Sometimes, my favourite poems are the shortest and simplest. These two are maybe my favourites, also because others have commented on them. ‘The Plate Spinner’ especially: I have friends (in Weymouth and Cagliari) who know what plate spinning really means in metaphorical terms! Read here by Johnny Morris. ‘Land’s End’ read by myself reminds me of home and Devon, and gave me an opportunity to try to put on a pirate accent! Moony plays a blinder! The collage to this poem is one of my favourites and again a popular one with friends.
the plate spinner spins his plates but he’s let things slip a little of late his life in pieces at his feet that magic touch that filled the seats a helpless helping of butter fingers now all washed-up he takes a bow what a shame what a pity this inconsequential little ditty.
Land’s End
You’ll end up a bad ‘un; No going back but on what you’ve done.
It’s a risky game. You play till you drop; A few hundred metres onto the rocks.
You’ll hear the gulls and the sea-spray crushed but will you jump even when pushed?
John Di Girolamo was born during the swinging middle ages as the Battle of Hastings raged outside on a cold, miserable Saturday evening just outside 'The Juggler's Arms' in Oxford, Torquay and Exeter at the same time. Born to a family, he spent most of his early years learning how to open umbrellas for a rainy day, and the runnings of horses and sword swallowers and the costs they incurred. Having graduated in 'Circus Management', he took to spinning plates for a living and persuaded his father to buy a restaurant to fund what he believed would be a lucrative career move. However, in the the days leading to The Age of Post Punk', he quit and would embark upon what was to go down in history doodles as a notebook.
Few knew it then but he had already started copying poetry, and often written by other people. As the minutes passed by, and Sardinia loomed, the idea of collages and drawings suddenly hit him as a way of filling up what had become a kind of book with pages and all. One day while storming off in a huff because his mum told him to, he struck upon the idea of putting it all together over a long-playing record (later a CD) and during a commercial break in the digital age, decided a blog would end Cromwell's ill-fated republic.
Sent off by recorded post, it would be by chance that his poems would get to their ultimate destination as, meanwhile, his pigeon who had queued so loyally for so long, sadly died the day before it was sacked.
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A Pretty Kettle of Poetry 
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