Ama Bolton

AMA BOLTON, a former member of the Liverpool School of Language Music Dream and Pun, is the Poetry Society Stanza Rep for Wells. She has performed at Bath Fringe, Bristol, Wells, Swindon, Winchester and Aldeburgh festival events and at Keats House and The Poetry Café in London. Her poems have appeared in various magazines and on-line and in anthologies including Bridport Prize 2008, when she won 3^rd prize: in other years she has been on the Bridport short-list four times. She is a contributing member of Bath Writers and Artists, and appears irregularly on Glastonbury FM. In her chequered career she has been a singer/bass player with a bluegrass band, computer programmer, caterer, textile artist, teacher, homeopath’s assistant, artist’s model and gardener. She edits and publishes her own and other people’s poetry in small handmade editions.

Here are a couple of recent (2019) poems. Caffe Nero is included in the anthology “A Poem for Europe”, and The Bad-news Bird  is in the 2019 Winchester Poetry Prizewinners’ anthology.

The poem below was awarded a “Highly Commended” at Torbay Festival of Poetry in October 2016, and was read at the Fountain Poets’ November 2016 meeting.

The poem below was  published in the Poetry Space 2014 anthology “For Want of a Better Word”, and was read at the Fountain Poets’ December 2014 meeting. It has also featured on Glastonbury FM.

Brown Sugar

It’s Advent in Morrisons
and, thank God,
they’re not playing carols on the PA.

Instead it’s Jagger
who puts a smile on my face
with Brown Sugar

not loud enough to hear the words
over the ping ping ping
of cash-registers

but there’s a spring in my step
as I swing down Aisle 6
humming along with Mick.

How come you taste so good?
I ask the avocados – soul-food
ready to eat and 50p off

consult the shopping-list
Doin’ alright, I whisper
to a fist of fresh ginger

I said yeah, I said
pick up a bag
of Muscovado

pay and get out of here
before some guy starts telling me
to have myself a merry little

…

The haiku below was chosen for inclusion in the British Haiku Society 2013 Anthology. The theme was “Time”.

cracked sepia
the same furniture
in another house

…

I am one of the editors of “The Listening Walk”, a new anthology that includes the work of several members of the Fountain group. The link for those in USA is here.

This is one of my poems from “The Listening Walk”. It won second prize in The Plough Competition in 2010. It was written on the back of an envelope while I was riding on the back of a motorbike. A Honda 750 with home-made side-car, since you ask.

Adagio for Honda and Cattle

We meet head-on in a narrow lane
and stop the bike to let them pass.
Switch off the engine. Lark-song. A bumble-bee.
Soft patter of hooves. The world moves at their pace.

They lurch and lumber, lugging heavy bags,
swish flies and snatch mouthfuls of grass.

Behind them the white-face bull,
all maleness and muscular grace,
sleek-suited, light on his feet,
swings his brown purse.

 

My book-art, and several poems, can be seen at barleybooks.wordpress.com

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