SUE BURGE – Poet and Tutor

Creative Writing and Film Studies

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  • SUE’S POETRY
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  • BLOG – POET BY THE SEA
  • THE POETRY SCHOOL – BATTLE OF THE SOMME PROJECT
  • FILM COURSES
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    • LUMIÈRE PROJECT
    • INSPIRED BY FILM POETRY COMPETITION
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ARCHIVE

LUMIÈRE PROJECT


 

INSPIRED BY FILM POETRY COMPETITION


 

BLOGS

 

Images above are courtesy of Daniela Casanova
DESERT ISLAND POETS
Join Sue & her second raft of castaways for an eclectic evening of poetry

Wednesday 16th March 8pm
… read more
POP-UP POETRY WORKSHOP
AT THE SAINSBURY CENTRE
FOR VISUAL ARTS (Norwich)
MENAGERIE

Friday 24th June
13.30-5pm
… read more
VOICING NATURE
ECO-WRITING WORKSHOP

Saturday 30th July
10.30-5pm
… read more
THE POETRY GYM
a weekly workout for your poetry
muscles via e-mail

Every Tuesday from 6th September 2022
to 29th August 2023
… read more

SUE’S BLOG — POET BY THE SEA – cinema, poetry, café culture & all things watery

  • A Book at Bedtime 2 March, 2022
  • Canterbury Tales 6 January, 2022
  • “Smell the sea, and feel the sky…” (Van Morrison) 19 September, 2021

RECEIVE BLOG UPDATES

Click here to receive e-mail updates on my blog with Bloglovin

All Sue’s books are available directly from the author herself, signed or unsigned!  Go here to find out more about Sue’s two collections, ‘Confetti Dancers’ and ‘In the Kingdom of Shadows’ (Live Canon) and two pamphlets, ‘The Saltwater Diaries’ and ‘Lumiere’ (Hedgehog Poetry Press).

BREAKING NEWS

Sue is delighted to have three poems in the brilliant bilingual Revue [R]evolution. Go here to have a read:
www.revuerevolution.com/en/qelp-sue-burge

Go here to read one of Sue’s newly published poems on the fantastic Ink Sweat and Tears e-zine website:
https://inksweatandtears.co.uk/sue-burge

Go here to hear Sue read Catsitting, penned for Downham Market Cat Protection’s 30th birthday: scroll down to the 19th July at 17:18
www.facebook.com/CPDownhamAC

Sue is delighted to be in the company of Paul Stephenson, David Leo Sirois, Mary Cummins and fabulous host Damien Donnelly for a poetic celebration of all things Parisian

The Local Government Information Unit (LGIU) has been running a theme “Unlocked: Local Stories from a Global Pandemic” to coincide with the anniversary of the first phase of lockdown in March 2020. Two of Sue’s pandemic poems have been included and she is also interviewed about her year in lockdown as a creative.
The poems are here
and the podcast is here

Click here to find out how Sue became a poet on The Poetry Question
Listen to Sue’s podcast on fellow poet Patrick Widdess’s website. It’s part of Patrick’s Poetry Non-Stop podcast series, others include Jenny Pagdin, Jamie Osborn, Martin Figura, Avouleance Aaq and Alex Russell. There are even poetry exercises for you to try from each featured poet. In this podcast Sue talks about the links between poetry and cinema and reads from her collections.
CREATIVE WRITING COURSES
yellow-triangleWhy not buy a friend or relative a
writing course or a mentoring session as a gift?
Contact Sue for more details.
Gift certificates provided.
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The Unreliability of Clouds

There were no clouds where I grew up
               for all good fairytales take place in the forest
between the shapeshifting shadows.

When I hear the word for the first time
it is too close to “clout” and “loud”.
               I ask my unborn brother what it means,
instantly forgetting his answer.

One day a low cloud catches on a dead tree,
light as a cottonboll, as a wig.
               This is the day my mother begins to die,
it takes her a lifetime to do so.

Gradually, I get to know them better.
Now I sleepwalk in the encyclopaedia of clouds –
               full of moonshadows and ravens
defecating in the blackness.

I used to dream of being a weathergirl,
               envying their power to move clouds
over land and sea.

Sometimes clouds appear like speech-bubbles,
broadcasting my untold thoughts.
               I realise that each one is unique as a thumbprint,
though many are clichés.
Some are like sex, rumpled and knowing,
               sashaying across the sky with sassy curves;
often they shadow my white clothes in passing
with an unbleachable darkness.

At day’s end the clouds look like bruises,
               smell like vanilla.

 
Sue Burge

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Sea Glass

When I lick you, sea glass, you taste of pistachio,
crushed sage. On my palm, grainy as a sugared almond,
you weigh less than a fulmar’s egg, more than a grey feather.

You could be three times older than me, or more,
but I like to think you are the echo of that glass
I smashed when the world was too bitter to swallow.

Sea glass, you hold the answers to unasked questions
in your salty heart. I want to cleave you, hang you
from my ears, catch the chink of your pasts as I turn my head.

Sue Burge

 

In Printemps Department Store

A sleety April shower drives me in,
past the soldiers on the wet street,
the bag searchers at the doors.
I escalate up six floors of opulence,
order a jug of chocolat onctueux
under a stained glass dome
higher than I can tilt my head.

It reminds me of Kirsten Dunst
in Marie Antoinette — surrounded
by pyramids of shoes like sugared almonds,
halls of mirrors reflecting an infinite catwalk,
cascades of champagne, and cake,
layered and extravagant as wigs.

This is how it began confides Marie as I take another sip
shopping lists get longer, longer
than the sum of my days…
The solace of silk and velvet, the heartflutter
of new shoes, the best pastries rotting
my weak-willed teeth, my play kingdom
spreading like mould at the end of Louis’ careful gardens,
unfinished, a whole age lost under a falling blade.

And perhaps this is how it will end for me,
a sudden shattering,
high heels whirling past like multi-coloured spines,
silk tearing and fluttering in a rainbow of rags;
the glass, royal blue, gold, terracotta, peacock,
raining down on my pretty neck.

Sue Burge
(first published in The French Literary Review, Issue 26, October 2016)

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Jean Gabin

It’s not an obsession, she assures her friends,
bedroom wallpaper sagging under the weight of his face.

She has never seen him in colour, pictures
hay blonde hair, eyes as blue as her new spring dress.

His face has lived a hundred lives; collar open,
jaunty casquette, worn trousers pulling at his lean bones.

She wants him to kill for her, lost in love’s whirlpool
like in Le Jour Se Leve as Arletty looks on.

None of his stories end well. One day she sees him
buying gauloises on the Rue de Charonne,

follows him back to a shuttered and geraniumed
apartment block; all day she remembers

how he smiled as she passed, how he was
both more and less than she imagined,

her body glowing like a miracle.
Occupation, Liberation, her bones surfacing,

blue dress at least a decade out of fashion,
she waits for him to return to the city

that gives him his only true voice.
The day he dies she cries herself to madness,

his funeral stately as a president’s,
his beautiful ashes, sinking.

Now she walks the streets, shows the world
his photo, creased and cracked to anonymity.

Sue Burge
(first published in The French Literary Review, Issue 26, October 2016)