Polly's Poetry

[bluesman]

I read somewhere that pj has had poetry published. Anyone know if this is true? I've never seen it mentioned here so I have my doubts.

[Pollyphoniac]

I read somewhere that pj has had poetry published. Anyone know if this is true? I've never seen it mentioned here so I have my doubts.

to my knowledge, only two of her poems have been published, both of them in a collection edited by Sarah-Jane Lovett titled "Oral":

http://www.jphuntley.co.uk/pjh/picpage. ... s/oral.gif" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

these two poems are titled "Stoned" and "One Line", the latter being the precursor of the song by the same name.

now could somebody else post these poems here? (I remember seeing "One Line", the poem, somewhere, but can't seem to find it right now. but I've never found the words to "Stoned" anywhere, though I've been searching for it online. perhaps I ought to buy that book now.)


edit:
this book is out of print, but used copies (plenty of them) are available through amazon's websites (and actually, one "brand new" copy as well, though it is grossly over-priced). I just followed the moment's inspiration by ordering one of those used copies; looking forward to getting it soon.

[bluesman]

Thanks Pollyphoniac. Looks like it's all musicians etc., "poems, sonnets, lyrics and the like" think i'll source one out also. I had ran a couple of searches and came up Dry.
Well if anybody was going to know about it.....
Welcome back by the way, seems you've been gone awhile.

[DrDark]

One Line (Poem)
PJ Harvey

I long for you,
You, whom I destroyed,
I yearn for you
My heart pressed up against my head.
Shallow-breathing.
The feeling,
Still sends me racing.

I draw a line.
A thread across the rolling country
To the crushed city.
Your lightened window to mine.
Right here, right now, this time of day,
As light and stars come into play,
Your head.
In mine.
Your heart.
One line.

[bluesman]

Thanks Doc

[Pollyphoniac]

I received my copy of Sarah-Jane Lovett's book today, here's Polly's poem titled "STONED":


STONED

GREY
FUCKED OFF
NOT AT HOME
HARD BLUE EYES
STONED
STONED
STONED

LESS OF AN OPEN WOUND


(unfortunately the spaces I inserted before the first word on each line won't remain intact when I submit this post, so what you see here is not totally the correct thing: the lines of this poem do not start at the left edge of the page, rather the words of each line are centered on the page, and this arrangement is part and parcel of the poem's composition; so you should bear this in mind as you read this.)


as for the poem "One Line", the punctuation is just a little bit different from what DrDark showed us here (just the occasional comma rather than a point), therefore I "correct" those little details and here's the poem exactly as it appears on the printed page:


One Line

I long for you,
You, whom I destroyed.
I yearn for you.
My heart pressed up against my head.
Shallow-breathing.
The feeling,
Still sends me racing.

I draw a line.
A thread across the rolling country
To the crushed city.
Your lightened window to mine.
Right here, right now, this time of day,
As light and stars come into play,
Your head,
In mine.
Your heart.
One line.

[bluesman]

Thanks Pollyphoniac, still waiting for mine.

[yarnforhair]

Pollyphoniac, would you be able to scan "Stoned" so we can see the spacing?

That poem is quite short.

I'm not very good with poetry; for the most part from what little I've read I've thought it was complete crap and didn't mean anything. I do enjoy Hafiz quite a lot though.

[Pollyphoniac]

Pollyphoniac, would you be able to scan "Stoned" so we can see the spacing?

That poem is quite short.

I don't have a functioning scanner, so without going to someplace where I'd have to pay for getting it scanned...

but I might figure out another way of showing you this: I got it as saved as a word processing file, so if there's any way I could upload that file here, then you could download it. (and by "you" I mean anybody in here, because obviously I could send this file to any particular person, by email, and all you'd need to do is open the file in your word processor - but I can't send any number of emails, in case a lot of people want to see this. perhaps I could send the file to somebody who would then do the scanning?)

[Hell and High Water]

You can upload it to any file sharing service, like Mediafire.

What word processing program is it in? If it's Word or something I can open, I can convert it to a JPEG. Send it on over.

[Pollyphoniac]

You can upload it to any file sharing service, like Mediafire.

What word processing program is it in? If it's Word or something I can open, I can convert it to a JPEG. Send it on over.

I'm using WordPerfect, but I'm saving this document as a file in Rich Text Format, which makes it easy to open in another word processor; you should have no problem opening it in Word. (I'm sending it to you.)

[Pollyphoniac]

You can upload it to any file sharing service, like Mediafire.

good idea too, which is why I've just done it:

http://www.mediafire.com/?twkdt1z1d3d" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;

now get STONED, everybody.

[Hell and High Water]

So if this bothers you, you can download the file and change the font. It's Comic Sans.

[Pitifuljoy]

So if this bothers you, you can download the file and change the font. It's Comic Sans.

Why must you be so heartless and cruel?

[Pollyphoniac]

perhaps I should have thought of changing that myself, because the poem wasn't actually printed (in the book) in Comic Sans.

but whichever font I had chosen would somehow be inauthentic since the original poem was no doubt written in Polly's hand and so the only truly authentic font would have to be a facsimile of the paper with her handwritten version.