Poetical Quill Souls

Poetical Quill Souls

This blog contains a collection of renowned and young authors from around the world poems in the languages in which they were originally written. Each file includes author’s photo or portrait and brief biography. We offer news and announcements of interest to professional and amateur writers (writing competitions, poetry press, etc) too.

Este blog recoge una selección de poemas de reputados autores y jóvenes promesas de todo el mundo en las lenguas en las que fueron escritos originalmente. Se incluye en cada ficha una breve reseña biográfica del autor y fotos o cuadros de éste. Se complementa el grueso del material con datos de interés para escritores profesionales o aficionados a la literatura (como información sobre certámenes literarios, editoriales dedicadas a la poesía, etc).

John Hartley Williams


My real name is Stanley Kubrick

It was Thursday and the skeletons were out
dancing as was their custom in the beetroot
and the wintry sun shone down on their fragile paleness
and the earth crunched under bony feet.

No film made by actresses with bad breath
could rival their dialogues of 'Boo!' and 'Gotcha!'
In this film scripted by a weather forecaster
everyone misremembered their lines.

What ought to be an endearment was a whisper
disguised as a shudder that opened a creaking door
to a basement down whose cracked stone steps
skulls rolled merrily, joking as they fell.




In the house of a demented aunt, a lone skeleton
ran its clacky digit over a wrinkled forehead
and tweaked at wispy hair and lay shadow-
traps everywhere for the elderly and blind.

It was Midnight in the garden of the beetroot
and the skeletons went down one on the other
and tasted each other's bones like crows on
chicken carcasses, or directors filming mud.








John Hartley Williams (Cheshire, Inglaterra, 1942). Docente en la Arvon Foundation. Poeta.