festival on April 24^th.

 http://danholloway.wordpress.com (where you can download my current collection “i cannot bring myself to look at walls in case you have graffitied them with love poetry” for free)

http://twitter.com/agnieszkasshoes

http://facebook.com/danhollowaywriter

http://eightcuts.com is a literary project I run that combines online exhibitions and spoken word shows

http://79ratpress.blogspot.com is my experimental publisher, launching 6 collections by new poets this June.

strangers

  

street smells and posters and paint and

uncanny rhythms through doorways

click through and scroll

   down

and slide

    across

the sprung limbs of our disappointments

hover

behind glass

cursor-like ghosts

moving

  imperceptibly

             slower

london has put on her lipstick for strangers

gewgaws and whirligigs and astroturf and tar

concrete and candy and steel and the christmas sweat

of a woman with

     not enough

             whisky

acid skies etch the textures of jazz

into concrete

she pours mojitos

to quench

   dry-throated

           promises

we are the soft belly of an afterthought

stashed under ruffled underskirts

where her scent

is untouched by the cooling

      cologne of

             drum and bass

delivering endless slow-tongued reproaches

through the jabbering of strangers