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Likestarlings is a place for talking in poems. We pair poets with poets and they write a sequence of six new works by responding in turn to one another. Our palaver blog goes beyond poetry to discuss collaboration in theory and in practice. Please take a look, and feel free to add comments, opinions and suggestions here. Read poems here
 

Catch Up


You're awkward without a Guinness,
stir with suspicion, inspect the sugar cubes
as though they are a new invention.
It seems a shame to interrupt the scene
by stepping in beneath the awning.

But our hello is a gang of pigeons, erupting.
Our goodbye a plate, somewhere inside, breaking.
In between, we talk the magnificence
of solitude; the clarity of mind it can bring;
how, like a wet finger on the rim of a glass,

the silence can make the muse sing.
In our love for privacy we are kept apart,
united in mutually-assured destruction.
In life's complicated affairs, well -
that's the closest it gets to perfection.