Blog The Anti-Valentine’s Poetry Party Deep in lockdown what I crave is contact, skin-to-skin intimacy, the friction of a lover’s voice in my ear. But let’s turn it inside out, let it include all love in all directions, and even the vacuum of its loss. So this was Poet in the City with Nikita Gill (as presiding Goddess) holding an Anti-Valentine’s Poetry Party where we as friends, patrons and enthusiasts could bring any poem to celebrate love and its inversions. Nikita started us off with The Women I Know: I call them: my sisters, goddesses and the moon.I tell them they glow more radiantWith each passing spring and monsoon. Salena Godden’s Soup, a love song to diversity, managed to be angry and warm and funny all at the same time, and gave in its bowl of flavours a taste of the delicious poems each person would bring. Reading through them now, what strikes me is how rich we are as a community of poetry lovers. Most I had never read or heard, every one is a new path to take or a secret vault. This is what brings me to Poet in the City events: the chance to be nudged out of my cloistered preferences into something unexpected. Menna Elfyn’s love poem to poetry, to her hero R S Thomas, and to the Welsh language took us deeper in; while Mary Oliver brought us back out, up to mystic, transcendent nature worship. Not all was sweet and nice. John Webster’s Duchess of Malfi and Dorothy Parker’s Symptom Recital brought us the bitterness of barren hearts and jaded lassitude, but at the turn of the last line, hope: “I’m due to fall in love again.” I love the chance to share favourites - how Kama the God of Love (of Kama Sutra fame) lost his life to Shiva’s fiery anger as he tried to shoot the deity with his mango-blossom darts. It’s Kama’s wife Rati’s lament I find so beautiful: As she rose up she said “Lord of my Life, Are you alive?” and saw the man-like shape Impressed on earth in front of her, just ashRemaining from the fire of Shiva’s wrath. “Why have you abandoned me whose lifeDepends on you? You broke love instantlyAnd fled like water from a dam-burst tank:You left a lotus stranded in the mud.Kalidasa: Kumara-sambhava (Birth of the Prince)(author’s translation) From Sanskrit of the ancient past to the poets of Twitter, Instagram and Pinterest - What I Would Tell You by Lang Leav seems coeval with this and these following pieces, so intricate is its ambivalence. It could easily match Lord Byron or John Donne in their narcissistic or audacious break-up poems. For love turned to hate for the other, and then putrefying into hate for oneself, read Havisham by Carol Ann Duffy. Perhaps Miss Havisham should have taken Wendy Cope’s advice: 1. Don't see him. Don't phone or write a letter.2. The easy way: get to know him better. Or following Yeats she could have slipped into senescent meditation: And bending down beside the glowing bars,Murmur, a little sadly, how Love fled How more weird is the poem’s world of love than prose can say? And it’s practical too: where else would you get Rachel Long’s advice on bra padding with white sliced bread? the boys have clocked the difference betweena tissue and a tit, a sock and a tit, but not quite yeta tit and a slice of bread. By the end of lockdown we all have Zoom-fatigue, but looking at this list and remembering the thrill of discovering each poem in each person's voice, I have to say it works so well as a medium for a poetry party. I’d happily do it again. Here is the list - dip into it and enjoy! The Women I Know – Nikita GillSoup – Salena GoddenHandkerchief Kiss (Cusan Hances) by Menna ElfynWhen I Am Among the Trees – Mary OliverMonologue from The Duchess of Malfi – John WebsterSymptom Recital – Dorothy ParkerThe Expiration – John DonnePoem: Walk – Ray AlbanoDream of a Curious Man – Charles BaudelaireOne Week in April – Charlie MillsThe Skunk – Seamus Heaney When We Parted – Lord ByronRati’s Lament – Kalidasa’s KumarasambhavaWhat I Would Tell You – Lang LeavWhen You Are Old – WB YeatsWild Geese – Mary OliverTwo Cures for Love – Wendy CopeHavisham – Carol Ann DuffyLove Letter Burning – Daniel HallToday I Saw Myself For The First Time – Rupi KaurLate Fragment – Raymond CarverThe Story of Broken – Poonam LumbIn Memory of My Mother – Patrick KavanaghThe Wife – Emily DickinsonWisdom in the Water – R QueenNegative Space – Keisha ThompsonDust if you Must – Rose MilliganSandwiches - Rachel LongA Portable Paradise – Roger RobinsonMy Address – Amrita Pritam