Since I haven't the time and expertise to read through an entire year of Britian's best poetry, I have resorted towards someone who has in order to reveal to you this list of the top 3 best poems of 2011. Derived from "The Best British Poetry 2011," the top 3 most delicious poems of 2011 go as follows:
Andrew’s Corner
Kayo Chingonyi
I
Where an old man comes, to practise
standing still, tutting
that the street he fought to keep is gone
and, sixty years on, he doesn’t belong
to this world of bass, blasting out of
passing cars, and earshot, at the speed
of an age when pubs close down
overnight; are mounds of rubble in a week.
II
Where flowers moulder in memory of Tash,
fifteen, her twenty-something boyfriend
too drunk to swerve and miss the tree,
girls own their grown woman outfits,
smile at boys who smell of weed and too much
CK One. Pel, who can get served, stands in line.
Outside his friends play the transatlantic
dozens; the correct answer is always your mum.
III
Where alleys wake to condom wrappers,
kebab meat, a ballet pump, last week
a van pulled up and it was blood. Today:
joggers dodge a dead pigeon, offer wordless
greeting to the night bus’s army of sanguine-
eyed ravers, nursing bad skin and tinnitus.
Goaded by the light, past the same house on repeat,
they think of taking off their shoes; inviolable sleep.
from Wasafiri
Kayo reads ‘Andrew’s Corner’.
*
Hare
Abigail Parry
You dreamed the field was a tin grid,
Latticed with running hares, March-mad and stargazy,
Their quick jolts the firing of neurons.
At other times you meet him alone:
That long face, the dowsy parting at the mouth,
A suggestion of teeth; lecherous, repulsive, somehow
Irresistible. Witch.
And he was there in pinstripes,
Haunches drawn out on their pivot,
Leaning over your shoulder at the wedding party,
Those fine ears folded smooth down his back,
Complacent. Smug. Buck-sure.
His yellow eye met yours, knowing
You could do nothing. You thought:
I’ll have you, you suave bastard.
Find him in a field. He’s gone
In one swift arterial pump.
Oh, he is a tease …
He is the sidelong, sidling
And askance,
So learn to see as Hare sees,
Learn his steps,
Accept his invitation up to dance:
He’ll stay that spring-heeled jolt if you keep time.
Walk in rings around him. Do not spare
One glance towards the centre or he’ll bolt.
See how a pattern’s there, a coiled line:
Tighten up the circles, and each whorl
Will shave a sickle off the verticil.
Pare away the moons. His labyrinth’s
A unicursal round: with just one end,
And just one track. He’ll be waiting,
Slant-eyed jack, and prince
Of tricks. Your part is fixed:
A virgin going down,
A widow coming back.
from The Rialto
Abigail reads ‘Hare’.
*
Mustard
Jon Stone
Its flavour in the nostrils a thundercloud smart
like seeing your crush on a superstud’s arm;
you’d have to be sturdier than durmast
oak to contain such a bastard stum
in your head’s barrel and not cry out drams
of tears. But if you, in your dilemma, durst
eat another spoonful, your throat’s drum
is often only half as stung, your heart’s mud
stirred to a soup and every untoward smut
on your tongue expunged in one broad strum,
leaving nothing – no points, no clear datums
from which to measure pain, no lukewarm dust
of hurt feelings, rags clinging to an absurd mast
or pins or crumbs or flakes of seed-hard must.
