Clearness in England
Humbler than lodestar claims:
citizens fossicking
for water standards,
where it’s made worse than brackish
at each profitable flush,
look downwards for truth
in such a sickly pickle.
Citizens writing,
not verklempt but using words
best true to the findings,
not parrot anger.
The glossy rag now carries
such stories. Let’s be
rational, rational. Let’s
be rational, rational.
The above was my entry in last year's CV2 competition. Some readers of this blog may remember that that competition requires entrants to make a new poem, in a single weekend, that must contain ten specific words emailed at 06:00 Saturday morning, UK time. In other words midnight Winnipeg time, as people living there slip from Friday to Saturday. Have fun guessing which the prescribed words are.
My entry got no success in the competition itself, but it has now found publication in Carole Baldock's poetry magazine Orbis. The work has had a measure of editorial improvement by Carole.
Here's some citizen journalism reporting on sewage, from East Anglia bylines. EAB is one of a network of similar outlets around the country; fun in the same way as the Places of Poetry online map that I've praised before.
