Wakeling
Waldron
Loydell
Jenks
Kashyap
Hullo again,
Welcome to issue 8 of PERVERSE!
A new section will be published every Monday between now and Christmas, starting with this one — five poems in each. We begin with Kate Wakeling’s poem ‘In Praise of Vaginal Flora’.
It’s always difficult to choose between the interesting, good, weird, linguistically dizzying, semi-pornographic (and sometimes thoroughly pornographic) poems I get sent during PERVERSE submissions. But I’m mostly into the language porn aspect — word combinations that are striking and unexpected, or that verge on the transgressive — and I think Kate’s poem exemplifies this. It’s psychedelic and rapturous, and lingers in the mouth. And each subsequent poem here, by Mark Waldron, Rupert M Loydell, Tom Jenks and Jayant Kashyap, follows that conversation along, each taking its own distinctive tack.
If you are in London next Monday 7th October, please come along to the free PERVERSE launch. It’s from 7pm, for readings at 7.30, upstairs at The Devereaux — 20 Devereux Ct, Temple, London WC2R 3JJ, between Blackfriars and Charing Cross. Our ten readers, each reading one poem and talking about their process in writing it, will be Jo Bratten, AV Bridgwood, Tim Tim Cheng, Eve Ellis, Holly Hopkins, Alex MacDonald, mulika ojikutu-harnett, George Ttoouli, Olivia Tuck and Mark Waldron. The last event was wonderful, and I know this will be too.
I really hope you enjoy reading these poems as much as I have. Glad to be back.
Chrissy
PERVERSE editor
PS It may be best to view these poems on a larger-than-phone-sized screen, or a phone turned sideways, or projected onto the wall of an enormous building.
Kate Wakeling
In Praise of Vaginal Flora
Picture them blooming, won’t you.
Let the view grow very fantastic.
Usher in a mood of crazed abundance
and go full fractal zoom;
go dream-sequence psychedelia.
Flood the scene with hot pinks,
turquoise, tints of lime. Place the word
lactobacillus in your mouth and run
a tongue across its teeming frills.
Visualise the sweet, shrill fruits
of gardnerella vaginalis then receive
each note of rose, sherbet, candied peel
with the rapture they deserve.
I am asking only that you apply your
best fancy to the matter.
Mark Waldron
waldron park
a mature park
foppish leaves
lumpy victorian trees
two bluish watery ponds
covered at night with lids to keep the bats off
trimmed white grass surrounds a nearby hole
bordered with soft pink banks
a sign informs visitors it’s a sinkhole
down which
careless deer routinely drop
further on
after passing various nondescript landmarks
we approach an interesting bushy area
where a branchless tree lies slumped on its side
our party agrees to rest awhile
some sitting on the toppled trunk
some leant against it
so that we might
from its vantage
admire the bucolic vista beyond
our eyes are led into a distance
enlivened by a pair of foot-tall castellated follies
which rise at the end of two scrubby paths
meanwhile back up at the ponds
the fountains burst fervently to life
we turn and watch
it seems waldron park
is suddenly sad
overwhelmed by sorrow perhaps
at the loss of all its disappeared deer
those deer
which now
jolted by the ground’s heaving sobs
and enlivened by the park’s display of lamentation
find the will to scramble from the hole
and then to bound away
their white rumps vanishing into the gloom
Rupert M Loydell
BILLY GOAT GRUFF
‘How can a scream devour,
at what angle of incidence?’
– John Wilkinson, ‘Shit’
The troll under the bridge
turned out to be a snake.
The goat was me.
Tom Jenks
Just popping out to pick up some halloumi. All the trees tied up with string. Don’t go in there, there’s a ghost in there. All the trees and silver frost. A calm feast in the dark gazebo. Each of these things a magic spell. I put some peas in it, I didn’t think you’d mind. I put my hand in the priceless vase. Pale blue sky and birds around. I am a knight and I ride a knight’s bike. A fabulous time with tender broccoli. Little muffins in the penguin pool. I say bigfoot, blueberry, borzoi, borlotti. I say sasquatch, shuffleboard, shampoo, spaghetti. The magical ostrich lives in this cupboard and may grant wishes if approached in writing.
Jayant Kashyap
small poem
about birds— they did somersaults
in mid-air summers ago
and landed between trees
it looked fucking exhilarating—
Kate Wakeling
http://www.katewakeling.co.uk/
Kate Wakeling is a writer and musicologist. A pamphlet of her work, The Rainbow Faults, is published by The Rialto and recent poems have appeared or are forthcoming in Poetry Review, Poetry London, The Stinging Fly and 14 magazine.
Note on ‘In Praise of Vaginal Flora’:
“I can’t remember when I came across the term ‘vaginal flora’ – the microorganisms that colonise the vagina and maintain its good health – but I immediately enjoyed the images the phrase conjured up. On starting the poem, I liked how the term invited a certain florid style of writing and I also liked how this might chime/jar nicely with a subject that would likely quietly repulse a quantity of people.”
Mark Waldron
https://www.instagram.com/markwaldron3/
Mark Waldron has published five poetry collections, most recently, A Straight Up with Bloodaxe Books in 2023. He was named a Next Generation Poet by the Poetry Book Society in 2014. In 2018 The Sunday Times listed him among the best poetry performers in the UK. He’s been published widely in the UK and the US, and his work has been translated into Spanish, Romanian and Serbian.
Note on ‘waldron park’:
“This poem’s one of a series in which a character by the name of Mark Waldron is imposed onto a physical setting. I want to take something we all do, projecting ourself out into the world, to a solipsistic extreme, and then see what happens. Poets, perhaps hoping to absolve themselves of responsibility, often inhabit personae, but I’m relinquishing that get-out. I hope to make the reader feel a bit too close to the poet/protagonist for comfort.”
Rupert M Loydell
https://www.shearsman.com/store/Loydell-Rupert-M-c28271824
Rupert Loydell is Senior Lecturer in the School of Writing and Journalism at Falmouth University, a poet and artist, the editor of Stride magazine, and a contributing editor to International Times. His poetry books are mostly published by Shearsman, KFS and The Red Ceilings Press.
Note on ‘BILLY GOAT GRUFF’:
“‘Billy Goat Gruff’ is one of the first poems I wrote as part of Damage Limitation, a sequence of poems about post-punk music back in the day, with specific reference to how Throbbing Gristle and then Psychic TV adopted the devices of a cult. The poem suggests the narrator is complicit in this, and was fooled. Damage Limitation will be published by zimzalla in 2025.”
Tom Jenks
Tom Jenks’ most recent books are Melamine (Red Ceilings Press) and The Philosopher (Sublunary Editions). He edits the small press zimzalla, specialising in literary objects.
Note:
“I’ve been walking a lot in the early morning, listening to podcasts about the Habsburg empire whilst eating fresh figs and doughnut peaches in hazy parkland to the extent that I’m unable to distinguish between fact and fiction, just different types of fruit. This poem is a transcript of my inner monologue as told to a stenographer, who shall remain nameless for legal reasons.”
Jayant Kashyap
https://giantketchup.wordpress.com/; https://poetrybusiness.co.uk/product/notes-on-burials/
Jayant Kashyap is the author of three pamphlets, most recently Notes on Burials (Smith|Doorstop, 2025), and a zine, Water (Skear Zines, 2021). His poems have been published in POETRY (Chicago), Poetry London and Poetry Wales.
Note on ‘small poem’:
“‘small poem’ was the result of a thought that focussed majorly on how, once, we often saw so many birds gliding around in the air – hundreds of feet above us – and they did all the neat tricks there; these days though I miss sparrows and crows, whose populations I’ve noticed have been declining gradually because of a plethora of reasons – and it’s deeply saddening, if not more.”
See you for next week’s issue, with poems by Eve Ellis, Martha Sprackland, Jo Bratten, mulika ojikutu-harnett and AV Bridgwood.
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