Two Poems by Roberta James

The solace of java

He winks, exudes a ‘look look’ look you see shimmer
from a distance as you focus on the blackboard’s chalk offer,
a brand new blend of coffee that will take you to far places, 
a hand-made cake of spelt crusted with a coat of sugared cranberries
that promises a whole mouthfulness of taste from alpha to omega.  
You view the woman by him bask in his hot gaze, her mouth a volcano, 
until a gloss of sweat begins to round her face to moonshine.
His untwinkling eye catches your quickly - too-slow - hidden wish 

to explore.  He’s seen it all before.  He dims himself. That switch 
brings you down to earth with a hurt tangs copper in your mouth. 
So you break a hunk of crumble crust that dapples your buds, 
then dip into coffee depths until under its waterfall rush 
you loop up the foam to smooth it on your gums as balm, 
heal tender hidden skin, thin coverings sinewing the bones.

Sibling songs

She loads her spoon with scooped-out last remaining licks
and twirls away her haul.  He stamps his feet to her resounding beat 
while carrying the whisk that’s coated with caul-thin mix 
that’s left from the bowl.  For one and two and round the room, 
then three and four to close the door, she lifts her spoon baton so high 
then whirls and swoops in loops to one and two now sit on the floor 
for three then four eat up some more.  The rough side of her tongue 
absorbs the mixture thick and sugar-grit, raw, for one then two I want to sing 
so three then four don’t join in.  
                                                   He claps his hands to an arc cymbal-banging big, 
rolls away.  Lays on his back for a while to stare at the ceiling that is the colour of
old egg yolk, wonders what sound cake makes when it cooks if you are quiet enough
to catch it macaroon crisp marzipan sticks render and miss sticky bits miss,
gooey bits fizz swish boing and burst until the smell of hot sponge stops him.
She turns to stare at the oven window as he stands up, her face hollowing. 
She has seen the rising, the split down the middle.

Roberta James earns a crust working freelance in London in the creative industries, and thinks she may live where she does because it is within walking distance of a great bakers.

Hollywood by JT Welsch

Our Hollywood baker returns to England,

a fall like his weaker contestants’ bread.

Every day, another headline to share

with comment: team him or team

poor wife whose pain we share

since her – our – betrayal.

No one sees his lonesomeness

in the return to mere couplehood—

to no longer sweep the room, hands on hips,

and know: but I am more than this!

—the errant heart still leaping

if she touches your phone.

It’s the thing no contestant

dares admit: love is risk.

May the game reveal my recipe to me

in every heightened peccadillo: So, you say,

muting the replay. That’s how I look not

bullshitting. You take notes.

JT Welsch is the author of three chapbooks, the most recent of which is 'Waterloo' (Like This Press, 2012). He is also a lecturer at York St John University.

The Easy Cakes of Ottolenghi by Jacqueline Saphra

In his salad days of skins and caves, man

gave chase. He slaughtered buck, swallowed

the heart. He knew adrenaline, hauled woman

after woman by the hair. That’s all gone.

Now there’s money and a new ache every day,

sags in unexpected places, a loss of collagen

and desire. Hunger’s always knocking

at the edges, just the tongue that’s jaded.

The waitress who’s an actress resting

crouches by the table: Sorrel sir, or salsify?

The soft salt melt of sea-bream, halibut,

a thrill of salsa, quince and pomegranate.

Then dessert: the easy cakes of Ottolenghi

drip their syrups, glisten in the night, secrete

fresh tones of apple, grenadilla, rose.

Jacqueline Saphra’s first full collection, The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions (flipped eye) was developed with the support of Arts Council England and nominated for the Aldeburgh First Collection Prize.

On Typing Paper Stolen From Her Employers She Proceeds To Evolve A Campaign by Amy Key

A feeling that I should be writing a diary,

but every thought feels like an abomination. Like: drunk desire,

or cling-film bed sheets. My old diaries

bring on a feeling like feeling uncertain in someone’s embrace.

How I lacked ingenious neuroses!

Meanwhile, I am in love with blondes

in the newest way passion can exert itself. But,

it was blondes who I first edged my knee towards,

some hours before intolerable kisses.

Lips I’ve kissed crumble like meringue.

Hopes should recede with age, but this isn’t

a right-seeming present!

Mainly, I sat with the expectant feeling

of a passenger, for minutes and streets away

other things were possible. Sleep, a means of lace-edging days.

I could mock all my past’s authentic woes

and the character I sketched out for a novel

that might be me: “23 years old, no imagination”.

Surely I should be listening to other songs by now.

My imagined future is a collapsed soufflé.

Amy Key co-edits the online journal Poems in Which. Her debut collection Luxe is forthcoming from Salt. Hers is a salted caramel macaron.

Too Sweet by Sarah James

i) expectations                                                

My mother is rolling out icing: her fondant
pressed evenly against a wooden board.

For years, her fingers have been flecked
with white as she cuts and shapes petal
after petal, then wet-sticks these small
thumb-curved ovals together with a tight
pinch at the bottom until this flower,
her work of art, fills the kitchen, spills
out the doorway, through the hall, lounge,

stairs… She places this heavy gift in my hands.                    

ii) ingredients

Dear Mum, let memory repeat it:

eggs, flour, sugar, butter…

After the mixing, the baking.

After the baking, the white icing.

Alternatives in almond essence,

peppermint or vanilla. Add brandy,

sultanas, cherries, peel, any dried fruit.         

Easy on the grated zest and spice.

Always before the icing, the making.

Before the making, eggs breaking.

Before the breaking, raw weighing.

Be sure to first calibrate your scales.                         

iii) in time

Years later now, birthday barbie

is still in her ballgown of roses.

Shelved in my Mum’s cabinet,

alongside a set of silver spoons,

Nan’s best porcelain and memories
unwrapped from crumpled newspaper.

Her pudding-bowled dress has kept

its shape, blossoms from trim waist.

But her plastic arms, dried brittle,

have cracked at the wrists, white

petals break from her skirt.

Powdered sugar layers as dust.

Sarah is a poor baker but an enthusiastic cake and bread taster! Although the chances of her successfully mastering icing are probably lower than her ice-skating a figure-of-eight, she still lives in faint hope. Her first poetry collection Into the Yell (Circaidy Gregory Press, 2010) won third prize in the International Rubery Book Awards 2011 and her most recent collection Be[yond] is published by Knives, Forks and Spoons Press. Sarah's website is at www.sarah-james.co.uk

Caramel by John McCullough

Weigh, measure, dissolve. Learn the dialects
of sugar. Make sweets hard, harder,
hardest. Wring colours—red from cochineal,
green from scalded beet leaves. Inhabit six degrees
of boiling: thread, pearled, blown, feathered,
cracked, caramel. Elevate yourself
to the baron’s house―a carved orange at the apex
of a pyramid of salvers. Loathe the cost
of ingredients. Mr Platt the footman cannot
be trusted. Ginger is delivered to a secret door,
to Miss Crosby’s hands. Use your tongue
to gauge success. Craft a Battenberg house
just for servants, for two. Find small, firm tears
naturally in cane. Keep finding them
for years. Detect a bad taste instead.
Live there but not for long, not for too long clearly.
Plan a wedding centrepiece. Glass fountains,
tulips cut with the point of a knife. Hover
at the work surface, ready and not ready,
staggering, clutching your chest. Remember it.
Remember everything these hands have done
and not done while you stand there
and gasp. Weigh, measure, dissolve.



John McCullough’s first collection of poems The Frost Fairs (Salt) won the Polari First Book Prize for 2012. It was a Book of the Year for both The Independent and The Poetry School, and a summer read for The Observer. He lives in Hove, and teaches creative writing for the Open University and New Writing South.

John says this poem was inspired by the September 18 episode on puddings last year, which saw Sue Perkins finding out about cabinet puddings and the showstopper cakes made by confectioners who actually lived in nobles’ houses.

Get ready...

Rum babas at the ready everyone. The Great British Bake Off is back on our screens on 20 Aug, and the Great British Bard Off pop-up poetry shop will soon be opening for business once more. We've got deliciousness, rhythm and some surprises in store... and to take part in the fun, send your poems to greatbritishbardoff@gmail.com!

Anything inspired by baking or by the marvellous TV series itself is welcome. And, at the end of the series, we'll be crowning our very own Star Baker, a high honour awarded to the person whose poem we like the best (and we'll also be awarding prizes for the best Showstopper, Signature Bake and Technical Challenge). There is no prize but glory, and the ability to claim yourself as an expert in both baking and poetry. Last year's winner was Lavinia Singer.

As a reminder, we are in no way affiliated with the BBC, Love Productions or the Great British Bake Off. We are just fans of the show, of baking and of poetry. Ready? GET BAKING!

Every Hand in the House

We feed it year-long.
Its sixpence heart waits for the great reveal

(through summer's parched dominion,
through another bastard year of inferior cinnamon)

and mellows with every month
and every lavish swig.

Every hand in the house had stirred it.
And as another Christmas shivers in

we take it from its cupboard home,
dense as a neutron star and burning blue.

A Molotov pudding, a brandy sun –
every hand in the house presents a spoon.

Jody Porter is Poetry Editor for the Morning Star. His poetry blog is All Deciduous Things.

O My Dears One Learns Something New Every Day

        How painful to admit

                                  so many cakes later

                    that due to sloth

& one’s terror of inadvertent

                                        flour inhalation

                    one has missed

                                                  a trick

         but one is not above

                        confessing one’s peccadilloes.

  One speaks, O my dears, of decades

of denial:

                         all that faff

                                           with the sieve

                                resulting, as it turns out,

                  in a lighter sponge.

    Who knew?

                One will now don

                                 one’s sheepish apron

hold one’s breath,

                   sift as if one’s life depended etc,

            apply heat          

                                & revel in

  this frankly indecent expansion.

             O my dears, how

                                   perfectly

                                                      fat.

Jacqueline Saphra's latest collection is The Kitchen of Lovely Contraptions. You can read more of her work on her blog.

                                                                                    

Paul Hollywood’s Chestnuts

 The seller sang The Christmas Song,

rustling up the blackened beauties

in paper bags, thrusting them to us.

'That’s two quid, mate.'

Within the wrapped-up crowd I peeled;

I tasted. I offered up the bag.

‘Mary,' I said,

'I'm not sure about the bake.’

Lara Jakob's blog is Word of Mouth.

Stirring

Heap up the dried fruits, let them marinade

all night, a second honeymoon of booze;
an upset of almonds with their whiff of cyanide;
sultry cherries in their violated glory;
bittersweet, the candied taint of peel
we once discarded. Add citrus zest
to this pirate’s chest of jewels, sprinkle
cinnamon for regret; swing a great censer
of nutmeg absolution, a covet of allspice,
slow-blending muscovado. Help me preserve
all these good things against the winter. Bind
with butter, eggs and flour, bake it loveblind
in a bedding of brown paper, the fragrance
hotter now than summer. Let us make
a new abundance in this kitchen.
Let there be a sticky handfasting
of gritty marzipan and fondant icing.
Let there be more fruit than cake.

Judi Sutherland is a poet and writer, she blogs at There Must Be More To Life Than Having It All.

Icing

The silver medal bears the firm’s name

not her’s. No matter. I know

how she formed fancy from sugar and water:

roses in woven work, scrolls, waves.

On a snow day we’d sit in the back-kitchen;

she’d steady my hand, but there was always

something: the piping bag too fat for my grip,

the dummies resistant, their cardboard hard,

nothing like the riches of cake.

They smelled of must, not sweet-soaked fruit

brandied each week since October

with the Georgian crested ladle.

‘It’s practice’ were words of discomfort.

I’d sooner stop, watch her layer

a royale ice rink into winter’s wonder.

Kate Noakes blogs here. Her first collection Cape Town is published by Eyewear. 

Winners of the Great British Bard-off

We are delighted to announce the winners of the Great British Bard-off

Star Baker is awarded to the poet with the most read poem. This year's winner is Lavinia Singer.

Charlotte's awards

Signature bake: Roddy Lumsden for Self, Rising

Technical challenge: Simon Moore for Sonnet Review

Show-stopper: Lavinia Singer for Mary Berry Comes for Tea

Amy's awards

Signature bake: Wayne Holloway-Smith for Cake

Technical challenge: Gingerbread Brutalist Poem by Abi Palmber

Show-stopper: Lavinia Singer for Mary Berry Comes for Tea

Thank you to everyone who took part!

We're now accepting submissions for our #GBBO Christmas Special. 

Email your festive pennings to greatbritishbardoff@gmail.com 

The Final by Jacqueline Saphra

What stirs here, friends? Ambition, hunger and the wooden spoon

join together for the rise, fight to trap the crucial air.

Our three contestants work towards the best Pivithier

each with his ample, buttered love. What can we do but swoon

at this parade, their naked need to please, the spill and trick?

Though some would say it’s only cake, our heroes are hell-bent

on perfection: what could be more endearing than these men

who urge, with gentle rage, their sponges into sickly pink?

The fancies fall apart. Why, why? The icing will not hold.

Outside, on the soggy lawn, one dear man can hardly speak

for sobs: other losses, older griefs perhaps. But he takes stock,

moves on: this is the British way. Determined. Even cold.

Inside, it’s almond, rose, pistachio. Cakes rise again.

Outside, a hush where hopeful relatives in sweaters wait.

Inside, they’re done: the darling faces flush. It’s getting late.

Outside: the truth, our English garden and the rain, the rain.

Jacqueline's latest collection is The Kitchen Of Lovely Contraptions. She blogs here.

James Sixth and First by Sean Jones

"that which hath so bound and firmely knit the hearts of all 
your MAJESTIES loyall and Religious people unto you, that
your very Name is precious among them, their eye doeth
behold you with comfort, and they blesse you in their hearts"              
 - dedication in the King James Bible.

Great and manifold 

rough puff (bread Sovereign)

thick, and palpable

clouds of butter

cannot overshadow your MAJESTY

A fall to the ground

not suffered, rather

taken up.

In your chiffon king

of Great Britain, Ireland &c.

Tranquil peace at home

and abroad.

French fancies

the heavenly hand enriched

far and near to 

urge and excite

humble craving.

Into the English tongue

the fruit thereof

extends itself

hammered on their anvil

of deep judgement, apprehended.

Mary, Paul (Popish persons)

will malign us.

Such importance might justly require

ill meaning, discontent.

Their contentment does not

diminish or decay

vehement desire perpetuated.

Happiness, true felicity.

The eye beholds you with comfort

Immediate author of our happiness

more and more kindled.

Do not go backward, slack

though Sun in his strength

dwindled

to supposed and surmised mists.

Comfort Food by Jill Abram

To show her love, she liked to bake.
Her sons ate three hot meals a day.
Her lover liked a chocolate cake,

so healthy lunches, for his sake,
she served up promptly at midday.
To show her love, she liked to bake.

Her speciality was strawberry shortcake
whenever she had guests to stay.
Her lover liked a chocolate cake.

With all those sweet things, toothache
was a threat she must allay.
To show her love, she liked to bake.

She knew well how to grill a steak
to perfection, just the way
Her lover liked.  A chocolate cake

for pudding she would make
to keep him home, that old roué.
To show her love, she liked to bake,
Her lover liked a chocolate cake.


Jill Abram has 3 poems published in Ariadne's Thread issue 3 which is available at www.ariadnethread.net

Mary Berry Comes Over For Tea by Lavinia Singer

    The news was greeted With that peculiar mixture

  of three-parts hot cheek Horror to one of itchy palms,

       last experienced the dAy when Andrew Motion

              overheard my ouTpouring of love

             for Cheryl Cole. What can you serve to this

    Maharaja of AGAs whO’s known for her scones

  & sprightly sponge? my Usual dessert

         is packet powder jelLy (which often as not

 refuses to set) Egad! I’m Done for:

               my meringue is Malingering – slunk

           in the sink, I’ve strAngled my strudel,

                 rubbished the Rum Babas, an upside down

     cake is upside down bY mistake…
 (Don’t even get me starteD on the plaited loaf.)
              Hopeless. Time tO throw in

                      the tea towel? Offer up

            a plate of Krispy Kremes or some
 jammy dodgers to connotE a respectable air

                  of laissez-fairE? “It doesn’t get tougher

than this!” – you bet your Profiterole it doesn’t.

                  O Gregg, I’d Be your DisasterChef.

                                       And yet –

       an image rises of her Kindly gaze, eyes of

        cornflower blue, and I think, What ho! I too

  can be dough-mestic! BriNg out the jelly and the Pick n Mix,

      I’ll give her something Gorgeous. Sherbet, mint

leaves, gum drops et voila! Not star baker, but it’s a start.

Hope You Approve of My by Nia Davies

Ever since the incident with the ginger

boyfriend and the ginger-

bread men,

I never baked a thing ‘til this

tin of non-stick with

ten scooped shell dips

for piping courgette-laced mix

to be zucced up to a crisp.

Each madeleine

will fit the arc of the palette.

Our mouths, big toe sized,

say: lo and behold

this is good! I coasted

the pips to fit just into but out of it,

thought again of My First Parmesan:

in the house of Yarnit (at home Mum

 and I ate courgette soufflé

with a lettuce leaf).

I’m still deferring my questions

to their expertise: Parmesan

or Parma Reggiano? And

now the Yarnit sisters,

standing on my step a cake to each hand.

Try my toe-cakes, please.

Approve! Yes,

approve me

please!

Nia Davies's first pamphlet Then Spree is forthcoming from Salt. She blogs here.

Layer Cake by Mark Waldron

icing
sponge
jam
sponge
jam
sponge
plate
table mat
table
lino
glue
wood
concrete
screed
soil
clay
rock
magma
outer core
inner core
outer core
magma
rock
silt
gravel
soil
screed
concrete
wood
glue
carpet
table
table cloth
plate
doily
sponge
jam
sponge
jam
sponge
icing

Mark Waldron's latest collection is The Itchy Sea.