poetry pRO     Maggie Butt
Translation Café, (interview p.47)

Poets: browse the list

ppf SHOP ONLINE      MEMBERS’ COMPS & CALLS 31st Aug, Enfield Poets
 
MEMBERS’ EVENTS/VENUES Jul: Shortlands Poetry Circle: (live) 14th; NWK Stanza: 22nd (changed from 15th)
 
see/hear: YouTube, Cliff Forshaw reading his poem Loop

 

 

donations will be very gratefully received.

latest on site:
   Julia Deakin
   Joseph Long
   Peter Ualrig
       Kennedy
   Judith Wozniak

latest new pages:
   Margaret Wilmot
   Barbara Hickson
   Marina Sánchez (biog)

COMPS & CALLS:
Aug26: Enfield Poets

latest comp results:
   Frogmore 2026

selection of books:
   ppf shop online

previous projects:
   Poem Cards
   Blyth Valley Radio
   poetry tREnD

featured poet – Carole Satyamurti (1939-2019)

How I Altered History

Wild splashing – a lizard,
fallen in the rain-water bucket,
was scrabbling at the smooth sides
 
frantic to get out,
delicate fingers not up to it,
flanks fighting for breath.
 
It’s a privilege to save a life;
some people never do.
And since life is life, indifferent
 
to worth or benefit, it was as though
I’d saved Mahatma Gandhi, Shelley,
Barthes – or any joker
 
whom attentiveness and a well-placed hand
could have turned from premature extinction.
As it was, it was a lizard with no tail
 
I tipped, ungrateful beast,
urgent for ants, twitching for a quarrel,
into the rest of its singular career.
 

Carole Satyamurti

first published in Ambit

© Copyright of all poems featured on this site remains with the poet
site feedback welcome