Phil Burdett - Poetry & Writing

A little new & old poetry & prose read in a droll Estuary twang...this Wednesday...

Leigh-on-Sea Town Council will be hosting their monthly poetry and open mic night “The Listening Room” at Leigh Community Centre on Wednesday 13th July.

October’s guest speaker is Phil Burdett. Phil is a 61-year-old singer songwriter/poet/author who has been making poetry & music for over 40 years. From early years solo on the folk/blues/indie circuits of the late 70s/early 80s through his later band 'The New World Troubadours' playing in Essex & London to getting a record deal through a BBC documentary (resulting in his first album 'Diesel Poems') & on through subsequent changes in styles & personnel making nine further albums of songs drawn from a myriad of experiences & influences with many of Essex's top musicians. Now living in Westcliff-on-Sea in Essex he continues to write songs, poetry, prose & experiment with art & video.

The Listening Room is open on the second Wednesday of the month from 7.30pm – 9.30pm at the Lorna & Lottie’s Café in Leigh Community Centre. The bar will be open providing refreshments, including alcohol, soft and hot drinks. Entry to the nights will be by donation, on a pay what you can basis, with all profits going towards the Town Council’s Chairman’s Charity, which this year is Gold Geese who support local children with cancer.

Attendees to the poetry night are more than welcome to get up on the open mic and read their own poems and stories or even play music or perform comedy. The Council are proud of the creative spotlight they have been able to cultivate that welcomes all types of performers.

For more information about attending contact the Council on 01702 716288, or email [email protected]

For enquiries about performing please contact Maddi at [email protected]

PB will be reading a few new poems & perhaps singing a few songs at this delightful event this Sunday...

PB will be reading some old & new poems & a short excerpt from his new novel 'MALEDICTUS' at this splendid happening next Sunday 20th Feb. at 2.30pm at Hoppily 1221 London Rd. Leigh, Essex

Once anybody (if they ever do) has ploughed through this little amorality tale should feel inclined to review it, positively (thank you) or negatively (f**k you) then it would be much appreciated. It's a harder 'sell' than music & I could do with it being shared on any platforms y'all are involved with. I'm possibly going to sort an 'event' in the mid-future to help it on its way to obscurity but we shall see. That's all for now. Thank you for your attention.

Maledictus - Phil Burdett The debut novel by Phil Burdett.

Available via www.philburdett.com Feb. 5th
Debut novel by Phil Burdett
£15 plus p&p

Two books of poetry by Phil Burdett
Still available with lots of music CDs at
www.philburdett.com

It is not national poetry day so here isn't a poem - www.philburdett.com for other stuff

O DEATH, WHERE IS THY STING

Saw Paddy from the Chieftains kicked it
A thousand things we learn, discarded
Right after his blathering eulogy
A picture of a Morris Minor, perfect
Unlike the old ones remembered
Shouldn’t have scrolled by the news of him
Shouldn’t have liked the car
Old times growing younger
Young times growing harder
I’ve tried hard to hate the dead ones
Not give the actual haunted f**k - & for a bit
It worked, my disdain perfected
No false sentiment did the mourners suspect
No bu****it swallowed or indeed shat out
The sad ones, none the worse for that
The sad ones, ah – there lies the taunt

Phil Burdett Home page of Phil Burdett, an americana artist from southend-on-sea

Tonight - Bloomsbury theatre - Ralph Dartford/Phil Burdett - an early evening of poetry & songs...

Event Details If you hold a membership subscription you may be eligible for discounts. Log in and these will be applied to your order automatically.

One last fling for 2021...tickets via the Bloomsbury Theatre website or at philburdett.com

Phil Burdett & Ralph Dartford - Hidden Music @ Bloomsbury theatre & studio - Oct 4 2021, 6:00PM An evening of poetry & song. Ralph Dartford will read from his new collection 'Hidden Music' & PB will be reading old & new poems plus playing a few tunes. This is PB solo performance & not as advertised with the PB Ensemble. Tickets available from the Bloomsbury website (Google Bloomsbury Theatre &...

NEW PB POETRY BOOK 'THE POOR RIVER LOST ITS MIND'
OUT NOW - ONLY £10 (PLUS P&P)

Go to www.philburdett.com store for purchases

Support local artistes in these chastening times.

UPDATE:
PB's new poetry book 'THE POOR RIVER LOST ITS MIND' will be available on 27th January 2021 (PB's 60th birthday) via www.philburdett.com
There are shows being arranged for later in the year. Updates will appear on the website. Join the mailing list for news letter & notifications of releases/events etc.

As part of the ever wondrous 'CULTURE AS A DARE' festival here is PB's contribution. A video poem taken from an album of poetry read to music that will emerge early next year along with PB's second collection of poems. The album will feature readings from both his books. This poem is from his first book 'RHYMING VODKA WITH KAFKA' available at www.philburdett.com Join the mailing list for info regarding album/book releases & live shows. Check out the fabulous CULTURE AS A DARE youtube channel for other delights of a myriad & eclectic nature.

Phil Burdett (UK) - RED I & GONE Phil Burdett is a 59 year old singer songwriter who has been making music for over 40 years. From early years solo on the folk/blues/indie circuits of the la...

Phil Burdett - Poetry & Writing updated their business hours.

A poem about a dream I had remembering my dad watching Bloody Sunday on TV mingled with my subsequent visits to Ireland...

LATE DREAM OF IRELAND & DAD

Ireland swirls in slow, dancing hours
That fold the soul over places & I moved, wistfully
Loving each street name, making lists
Trance-cities, Cork & Dublin – the bars we made ours
Weighted with the planted stone of blasphemy

Spinning on a witches-hat roundabout – a grassy cemetery
The thick trunk growing up & far away
Through The Snug in Bantry Bay
& that small dog barking at nothing up a tree
In Phoenix Park on the evening of the last day

& then the dream shifted & my dad appeared
In his old armchair watching the troubles begin
& I was watching his face – nine or ten
Years old & my days not yet drained by the bored
Grip of TV news – sensing

Though that this was closer - these cartoon
Explosions were made real by proximity
To my flat world of signs – a wilder city
Within reach of my exploring mind strewn
With the debris of divinity

& as the news rolled I watched his face harden
To that statue of brooding ardour – resigned
Yet flickering imperceptibly – his cold time
Stretched back like a slowly ebbing garden
Behind him – Ireland’s dumb mime

Acted out in smoky chapters that seemed
Electrifying to me – & as the victims bled
Through hasty makeshift bandages, blooming red
Toy soldiers posed in unshakeable rows of dirty green
‘We bloody started this…’ he said

& I think that this voice - a throb of rain
I had not yet heard fall from his lips -
Stopped the fearless wave of childhood, tipping
Me into a theatre of cruelty where unfeigned
Wounds did not heal – where the trip

Of the sixties fell to the new decade’s ditch
& the mysteries hushed, lifeless under angry headstones
Of flesh & gunfire – white flags & bleached bone
& how through unwashed memory a stray dream can teach
These mortal vistas no dreamer should own

Poem of the day, a new one entitled 'CRIME SCENE'
Books/CDs available @ www.philburdett.com
Please support your independent local artists.

CRIME SCENE

There’s a tenderness only found in the past
It often seeps from the creases of photographs
Blinded by sunlight, a long dead sunlight
Young people mock their future selves
By acting the fool or climbing a slide
Rude in health & providence
The ravine between us is too vast
& in these fading halls nobody laughs
I hang in the sticky web of coming night
Searching for echoes in putrefying shelves
Killing time is a murder well justified
It’s an act of self-defence

Phil Burdett Home page of Phil Burdett, an americana artist from southend-on-sea

Today's poem; A new one called 'DO YOU REMEMBER?' A strange flashback to a Wreckless Eric gig & a drunken traveller girl...

DO YOU REMEMBER?

Somewhere it was
That much & more I know
The strange little reckless man
Frog-voiced & sodium-lit
Glares & sighs
Down at us through coughing smoke
The guitar is atonal & scratchy
A distant buzz-saw slicing logs
& the dogs bark in my heart

Somewhere, yes
& the beer was sticking peanuts to the bar
As we held hands
Through the heartbreaking rush of noise
You said there was
A bottle of sweet sherry
On the window sill at your bedsit
We could stay up late
Fill the room with smoke
& shout poetry

Now, a thousand years later
A lump of life
Is regurgitated on YouTube
It can be repeated but I won’t repeat
I can’t see us there
I can’t smell the stale beer
Its taunting is worse than ghosts

The hand-held camera fixes it fast
Even muted it saddens my day
A memory of the tribal tumult
The communal wave with you as its shore
Was just a drunken mob waving tattooed arms
Semaphore signals from a forgotten world

Today's new poem 'CARRY ON AL FRESCO'

Buy books/CDs at www.philburdett.com
Support your local artistes by buying their work

CARRY ON AL FRESCO

A cold caravan
Hole in the roof, stainless-steel sink
Towed by an Austin Maxi
I could be anywhere in these hunchback hills of Albion
Anywhere in these rutted backroads of occasional horses
Nodding & chewing across an iron gate
Better than a druggy hotel or singing the blues for free
No, give me the shivering queue for toilets
Where we mumble the weather & clutch rough towels

I will lose my belief in nature here
Sneak up on the danger from behind
Instead of writing cryptic poems to the vain city
Breathe out Barbara – throw wide
Your arms you saucy Barbie doll
Let your breasts explode the bikini top
Across the startled face of Kenneth, sexless
With his blazer & swooping, disinfected vowels
Orton’s kicks & pricks worry his dream states
Slow lingers the lens on humiliation & disgust

Soon the rain will start
I may borrow my neighbour’s guitar
He played when we sat around the campfire last night
& caressing it I shall break your heart
With someone else’s song

The deer pauses in a gap in the smoky morning trees
The sun sneaks between horizon & unmade clouds
On the camp stove in a tiny pan
Two eggs seep into bacon
Sid brays & ruts in the meadow
& a chicken gargles in the spooky barn

The wives have turned up unexpectedly
To offer eternal chastity & slow-cooked boredom
A music festival is setting up in the next field
They are drilling peep-holes
In the shower cubicle wall
Soon it will be time to take tea & Angel Cake
Put the kettle on, re-light the windows of the city
Starchy potatoes baste in the juices
Of the bird of paradise – the cricketers
Tapping in the stumps with bats as the linseed rises
Walk on beneath that heavy flag
Walk on, England – onward my crushed rose!

Phil Burdett Home page of Phil Burdett, an americana artist from southend-on-sea

New poem for today
'THE DEATH OF EXPECTATION
Books/CDs available at www.philburdett.com
Please buy the work of independent artistes in this difficult time of plague

THE DEATH OF EXPECTATION

Sitting in my quiet storm of books
As dusk comforts a wounded rain
& cold coffee thickens in mugs
A split-screen effect broadens the lesson

The riots are like documentaries of ’68
The colours are sharper & the masks
Are for the germs more than to hide their faces
More snowy heads get tanned in the sodium beams
Petrol roars its approval through a messenger of fire

My peanuts are coated with coconut
They are very beautiful & I eat too many
There are squirrels chasing each other
Up & down the neighbour’s fence
I’m speaking from a place of privilege, you understand?

I’m slightly over
My recommended weight
Here in the death of expectations

There are others on the ward
All our families are dead or indifferent
They buy shoes in the mall or rent films
Sexless & blistered they mow a thousand lawns

The police are moving protesters back up the burning street
Exhausted rocks form a harmless parabola in grey smoke
I have a dead arm
From my bad sedentary posture

God spoke to me last year but I wasn’t in the mood
I can get my dreams from the newspapers
Every house I know smells of cat-food & deodorant
Every shed a dusty home to a motorbike in bits

The president is waving from a helicopter
High above the bubbling tarmac of the city
High above the love & failure & exquisite crowds
The rotor-blades drown the communal singers

Someone asks the camera ‘Is this the news?’
It is another day in the death of expectation

& the washing machine screams & screams
I think the drum is loose, needs oil, or something
I’ll see to it when necessity calls again
With its blue gloves & hair ablaze
Lurking at my door like a lonely Christian salesman

The barbecue sits sulking in the cupboard under the sink
Where it is always winter & tomorrow happens

We must uphold standards
Even as the community falters
We have to stay calmer than we care to be
My head is my heart
When my heart is failing

Phil Burdett Home page of Phil Burdett, an americana artist from southend-on-sea

Today's poem; A new one...
Books/CDs available at www.philburdett.com
Please help local artistes buy purchasing their work....

APATHY WALTZ

There are no more steps to the old wily dance
For ages we swept the echoing floor
Our feet mapping love on the tiles no more
The sailor has changed not the sea
Now love dwells happier in absence
Than in rooms it left for me

Phil Burdett Home page of Phil Burdett, an americana artist from southend-on-sea

Today's poem is from the book
'RHYMING VODKA WITH KAFKA'
available at www.philburdett.com

ROCK & ROLL WILL NEVER DIE #2

Well it was one for the money
& no girl showed
Three years getting ready
For the merciless road
Blue brothel creepers
Shifty in wallflower shadows
At the dim party
Where first I heard Blitzkrieg Bop
& agreed to see you tomorrow by the jetty
Your moony face
A succulent mask of broken pity
Crumbs of cake stuck on your lower lip
Spastic thump of floor-tom
As vinyl discs warped & slowed
Then we bumped like drunken dodgems
Through skunk-smoke in a crazed lock-step
With wailing kleptomaniac spectres of a walled-off sound
At last alone & kissing lazily
wordless on the thick stone doorstep blurred & frantic
When I got to the beach
There was nobody around

Phil Burdett Home page of Phil Burdett, an americana artist from southend-on-sea

Todays poem; A new one called 'MOONSHOT'

MOONSHOT

Dog barks at a bird in the tree
Barking still as the bird flies
The astronauts float tenderly
Colossal babies placidly ricocheting
Off the cables & dials
Just a speck of flame
A meteor of machinery
Fizzing over the map of our kindness
The last wheeze of a firework
Or the small talk of a tired sea
The bird a black cinder now almost gone
The dog barks one last time
& turns away to stare at the fence
Behind which no traffic passes
It is perplexed by everything
Birds leaving, spaceships & most of all
The raging road’s extraordinary silence

Poem for today...one from 'RHYMING VODKA WITH KAFKA' entitled 'FAIRGROUND LEAVING TOWN'
Buy the book & other stuff at www.philburdett.com

FAIRGROUND LEAVING TOWN

Up & about, 5a.m.
Heavy mist blurs the fairground
Almost ready to leave town
Coddled heaps of tarpaulin – elephants of hush
A sense of fun that has long been had
A fun that now sleeps
On cool grassy mud beneath rainy folds
The dew dripping from the carousel awning
Smoking nervously, silent as glass
Dangerous, swarthy boys tie the tent-flaps down
Always frightened, I was, by the sounds
Squeezing together – notes tangled, pulses
Of yelped words – voices
Twisted around twigs of brittle silence
Failing to be heard
& the leaves, cascading in my autumnal brain

No more the shock
Of fathomless lights & haunted noises
No more the thunderous cup of fear waltzes
Mud tracks between the dodgems
& it is harder to care
When who becomes where & down is up
When passenger turns driver
& the prize won at the fair
Is carried by fathers forever
& when the falling water pauses
It is a shame to make words It is hard to be too clever
As truth becomes daring & melts the candy floss
& all the old balls-ache
About this or that prayer
Rises & falls with the dumb bright horses
Toffee apple suns & tropical birds
Brought slowly to a final halt
Packed like doomed meat into growling lorries

Phil Burdett Home page of Phil Burdett, an americana artist from southend-on-sea

Poem of the day...a new one...
Buy the old ones at www.philburdett.com

OLD-FASHIONED CHRISTMAS CARDS

Whipped solstice winds once crooned in trees of vivid snow
& the hymnals they sang were of death & old battles
But none of us cared – let them bleat their litanies
Sledges gunning down the marshmallow fissures
White faces torn red in hurled machete sleet
Bags of tinsel dragged from under-stairs with our morals
Baubles swell the breathless reddening gurns
Resisting the sloppy aunt’s kiss before they go
A morbid saviour’s hush broken by trenchant carols
Ring out as the stuck-glue, glittery crosses burn
I will go there again & cross that moon-white sea
Crushing boot-prints into its audacity

A bridge here – rises from a patch by the water’s dance
I remember it – yes, soft rain & the damp stone’s clung
To each other, a rug of moss stretched dew-moist, taut
Yellow ivy wings spreading as the hung midges pounced
It never really existed – the simple swerve of gravel path
Where you & I strummed hand-decorated guitars & sang
The passers-by dimmed with the lamps & died for all we knew
No delicate engine of river prayer rang out – here, ensconced
In ballads that were bellows to the late blue embers
In needling calls of blown geese flung across the sky
I will go there & cross that bridge again
Before it falls in a different rain

Phil Burdett Home page of Phil Burdett, an americana artist from southend-on-sea