1st April, 2016

Friday Poem – Flamingos

Our Friday poem is from the Costa Award-winning book of poetry, My Family and Other Superheroes, by Jonathan Edwards. It is titled ‘Flamingos’ and is being turned into a dance! The humor of the poem makes for an ideal April Fools’ Day piece for all to enjoy.

My Family and Other Superheroes introduces a vibrant and unique new voice from Wales. The superheroes in question are a motley crew. Evel Knievel, Sophia Loren, Ian Rush, Marty McFly, a bicycling nun and a recalcitrant hippo – all leap from these pages and jostle for position, alongside valleys mams, dads and bamps, described with great warmth. Other poems focus on the crammed terraces and abandoned high streets where a working-class and Welsh nationalist politics is hammered out. This is a post-industrial valleys upbringing re-imagined through the prism of pop culture and surrealism.

Who spray-painted the swans? You dilly–dally, 
       shilly-shally in the shallow end
on Meccano legs, your day a foot massage, 
       curve your neck into a clothes hanger
            for your rose-hue tutu and your feather boa.

You’re every little girl’s dream, a shock, a flock 
       of neon signs, advertising candyfloss.
Why do you blush so much? Each time you eat,
       you have to kiss the you-shaped bird who floats
            in the lake surface, steal food from its throat.

February. Outside’s a place of grey
       line managers, timetabled rain, the bus.
But with your silly-billy,Vegas waitress, 
       camouflage-for-a-world-of-joy body,
            Fuck that, you say, let’s all be fabulous.


Buy your copy now.