a fresh cut poem,one of a
million varieties at the un-
cultured end of the market.
For all that,
laid on a bed of clean linen,
its faint perfume will fill in
the silences between/around you.*< b r>And even if you shove it
in a drawer and forget it,
it will keep its bloom,
years later reminding you
of a**______________ October day
when they were giving away
poems(!?!) and everything
in your world was**__________________

*delete one
**complete as appropriate.

Visual Poems

Ever since I started to write poetry I have, at various stages, played at combining words and images. The strongest influence I suppose has to be that of the American poet Kenneth Patchen. I work as spontaneously as I can, usually in pen and ink, not kno w ing what the image is going to be when I put pen to paper, not knowing what the words will be till the image is made. I only do them once, so they either work or they don't: to me they work if they appear playful, spontaneous and suggestive of a larger, s ubmerged narrative.

The three visual poems I have submitted to TANDEM for National Poetry Day were all done when I was Writer in Residence at the University of Alberta in Canada in 1992-93. The influence in them of the Inuit art I was looking at then i s obvious.

I value the opportunity that the net, and PROGRESSIVE ARTS: TANDEM in particular, offers, for sharing work which is very different from what I have so far published.

TOM POW, Dumfries, Scotland. Oct 95.

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Peter Morgan and Tom Pow