Alan Pulverness: Starting the conference on creative literary activities for all

The two poems Alan presented:

Nice neighbourhood, great country

My wife is such a light sleeper
That when I come home late
After a night out with the boys
I always remove my shoes
And leave them at the bottom
Of the street

Image my surprise, when
On retrieving them this morning
I discovered that they had been
Polished

What a nice neighbourhood I live in.
What a great country this is.

Roger McGough

Alan displayed Roger McGough’s poem, but for the last two lines he only showed us the two “What a …” phrases. He asked the group to work out what the rest of the sentences could be.

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Finders Keepers

This morning on the way to Charing Cross
I found a stiff upper lip
Lying there on the train seat

Finders Keepers
I was tempted to scream

But something about that stiff upper lip
left me speechless

It looked so abandoned so unloved
like a frozen glove
nobody bothers to pick up

I could not bear to hand in
that stiff upper lip
to the Lost & Found

So I made a place for it
in the lining of my coat pocket

and I said
Come with me to the Third World

You go thaw off

John Agard

Here Alan displayed the poem, leaving out “stiff upper lip”. He asked the group to guess what the person might have found  on their way to Charing Cross station.