I write poetry for publication and performance: as song-lyrics and for
exhibition in visual art forms of my own creation, or in collaboration with
others.I have performed at literary and arts festivals including Ways With Words at Dartington, Torbay Poetry Festival, Glastonbury Festival of Performing Arts, Larmer Tree Festival, Croissant Neuf Summer party, and the Electric Picnic, Ireland. Also at many cabaret, fund-raising, open-mike, and rural events in Devon.
I also run poetry and creative writing workshops, classes and courses. Details and dates of these are in the 'events' section of this site.
I am a committee member of 'Moor Poets' which is a community
based, poetry training and development network.
I am committed to promoting the profile of poetry and poets in society:
- to encourage the
potential of poetry, which affirms personal and cultural identity and expression
- to enable
personal and community development
- to enrich mainstream education and
influence other establishments
- for my enjoyment.
Occasionally, I organise independent poetry
events with other poets, and participate in collaborative projects. These include several projects with published poet Mim Darlington, as literary duo 'The Honey Tongues', and with performance poet Dennis Just Dennis, with our show based on the 'Poets Political Party'.
Me & Dennis on the billboard with poetry heroes! Electric Picnic, Ireland, 2008
Mim & Lucy as 'The Honey Tongues'
In Devon where I am based, there are many communities of poets and collaborative projects which thrive, as does a strong ethos of mutual support, friendship, and vive la difference.
I perform poetry best suited to performance; seek publication elsewhere for
words best enjoyed from the page; and use extracts from these or produce new
work, or provide 'found' poetry, for individual or collaborative work in visual
arts media.
I produce booklets, CDs or cards in support of exhibitions and performances.
Alan Titchmarsh, competition judge, Chelsea Flower Show poetry competition 2005
"A wonderfully accessible, life-affirming poet with great range, bold imagery, warmth and wit. I'd recommend anyone to listen to Lucy Lepchani'
Matt Harvey, poet and broadcaster.
SHORT STORIES
I also write short stories for publication, most notably ‘The Monarch’, publ.
in anthology ‘Shoe Fly Baby’, Bloomsbury, 2004, and which won second
place in the Asham Literary Awards 2003/4; and ‘Emma’s World,’ accepted
for ‘My Weekly’ magazine 2004. Earlier short stories 'The Family Tree' and
'Ancient Thera' have also won honourable mentions in the Library of Avalon
short story competition.
I am currently working (slowly!) towards
completing an anthology of short stories and a first novel.
Some examples of published and unpublished creative work
(all works, in part or in full, are copyright and may not be reproduced in any
medium, without permission from the author)
Extract from ‘The Monarch’
One by one I
named all of the butterflies in the pictures, some of which I had learned to
identify only the evening before, from the same book; and some of which were
almost as familiar as my own family. Dad’s eyes twinkled with delight; he loved
it when I got things right.
“Well done, lad. Well done. Do you know, when I was a boy in India, some of
these butterflies were exotic to me. Here, they’re all over the bloody place!
Annie, he got them all right, isn’t that good?”
“Mmm, lovely,” said my mother, more interested in the pages of her
Mills and
Boon novel “perhaps he should have some pocket-money to go to the
shops.” She was near the end of her book, and we recognized the
expression, the
posture, the small flicker of her steely grey eyes as they beamed into
the
pages. It meant: “Do not disturb me. Interrupt at your peril.”
“Half-a-crown,” said Dad, “and yes, you can spend it all on sweets if you like.
Just don’t worry about your teeth all falling out, at least you know all your
butterflies.” Dad, proud and awkward, gave me the coin he fished from his
pocket.
“Can you get some shopping too, Michael?” said Mum, in a distant, faraway tone.
“Give him a fiver, Viknesh, there’s a list in the kitchen.”
“A fiver? How much shopping you bloody want him to get?” and Dad walked out of
the room. I stood before Mum, uncomfortably turning over the half-a-crown in my
hand. She looked up at me briefly and smiled, then turned back to her book.
“Will my football kit be ready for Monday, Mum? I put it in the wash yesterday
eve…” She interrupted with a loud sigh, and without looking up, said:
“Yes, yes.” And she was back in the arms of her fantasy hero once again.
“There’s a whole weekend’s shop here. He can’t bloody carry all this by…”
“Yes he can.”
“We’ll drive to the supermarket. Doesn’t look much like we’re doing anything
else this bloody weekend, does it?” Mum didn’t answer, or even look up at Dad.
She turned a page gracefully.
“Get your jacket, Michael. You have to help me.
Come on, let’s go.” Dad took his jacket from the peg in the hall and turned to leave the
house. He was angry, but he was letting it simmer down rather than boil up.
Mum, she was like ice. I knew she was angry but I didn’t know why, and the fact
that she held it inside her, poised and brittle, scared me.
published in the short story anthology 'Shoe Fly Baby' (Bloomsbury, isbn 0-7475-6686-0) 2004 and won second prize
in The Asham Literary Awards, 2003/4)
A Poet’s
Manifesto
Poetry should not live in books on
shelves, all covered in dust.
From now on, it should be written on the
stripes of zebras
that run on the Savannah
announced in vapour trails of aeroplanes,
engraved on the glass of morning
milk-bottles,
alongside bite-sized mini-quotes on cereal
boxes,
and printed, in rhyming couplets, onto all
utility bills.
Limericks should be placed on big blue
signs up and down the motorways,
sonnets onto street-maps, and kennings
strung aloft miles of festival bunting,
haiku iced over cakes in the bakers shop
window,
and all the morning papers should filled
with the works
of Benjamin Zephaniah and William Blake.
But let it not be, that just published
poets
should hold this worthy court:
let every scribbler and scrawler, every
closet wordsmith,
be illuminated by this craft!
Or let our words appear in thought bubbles
floating importantly overhead,
while children call revolting rhymes
and rude recitations around the playground
daily.
There should be reams of rhymes of
graffiti in our cities,
and police should learn to rap to rhythms
of flat-foot plod
as all good citizens uphold the law
according to Pablo Neruda, Aphra Behn and
e.e. cummings.
in the NHS, nurses shall croon soothingly
to their patients about
" ...hosts of golden daffodils", or,
"...rage, rage against the dying of the light”
while doctors prescribe twice daily verses
of Rumi,
or Marge Piercy, or John Cooper Clark
while military forces are issued with arms
to hug
and will shout out from megaphones,
microphones, minarets,
the best works of our peace poets
while all weapons are melted down
and made into statues of Wilfred Owen,
Emily Dickinson,
Rupert Brooke and Ken Saro-Wiwa.
This good earth will be safe and free,
beneath the grace of poetry!
You think these politics absurd?
This will make our country great; or I’ll
eat my words.
from 'The Wisdom of Bees' CD and included in Poets Political Party performances with poet Dennis Just Dennis
Conversation
The zig-zag of
their consonants buzz and curve as
if they have sawed
their language, sharp with silver
tongues.
I tell this to Ania
and she translates
the joke to friends. Laughter scatters -
the same in any language.
How does English
sound to the Polish ear?
I ask.
Her reply is
immediate accented by a
smile.
“Like circles,” she
says “circles inside
circles.”
We spend the
afternoon rippled in
conversation.
From 'Immigrants, Migrants, Native Species' exhibit, Mythic Garden, Dartmoor
Blacksmith
Blacksmith is his own hot myth
and draws from it, an underworldly glow.
Illuminating the mettle of self
he feasts us with mysteries
wrought from flame and forge-wrung sweat
and spirit that leaps from the dark.
His hammer-head, chipped from Thor’s own
beats on anvil’s back
in Hell-sprung heat:
evoking the ringing of magical metalwork
chiming and rhyming in echoing air
and from it summons
his heart’s dark art
transmuting the pig-headed
smoulder-fist bulk
with the graft
and grip of his craft
and with tempering, tempering, tempering:
he tenderly shapes where the furnace-eye blaze
and the genius grace of his hands.
Exhibited as part of the collection ‘A Spotters Guide
to Sculptors and Sculpture’ in sculpted wooden book (made by Sean Hellman – see
www.seanhellman.com) at MythicGardenSculpturePark,
Chagford, Devon
The Ballad of
Chelsea Flower Show
From the humid glass-house empires
to the subtle spring-time border,
the genius of gardeners
has set its house in order
as a thousand busy shovels and a million pairs of hands
have transplanted and transported fleets of flora through the land.
There were juggernauts of jasmine
there were trucks transporting trees
and palettes of petunias
that scent the May-time breeze;
there were lorry-loads of lavender, and every perfect rose
tearing swiftly down the motorways to Chelsea’s
Flower show.
Now here, are dainty flower-heads;
exotic, gaudy blooms;
and countless, coloured flower-beds
expiring sweet perfumes,
offset by architecture and experimental art,
here in Chelsea, at the flower-show,
a tonic for the heart.
The crowds all gasp, and wonder;
they say ‘wow!’ cry ‘oooh’s and ‘aaah’s
and they’ll dream of floribunda
when they leave in trains and cars.
Time passes; flowers wither; leaves will fall and petals fade:
but Chelsea
lives forever in the glory that was made.
Won first prize, Chelsea Flower Show Poetry Competition 2005
September
Sonnet
September spans
her languid days to autumn’s edge,
in Midas’ thrall and summer
ember-glows where rays spin kindled
light beneath their fall. This polished
drama rests and plays on centre stage,
as each and all things underneath
the still, blue gaze applaud in
bronzed resplendent sprawl. Then, clouds roll
in and change the scene as new
percussions strike the breeze to challenge all
that once was green and sketch stark
backdrops of the trees: stripped bare by
North Wind’s wild burlesque - to twisted wisps
of arabesque
From 'Seeing the Wood Through the Trees' exhibition, High Moorland Visitor Centre, Dartmoor
Billy’s Car
Volcano hot
and red as lobster
Billy’s fast car gleams and shines,
beat-box throbs in hot-rod dragster
engine whirrs a throaty whine.
Billy’s pride
and race-track joy
has reputation far and fast,
icon that makes man a boy
and king, from back-street kid, at last.
If Son-of-God
was six feet tall
if Billy’s beaming grin was stars
if chequered flag was Lord of All -
the world would worship racing cars
but CO2 fumes
take their toll
and oil bleeds nations into wars
and Billy wonders that his soul
should race towards a greater cause.
And how his
sweetheart frets and fusses!
How her fears feed storms and strife!
She wants to buy a fleet of buses
live a cleaner, greener life.
Billy can’t
give up the races
can’t give up the speed or thrills
knows the finish line he faces -
all alone. Truth hurts. Speed kills.
Unpublished, performance poem
My Grandmother in Sikkim
My Grandmother in Sikkim is dust, and is scattered to the wind. Footprints she left in mountain snow have run to rivers, long ago.
Those lands of her ancestral home hold faded whispers of her bones - and yet across time’s span I hear and feel her presence standing near,
and moments from her life unfold to speak in my mind, voiceless told. They rise to thrive from hidden dark and light a fire with vivid spark
as history within me, stirs, embraces passions that were hers and images I have never known wake memories as if were my own.
They echo like an ancient song; call to my heart, beat to belong where orchids spill and magnolias rise where ice-white pinnacles pierce the sky .
No breadth of land that spans this earth divides us, nor will death or birth; connection to all kith and kin belongs always, beyond the skin.
The past is not lost, it is just mislaid by deals that time and truth once made, and prayers whispered long ago still have their own force, their own flow
to cleanse the wounds that lies arranged with tongues that speak, for peaceful change. No Empire now, to stem that flood. Myths reawaken in my blood.
Available on 'The Wisdom of Bees' CD
Haiku:
‘Money is status’
say our designer labels.
The heart is silent.
All works, in part or in full, are copyright and may not be
reproduced in any medium, without permission from the author, unless for use within educational establishments.
to browse or listen to more poetry by Lucy Lepchani: