PERVERSE 9D
"Pelican porcupine peppercorn..."
Westcott
Shaw
Winslow
Naomi
Phipps
Hullo there,
Hope you’re keeping well. Here are five new wonderful poems for you.
The connective tissue between them is something to do with sound, and song, and the ways in which we try to process the world’s “unpredictable designs” upon us. Also: pelicans.
Enjoy.
Chrissy
PERVERSE editor
PS Some of these poems may be best viewed on a larger-than-phone-sized screen, or a phone turned sideways, or projected onto the lifespan of a sea bird.
Sarah Westcott
Merlin From the syrinx sounds precision locality - notation - day species-species voice productions minds alight continuous.
Listening - power on -
screeds of language, ribboned time -
alike (delete) succeeded range
finite the song —Coo-coo mink-mink weep weep, tssee see
whistle ratify
encore, encore season-songs’
unpredictable designs.Natalie Shaw
I, PELICAN
Pelican pemmican heliotrope reticule polycule hexagon chambermaid spoon
Pelican frangipane polymath Taliban applesauce tailor’s chalk pineapple boot
Pelican porcupine peppercorn try again falter and try again elegant suit
Pelican where shall we meet again trembling in the rain, spooner attacking, spooner absolved
Pelican frigatebird spoonbird and heron, blood of my ancestor, eggplant and gruel
Pelican astrolabe, pelican eucharist, pelican cruciform, pelican crushed
J.D.A. Winslow
Upupa epops
eating ice cream
everyday
we read the reports
of the waterspouts
the docks hummed
with tourists
a noticeboard explained
the eradication
of non-native species
in the park a
hoopoe waited
for us to be
soft-murdered
preserved
in digital aspic
and a baby guillemot
floated
in the harbour
one way up
before the storm
and the other way
afterwards
we looked
away
Katrina Naomi
Sound Bath
‘a holistic approach to healing & meditation’
I’m handed a womb-red blanket which scratches like a bored cat of course there’s incense I lay down in the yoga room by a giant bronze gong an omnipotent god at first its sound gentles like the sun running through barley then booms reverberating through my guts like that night at Brixton Rec the dub skanking heart-stopping from head-high speakers as the noise crescendos my heart wilds like a first-timer doing a park circuit I wish I’d drunk water wish I’d never come I let my tongue fall from its ridgy roof allow myself so small a sigh it’s inaudible I’m porous hollow the gong waves drown the room with splashy white noise inking themselves to indigo dissolving behind my eyes I remember to breathe to focus on the Nag Champa let the smaller sounds of bells and seeds rattle through me I imagine this is jazz Billy Cobham Sonny Rollins imagine I enjoy this as the gong reaches what I hope is the climax a cacophony like three bull elephants a helicopter overhead a woman in an experimental film all duelling noise enters my shins my nose my hair my senses jagged as a tin opened by hand as if I’ve used six extra-strength Hopi candles at once as if all of my body was ear
Sam Phipps
I Hate Helicopters
I hate helicopters,
always crashing –
even when they’re not,
they’re oppressive
in your head –
fuck off helicopter!
fuck off!
O helicopter pilot,
do not take to heart
these words
and forsake me
one day or night
on the mountainside –
or in the floods.
Contributor Notes & Bios
Sarah Westcott
Sarah Westcott’s latest pamphlets are Pond (The Braag, 2024) and Almanac – a hand-stitched pamphlet with Coast to Coast to Coast (2025). She is currently researching inter-species poetry as part of an AHRC-funded PhD.
Note on ‘Merlin’:
“Nightingale song is so trippy and polyvocal and revered. I am interested in representations of birdsong and the tech we use to filter and feel it – something lost and something gained, for humans, at least.”
Natalie Shaw
www.brokensleepbooks.com/product-page/natalie-shaw-dirty-martini
Natalie Shaw once tried to paint over a pelican, but was prevented when Jack got his friends to staple him to the wall. Dirty Martini is published by Broken Sleep.
Note on ‘I, PELICAN’:
“This is my first poem about a pelican. I fully intend to write another one, probably called ‘In her piety’. I have long been fascinated by pelicans, not least as portrayed by Quentin Blake in his book Zagazoo.”
J.D.A. Winslow
J.D.A. Winslow is an artist and writer based in Edinburgh.
Note on ‘Upupa epops’:
“I spend a lot of my time thinking about titles. Lately, I’ve started writing poems with Latin names as titles. Maybe it’s from time spent in greenhouses, staring at plant labels. It seems unlikely I’ll run out.”
Katrina Naomi
Katrina’s fourth poetry collection, Battery Rocks, (Seren, 2024) won the Arthur Welton Award from the Society of Authors, the Holyer an Gof award for Poetry, and was recommended in The Guardian. She has just published dance as if, with Verve.
Note on ‘Sound Bath’:
“I wrote ‘Sound Bath’ as soon as I’d got home from the experience. I’m someone who likes a lot of noise in music, I’ll admit to a teenage passion for heavy metal which has never gone away – but I’d gone to this sound bath for relaxation. Everyone else seemed in a state of bliss, I don’t know what I was doing wrong.”
Sam Phipps
www.instagram.com/samphipps07/
Sam Phipps has had poems published in Poetry News, Gutter, the Bridport Prize anthology, Nutmeg and elsewhere. His sequence From The Mouth Of The Thames was displayed at the Totally Thames festival in London in 2023 and he is performing at Push The Boat Out in Edinburgh on 23rd November.
Note on ‘I Hate Helicopters’:
“For a while it was just the first stanza, then I thought: what if a pilot read it and was called on to rescue me, maybe years later? True, they’d have to remember the poem and recognise me. But you never know.”
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