You bud butterflies in purple haze. Bees speak your name, bud, and to spell you is to know you intimately, to smell you is to be 50ft high, climbing over our garage. You bud, and – bud, I need to chop you down, but you may be our only hope.
This is my offering for the #RedSkySessions series 4, ep 1, second exercise, which I am slowly imbibing.
Here’s a photo of my two books I took for my Instagram because I could. They came out 22 years apart and I am very proud to have had the chance to publish both of them. un(in)formed is available at https://www.beardedbadgerpublishing.com/online-store/UN-IN-FORMED-by-Becky-Deans-p311736067 along with other chapbooks in the series from Sonia Burns, Camille McCawley and Kevin Qweaver Jackson.
It’s finally here – and I’m not sure I ever thought it would be – but here’s the link to the orders for my chapbook, un(in)formed. https://www.beardedbadgerpublishing.com/online-store/UN-IN-FORMED-by-Becky-Deans-p311736067
Please show some love to Paul Handley’s new press, Bearded Badger Publishing, and buy the sett – including Rory Aaron’s new collection, doglike, and the new novel by Drew Gummerson, Seven Nights at the Flamingo Hotel.
Drew Gummerson’s book is out now. The two poetry chapbooks can be in your hands by 22 April 2021.
When I got my first job as a copywriter, I gave my boss my novella, but he made the comment that copywriters needed to be poets rather than prose writers.
I have found the poets need to be copywriters as well. It helps pay the bills and I like doing it.
Since graduating I have worked for so many clients directly, through agencies (mainly London agencies), and through freelance assignments. These clients include Dell, the Treasury, NHSBT (NHS Blood and Transplant), BMW, Oris, DBS (Singapore). As well as writing web-based and print content, I proofread, transcribe, translate or edit translations, compile social media posts.
You can find my copywriting site at www.beckydeans.co.uk
If DH chose a musical instrument, surely he would pick a sax? I wrote this unofficially for the 2018 Clarinet and Saxophone Society and put in on Instagram. It looks like there might be some research in Lawrence and jazz.
DH Lawrence’s Horn
He liked the feel of it in his mouth
He liked the sassiness of its sound
He liked its curves, its brassiness
And its perfectly shaped bell.
It wasn’t him to fiddle or flaunt
He’d have honked and horned
His flutter tonguing was perfect
As was his slap.
I’ve been asked for the text for this, but I feel it needs proper artwork, and I am a words person, not an art working master (all hail designers!), so it will take me a while to organise.
BBC Derby put waves behind this, and I did initially record this with waves in the background, but they weren’t my own waves. If we ever get to go on holiday again, and there’s a quiet day, I will record this again by the sea.
Please note that this comes from a poet and saxophone teacher who used to do guided meditations in yoga. I am not a qualified therapist of any kind.
Today the poetry showcase, featuring work from nine poets, is finally available. Go to beardedbadgerpublishing.com to download the full sampler, with contributions from Rory Aaron, me, Kevin Qweaver Jackson, Jack Cunnington, Oliver Cowley, Cullen Marshall, Sonia Burns, Camille McCawley and Anita Jackson.
Our journeys might be different, but our love of words brings us together.
You can find it here:
So, say, you’re finally there and you’re writing your bio, how do you know what to say?
I think I can safely say my bio is always changing depending on what mood I am in. My current Facebook photo is from 2005. It goes with the poem ‘Meditation on the A38’ but then so does the picture of empty beaches and the picture of Sir John Betjeman doing a little back bend at St Pancras Station.
I finished my first novella, exposé (TEXTS, 1999, Assessment and Expanded Text Project, part funded by Hefce), while I was doing the New Deal at the Wordsworth Trust, so that talked about that – and wanting to meet Jarvis Cocker.
In 2000 (Magpie, 2000, CCPA) my name is Becky in the front and Rebecca in the bio and I talk about a year of Wordsworth and telephone banking.
Now, 2021, I am looking at something that almost doesn’t seem factual. Did I really do that? Should I mention the (saxophone) recording in 2007? I definitely want to say that I supported Vanessa Kisuule in 2018 at Derby Poetry Festival. Everything else…
My latest poem is nothing like the Betjeman poem. It’s nothing like Sylvia Plath or Ted Hughes or Norman MacCaig or Maya Angelou. You can search for it on BBC Sounds – picture below.
But then, this poem isn’t in the chapbook, so I guess that doesn’t matter.
To find out more about Bearded Badger Publishing go to https://www.beardedbadgerpublishing.com.
Check out http://www.facebook.com/writebeckydeans for further details.
There is no cuckoo. Costa sifts snowdrops
in the top of your coffee to announce the spring
Cups drifting in the middle of the road will last longer than you
Yet there is a rhythm to everything. It beats.
When you feel you’re a footnote on someone else’s history,
Easily wiped away, like chalk on a board, remember your screech.
beckydeans 