The World's Longest Poem

See more on this project

We've now converted the 1215 lines of the existing poem and we will now be adding all of the contributions which have come flooding in during the last few weeks, as Gez Walsh travels the length and breadth of the UK and, indeed, beyond, performing and appearing in schools and libraries and at festivals. If you've recently sent us something, watch out for it appearing in the next couple of weeks or so!

WHAT'S IT ALL ABOUT?
Famous Potty Poet, Gez Walsh, is hoping to add the title "Guinness World Record Holder” to his many accomplishments. He’s aiming to produce the world’s longest collaborative poem!

There have been many famous long poems in literary history, of course, from the Babylonian Epic of Gilgamesh to Anglo-Saxon sagas such as Beowulf, through Medieval poems such as The Canterbury Tales, via Paradise Lost and Wordsworth’s Prelude …

All of which are very tough acts to follow: Gez is unfazed by this, but he needs the help of all you unsung poets out there:

"What makes my idea different is that it will be a collaborative effort,” he says. "People still think of poetry as essentially a solitary activity, with the lonely poet sitting up in his attic, sighing about his lost love. Nothing could be further from the truth! -We're going back to the original roots of poetry, when people would gather round the campfire and swop epic tales of heroes, villains, monsters, myth and magic.

One other important difference between Gez's poem and its epic predecessors is that it will be created online and this is another factor, says Gez, which will promote co-operation and inclusivity. Gez believes the internet can be liberating. "The internet is the modern equivalent of gathering round the campfire to tell tales and stories. It's just that now, the camp fire is a global one, and everyone is welcome. As long as people stick to the basic structure and any rhythm or rhyme scheme that is going on - or invent their own," says Gez, "they can take the poem where they like, subject to the normal standards of taste and decency and some basic legal considerations - which, in Potty Poetry, are set pretty low!" What else would you expect from the poet laureate of flatulence?

Torch Song by Steve Rudd

On the day of the royal wedding (29th April 2011) and on the day before, the police arrested dozens of people pre-emptively. People who had not committed any crimes were arrested, often handcuffed, and detained in police cells.  – News Report

I’d like to race in the ‘Lympics
But I’m guessing I must stay put
Because I’m in a wheelchair -
I have no athlete’s foot

I’d like to jump in the ‘Lympics
I’d wear my new pullover
If I thought there was the slightest chance
Of meeting “Fee-up-and-over”

I’d like to dive in the ‘Lympics
But it could be a pain
Cos’ I’d have to be para-plegic
And I don’t even own a ‘plane!

I’d like to swim in the ‘Lympics
Ambitions, I sure gottem:
But sadly, metal does not float,
And I’d end up on the bottom!

I’d like to compete in the ‘Lympics
Despite all the problems and bugs
And every day I’d strain, and train,
By taking a cocktail of drugs!

But I rather think that the ‘Lympics
Are a bit of a waste of space
Until and unless we disableds
Can rejoin the human race

Cause it seems to me at the moment
That patriotism is rife
But it don’t extend to the ill and the poor
Who are struggling with everyday life

It’s OK to cheer on our athletes
It’s OK to wave at the Queen
But it might get you arrested
To say that great wealth is obscene

‘Cause some in this land are speeding ahead
Without any handicap
While the rest of us are left plodding behind
And bearing their burdens through crap

I’ve had my fill of the ‘Lympics
Let alone the para-sequel
I don’t know why we should celebrate
When things are so unequal

So here’s an idea for the ‘Lympics,
For you would-be torchbearers to learn;
Use it to set fire to Parliament,
And then watch the buggers burn.

Patience by Steve Rudd

Those that tend fires require

A special form of patience

Watching through the window, winter-long

While the rain streaks; patience of a saint

Then, after bare grey days, at last

Catkins on branches unfurl daily until

The stumbling bee finally arrives

Late and cold like the spring at last

And the badger comes at night, or dusk

Rooting up the garden, from dark woods behind;

With patience to stay wakeful, and the stamina

You may glimpse its fleeting stripes by moonlight

Patience can make time pass quick or slow

Reconciling, days go by, like a pack of cards

Being shuffled and cut, and shuffled again

Jokers are always wild, spread out the deck

Red queen on black king; as pastimes go

It’s right up there with watching drying paint

Or having faith that things will ever change

Carry your cards, clock in, clock out, clock off

Have patience, they say; spring is coming -

It will come; it always does, sit tight

And tend your fire, and cultivate your garden

Long green spring evenings, now it’s light

But I was always better at starting fires

Than tending them, never saw the point

Of patience as a virttue (or a vice)

It’s not as if there’s ever any option…

Just sit there, and be a little patient

Tending your fire, not getting rash, taking your meds

In case your ever-coursing arteries harden

One day, if you’re patient, things may better!

One day, a lifetime’s end away from now.

Watch and learn, boy, watch and learn;

Life is what happens while you’re being patient.

Invisible Mending by Steve Rudd

Getting dressed, in chill before-dawn dark
One of those dull cold mornings, cursing,
I put my foot straight through a trouser turnup:

Now, my pants hang, sag, sadly over shoe,
Adding to my general dereliction -
A stitch in time was needed, ah yes

If only we knew, with perfect hindsight
The point where we should have stuck
The needle in, to intervene, to save

The need for later pins and needles
Pain jabbing – only a stitch, they say,
And you’ll soon run it off

A stitch in time saves nine; nine tailors makes a man,
Stitching surrounds us daily, like tapestry -
All of those needles, always waiting

Needles, sharp, fine, or hollow, hunting for a thread
But even caught in time, I do not think
There’s such a thing as invisible mending –

You rip what you sew; Euripides, Eumenides,
Your gentle “hem” is always ignored,
And life sharpens its needles, day by day

On worries worn as flat as rune-stones
Or pebbles in my shoe, the one that I stuck through
The web of cloth I tore by clumsiness

And so eventually, with the sense of an ending,
You’re forced to hunt the thimble, do your best
(In olden days, they’d sew you in a vest

each winter, underneath pincushion clouds)
Patches on patches, and hope your stitches hold,
Your needle swinging always to mag north

Follow it blindly on the rocks
And you may find they sew you into sailcloth,
The last stitch through your nose

I should watch where I put my feet
And tread more carefully: it’s always easier
To have a care, than try and mend a tear

Friends Reunited by Steve Rudd

Now that I’m pushing sixty, I spend time,

Much more time than I used to, looking back

Instead of forwards. Back, over my shoulder,

Down the hill of years, stand long-demolished pubs

Where we sank our first illicit pints, in streets, levelled now,

Where we had rare, exotic snogs at bus-stops,

Or, more often, disappointed, caught the last train home.

Was that even me, those years ago?

I’m not looking for my lost youth,

I know exactly where he is, he’s prisoner

Inside flat planes of photographs,

Black and white, I know him all too well

Awkward and gawky, John Lennon glasses,

Flares and tennis shoes, back in the days

Before they got called `trainers’.

Places like this don’t help: my past’s online

As if I was already history’s exhibit. Why am I here?

Because my old school friend (now lives in Wales!)

Sent me a “link” to click on, and up pops

This photo, taken 1967; both the message

And the medium of transmission, wireless through air,

Would have seemed witchcraft to us, way back then.

Boothferry Playing Fields, yeah, there we are,

Boys and girls both, fixed in our best blue uniforms,

Like specimens in a museum diorama;

Staring out into a future that became unravelled,

Lots of different lives, shorter for some than others,

Blank pages, still to be written, tangled skeins

Ravelling and unravelling again, blood in new veins,

New names to be grafted onto vacant branches

Of the budding family tree.

Their eyes ask what I want of them, especially the girls,

With their prim white kneesocks; that’s easy answered!

I want the same thing now I wanted then, but more so!

Though `now’ would be more difficult, for me, `now’ would involve

Me ironing out my wrinkles, standing up (a miracle!)

And shrugging off the rucksack of the decades

That I carry, back-bending baggage,

 – and for them, much harder still,

Changing back their names, forsaking kids and husbands,

Or rising from the pages of the dead,

Pulling on tight jeans, frizzing their hair, getting stoned again,

Wearing beads and headbands and

Coming through my screen, their virgin presence

Filling the room with the sudden scent of patchouli

- Filling my life with what might once have been.

Moonlit House by Deborah Tyler-Bennett

where a known ghost walks.  Barbara Villiers,
Merry Monarch’s mistress, pacing blue lit halls
Lamenting beauty drained to dropsy.
Bulking figure breaking night quiet,
lamenting her lustrous skin,
doll eyes snuggled in sourdough flesh
recalling face and hands
once gleamed softly as freshwater pearls,
crying her past, as Hawkers
cry wares.  Now looks exist
only anecdotally.
She’s spectre,
to amuse, or drag in tourists,
dropsied shadow, sobbing yesterday,
presence catching the throat.

Drunk Back-packer startled by floured
features at a window, by cheeks pocked as gibbous moons.
She fades, hears her whisper …’Lord, save us’.

Ghost pacing, drained, breaking her flesh and softly crying,
now only spectre, or shadow presence,
startled by us.

From her most recent collection, Revudeville, (King's England Press, £7.95)

Red Kites over Loch Ken by Steve Rudd

Have they been wheeling and waiting for me, how long,
Over these bare February branches,
skeletons they will neither roost in
Nor pick at, wood-bones for which they have no use?

Waiting all the while the silver water slides as rustled silk
Right to left, under the old viaduct at Parton?
Driven by massive air
That I can only guess at, from Greenland, arctic, God knows where,
They circle now; the world is stilled, only the kites revolve
In their great arcs of prey-seeking.

What strange concatenation of events
Has brought me here to see them, how could they know
I would be brought within the ambit of their circling?
Did they know the tide was out at Carrick, and the wind
Too strong, too blustering, there, to launch?

When all of us could just as well be elsewhere, yet
They still achieve their stasis in the frame of my eyes;
Was I recovered from the clutch of darkness, from the pull
Of an even wilder, darker shore than Galloway’s, for this vision?
Just to see the red kites wheel in the glint of February sunlight
Burnishing the loch beneath them, the rippling surface
Silver out of grey, some alchemy of light unknown to me.

I have a sense this moment is important
But, like so many others in my life, no inkling why,
No sense of wide significance, except their dark magnificence
Up there means something I don’t know yet:
All I know is the moment when, above bare February branches,
Crisscrossing sky in black patterns like veins, the kites
Rose over shores, hovering, huge, majestic; here
Soar red kites in the cold sky.

And I am watching them, and watching water; maybe
Spring will come back after all – there have been other signs, now I think on it,
And here am I, today, watching the red kites over Loch Ken,
And, for once, not drowning, but waving.