SOUF

listen
words pass overhead
spoken broken in dialogue slang where South
is said “SOUF”
and this language threads like suspended lines
seeping subtle to join that thin outline of smog

    
he– “wanna link?”

in South we don’t cross the river
and these words, clatter, drawl or patois
slips off awl tongues
in futile attempt to denominate
those who belong –
on corners, down pub, etched onto walls
this language is tags, bars and notes

     – “and nah it ain’t art”.

Poppy Frean is a writer/poet/artist from South East London who nurses a strong obsession for this part of the city. Her work refuses definition, coming closer to “wild, properly delirious and jagged text objects”. Electric, libidinal, these are words scratched into being, “a section of life torn out of reality and plundered for its swarms of idiolect and instinct. They reach high and grab at everything: myth, revelation, gospel.” A bid for sublimity, at once both tongue-in-cheek and yet deadly serious.