Days of Ordinary Madness is a new collection by Wayne Dean-Richards. We're publishing all 41 poems here first...
Hear Wayne Dean-Richards, Alison Gibson and Kalman Dean-Richards at an Outsideleft Quiet Night Out on Sunday June 8th, 6-8pm at the 1000 Trades on the Park, Lightwoods House. With additional ambient sounds from Dartmoor Explored. [more information here →]
it all comes down to this
he said he liked my pomes.
except he called them my work
not my pomes.
he said his students liked my work, too.
he said he was sure I was a university writer in the making,
if I’d just read for them,
then talk about my linguistic influences,
and other stuff like that.
what pomes should I read? I wanted to know.
he mentioned 1 or 2,
but I shook my head.
I couldn’t possibly read those, I said.
but I could read these, I said,
and gave him a list of
my favourites:
the ones full of anger
and bad language.
the professor shook his fine professor’s head,
with its fine professor’s beard.
not acceptable, he said.
which’s how we left it,
apart from the fact that
as I walked away
I might have called him a wanker, just once or twice.
© 2025, Wayne Dean-Richards
