PRESS RELEASE POET GOES ELECTRONIC

Well-known Irish poet Steve Downes embraces the internet with his new collection of powerful raw urban poems Urbania which he has opted to publish online as an ebook rather than in print. Steve took the opportunity of his Guest Poet spot at the recent Great Drogheda Poetry Slam to launch it by giving a forceful reading of a selection to the assembled poetry enthusiasts. Ranging from a study of a designer-punk trendy to neon-tinted street scenes, from a dead druggie in an alley to cyberweb mindset, the poems cast a cynical but penetrating eye at our modern society and its recent technology-dominated changes and developments.

Steve has three previous collections to his credit, the last being Side-Angles with Roger Hudson. An award-winning playwright, he recently completed the novel WarWorld.

Urbania is available to read or for free download on www.stevdownesurbania.com The poems are complemented by graphic-designs by Jamie Stanton and photographs by Duirmuid Jones.

For further information or interview, contact Steve Downes@ stephendownesma@gmail.com or 0857127613

Poetry Slam Reviewed

http://edition.pagesuite-professional.co.uk/launch.aspx?referral=other&refresh=m09M8T1tX1i7&PBID=eb89a4df-82ca-4255-b3ba-e3bfbcabe3b0&skip=


Poetry Slam and Fringe Fest. Review and Pics on Drogheda Leader website

Comments on Urbania

http://www.stevedownesurbania.com/ ... Feel free to leave a comment on Urbania here, things you like/dislike, questions or anything that pops into your head.

Steve D.

URBANIA Poetry Collection

http://www.stevedownesurbania.com/ ... check out my new free-to-read poetry collection Urbania, will be reading tonight at the Fringe Poetry Slam and more readings and Q&A to be posted soon ... enjoy

New poetry Collection

Urbania will be available (free to read) on-line from tomorrow .. watch this space

Come along to the great Drogheda Poetry Slam
... 30th April,
McHuges,
Drogheda,
with guest poet .. yours truely .. reading from my new free-to-read online collection Urbania
... http://www.droghedafringe.com/

The Sound of Pub Violence

Goodbye beer my old friend
I’ve come to quit you once again
because my vision’s badly creeping
threw my guts up while I was sleeping
and the damage
that was planted in my brain
still remains
with the sound of pub violence

On empty streets I walk alone
narrow streets of cobblestone
beneath the smile of a street tramp
I lay down in the cold and damp
when my friends were stabbed
by the flash of the neon light
they spit blood in the night
and touched pub violence

And naked in the light I saw
ten thousand cops maybe more
people screaming without speaking
people roaring without listening
People passing needles to share
and they would dare
disturb the sound of pub violence

Fuckers, said I, do you not know
violence like a cancer grows
hear my words that I might teach you
take my arms that I might reach you
but the words like blood drops fell
and echoed in the cells of violence

And people swore and prayed
at nightclub neon sign they made
and the sign flashed out its warning
in the mouths their words are foaming
and the sign said the words of the prophets
are scribbled on the toilet walls
and hospital halls
and whispered in the sound of pub violence

Horrorscope

Today’s Horrorscope: Virgo the Virgin: Male: If you don’t get some action soon your balls are going to explode, on the up side there’s a small chance you could be the next mother of the Chosen One, so make that decision for success and have that sex change today.
Female: Good week for wearing blue and headdresses, appearing on golf courses could mean extra TV coverage, but avoid randy Tigers.
Shemales: Typical, you went to all that bother and they changed the wrong half of you … contact ‘Injury lawyers for You’.

5 Step Template on: How to write a hit American sit-com

Step 1. Define your characters from the following types
A neurotic undersexed professional woman
An oversexed slut with a heart of gold
An ethnically challenged woman
A fat older woman who uses sarcasm (now that’s original)
A prudish professional man who falls in love easily
An oversexed boy-who-hasn’t grown-up
A bumbling idiot
Another bumbling idiot with a foreign accent

Step 2. Choose your setting
Doctors a hospital
Doctors in an apartment
Friends of a doctor .. in an apartment
People who meet in a coffee shop (everyday .. without fail)
Teenagers .. doing teenage things

Step 3. Add a series long sex/love theme
i.e. John is in love with Mary, but is sleeping with Mary’s sister Karen who use to be married to Michael, who’s now gay and dating John’s brother .. who has slept with Karen .. and Mary .. and the fat black girl who sarcastically notes he was rubbish in bed (this should last 5 sessions until a lesbian should be introduced to the mix)

Step 4. Write the episodes
Episode framework
I’ve slept with my housemate/friend/workmate (sister – for Fox network only)
Hilarity ensues as this fact is a badly kept secret and then revealed to all
We have a problem let’s solve it as a group
A serious of tearfull looks to camera with trendy music by Coldplay (any shit band will do)
Group hug
Finally joke (I thought you were your sister/brother in the dark .. any similar gag)
Canned laughter

Step 5. Repeat ad nausea and add new Characters when rating go down
new characters
Parents (famous actors looking for work)
A stoned young person
a long lost sister/brother
a long lost husband/wife
a duck
a dog
a gay man
two gay men
a naked guy in a window

Happy Birthday

Birthday Morning
a dawdling dawning of all that has transpired
the falls and fumbles
isn’t it strange
how we first remember the bad times
but a half-turn in the half-sleep interjects
and injects a happier spell
a second kiss
a first victory
a sickening excitement


Birthday dawning
slow morning with a tick as long as an eon
and a tock
echoing in a watched kettle
dull grey Irish day with the bentheads
on the way to toil
watched from the window sill by
the birthday suited boy
tick
tock
tick


Birthday morning
Teeth show yawning and fall back
onto the messy bed
head swimming with years of reminiscence
like some hack of a poet
attempting to rewrite an ordinary life
into windswept whimsies
another sleep
another dream
a second kiss

Object

Fear made her
fists made her black
slaps made her eyes blue

Something old
he was old
cheap vodka aged

Something new
she was fifteen
a doll-like child

Something blue
eyes like Coventry skies
wild sapphires

Three babies bourn
and she was aged too
worn as an old door handle

Yellow stain in her knickers
when he beat her
outside the school

This is what made her
something
not someone

Dawn at Midnight

In here
it is cold

only the surface is thawed
by radiation
by the touches of certain fingertips
by thoughts of idealised friendship

Inside
at the heart

far from the fake illumination
a diamond is forging from blackness
a coal face that does not yet show
a cold face to a ceaseless Sol

Dreams
and all the

Dawns of each rebirth and re-death
dreams have faltered
dreams have almost stopped
dreams waste even in the midnight sun

What
Is wrong here

Someone from childhood has died
and I can think of nothing but sad living me
and I have no remorse not even as a crocodile
and I can do nothing but watch the Blackpool lights blaze

for
Dawn at midnight

An Ending

A hand reaches out
touches
not touching
feedback wired into the cortex
it feels more than real
high definition vision
each compression of the skin
is exquisite agony or orgasmic ecstasy
no mediocre sensations from heaven
to hell without moving
just a blink of the electronic eye
purgatory is for the poor
reality for the downcast
the masses of the left-behind
just inches away behind the glass
the screen
the firewall
blazes
touches
while the dreamers dream
and night folk mare
the toilless workers reduced to scum
floating along the broken streets
waiting for the light to fail and it all to end
a hand reaches out
touches
nothing
we have passed from this reality
and become a mathematical memory
a fossil
a shadow
just radio voices in he dark cosmos
echoing what we were and could have been

A Prick in the Conscience

Cardboard cut-out boy
2D person
face from a book
black & white
but I never read on
ignorance is bliss
and we’re all mostly happy
to walk on by
our 3D steps clicking on the pavement
and like all the other ‘well rounded people’
I didn’t study the cardboard cut-out
genuine or not
how could I tell
he’s not real
cartoon qualities
thinly painted against the wall
just another 2D thing
I left behind on a Dublin side street
September 2009

Armistice Day Event on Nov. 11th.

* A talk by Donal Hall, author of "The Unreturned Army: Co Louth War Dead in the Great War 1914-1918 with following Q+A

* Letters & stories from the Front

* Readings/ Selected War Poetry, including Tom Kettle and Francis Ledwidge by Steve Downes

Boyne Books
56-57 West St.
Enquiries: 041 987 3835