blackmail press 17
Penny Ashton
new zealand
index
Bio: Since abandoning a career in ballet due to a pesky need to eat, Penny Ashton is fast making a name for herself as a global poet and comedienne.  She has been nominated four times as Best Female Comedienne in New Zealand, twice for a Billy T James Award and once for the People’s Choice Award at the Adelaide Fringe Festival.  One day she hopes to win something.  She has performed in numerous NZ Festivals and has travelled to both the Edinburgh and Adelaide Fringe Festivals. Her Hot Pink Festival persona has been a critical and commercial success and has prompted invites to perform in Singapore, London, Australia, Germany and Scotland.  In 2006 Penny also represented New Zealand in The World Cup of Theatresports in Germany, toured the performance poetry circuit in the UK and has been invited to represent Australasia in the Four Continents Slam UK Poetry Tour in December.

In NZ Penny is well known for her radio, television and journalism work.  She reviews books, and is a social commentator and interviewer on both Radio New Zealand and Breakfast TV.  Her voice has also used for numerous advertising campaigns and has brought to life two Power Ranger’s Monsters and one lesbian puppet called Ginny.  She has appeared on Shortland St as a gynaecologist and recently starred as a children’s entertainer with a stalker in the comedy Talent.  Penny also has a weekly column on one of NZ’s most popular websites; www.nzgirl.co.nz, is a company performer in ConArtists (formerly Auckland Theatresports) and runs her own Spoken Word Open Mic Night in Auckland. 

In 2007 Penny will premiere a new show at the Christchurch Busker’s Festival and plans to travel to the Canadian Fringe Circuit with her solo spoken word show; Hot Pink Bits.

Links

www.hotpink.co.nz

www.myspace.com/hotpinkpennyashton

http://www.nzgirl.co.nz/articles/4974

Metrophobia

Watch out poetry’s about
The sibilant equivalent of Count
Dracula, a vernacular
That wants to suck your blood
It’s a scud
Missile
A paedophile
Who wants to defile
you
With Bad Touching
It’s an octopus sucking at your skin
Dragging you in
To the inky waters of parker pens
And Times New Roman pt size 10
She’s a literatrix in her dungeon
Dripping PVC with a plunging
Poetic Poker
Subjecting you to mediocre
Secondary School English teachers
Talking bullshit and sticking leaches
On your butt, sucking any enjoyment you might have got
From poetry
But now it’s too late and it’s coming in the door
Emitting an onomatopoeic roar
I know I’ll run up the stairs and hide in the attic
And try to hold my panting breath to make it more dramatic
But what was that I heard a noise it’s following behind
Whatever you do do not give in make sure you don’t ……rhyme
Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh fuck, those tendencies you have to try and smash
Coz not only do poets never have cash
But everyone will be scared of you, petrified
That when you open your mouth they would rather die
Than listen to a poem about your VAGINA
Or your panty liner, or how you really really wish your mother had been kinder
BUT you are now their prisoner and they hav vays ov making you hear
Stripped to your underwear with a sack on your head
They’re under your bed
The monster in your closet is a malicious sonnet
The haiku will get you
Their stanzas coming like Panzas
And their verse will end this earth
Armageddon will come and not even Bruce Willis can save us
From the frightening, horrifying, scary, all consuming, creepy, chilling, unnerving, distressing………… beautiful world of panty-liner poetry




The Shall I have sex or write a poem poem

So shall I have sex or write a poem
The situation’s tense
If I give in to lasciviousness, then my muse and I will be spent
If I throw away my quill to jump under a feather quilt
Then once I’ve come and gone and come, I’ll be wracked with guilt
Aren’t poets supposed to be miserable, lovesick, forlorn
Not happily banging out a meter to the strains of porn
Shouldn’t I simply be masturbating all alone
Then turning my angst and finger cramp into a wretched poem
“Oh, where are you, and who is he, that lingers in the mist
The chariots of Helios still deny your kiss
My soul is turgid, torn tumescent tingling and true
But black satin sheets of wet desire boil a pheromone stew.”
Such oral epics I could produce on the back of restraint
Or of course I could get on my back, and oral till you faint
BUT no instead I’ll alliterate and show off my assonance
Write by flickering candlelight and bid farewell to finance
I’ll eat bread and mouldy cheese and move away to Paris
Catch a fashionable disease and dream about your phallus
Which I’ll compare to a summer’s day as it’s newly shook in June
Resplendent like a daffodil to make a Bath Wife swoon
A satanic mill never stood so tall and yours is a road that
I’d gladly take till your jabberwock finds my bandersnatch
For foreplay on your nipples I will lyrically wax
Till a Nobel Prize for literature becomes my shuddering climax
So shall I have sex or write a poem about having sex
Scheme with rhymes AA, BB or just XY plus XX
Will fame and fortune come my way if I come all alone
Or will my efforts come to nothing, a has been talent free zone
So shall I have sex or write a poem
The situation’s tense
It’s time to throw my leg over, stop straddling the fence
Sex, poem, sex, poem, clamped knees or bed spread
Screw it, screw me, poetic fame comes only when you’re dead.





Crow’s Feet

Whilst navigating my face today
I made an historic find
It appeared the map of my life to date
Had become much more defined.

My laughing highs and my crying lows
Seemed carved into my skin
And what once had been a blank landscape,
Now had wrinkles in.

My first reaction was one of shock,
At my premature decay,
And I made a lunge for the Nivea Visage
And trusty Oil of Olay.

But just as I was signing up
For beginner grade lawn bowls
My hysteria waned, my vision cleared
And I managed to gain control

As I investigated every pore
And put my face on trial
I saw these lines were more pronounced
Whenever I would smile

A grin once cracked it would appear
Never completely heals
But leaves behind a lingering scar
Resistant to chemical peels

First step, first laugh, first love, first joy
These all have crinkled my eyes
First joke, first kiss, first orgasm,
(Though that was more a look of surprise)

My face reflects 32 years
Of laughter and delight
So now I say who gives a damn
Let the crows take flight




Finger Licking Good

I’m counting my chickens
My plot has just thickened
My mind is a riot of free range smitten
Thoughts, that I’ve fought, don’t want to be caught
In the No. 8 wire of expectations, fraught, overwrought
Valentine’s bought
for a man I just met BUT I am counting my chickens
Coz its been slim pickins And I’m having more fun than a pig in the thickest mud
He boils my blood
A relentless stud
Who causes a grey-less cloud free flood
Of smiles
Hours just whiled away in a bed
With new colours in my head Like yellow and strawberries and crispy French Bread
He’s the tickle of new things
Aeroplane wings, the eye-full tower in my bed springs
a fantastically dirty boy sexy fresh fling
Who hangs round my neck like a beautiful bling
With a chest doused in hair
And my underwear
And sometimes I just forget to come up for air
SO I’m counting my chickens
Coz this girl’s been bitten
Not bitter or quitter but just go and get him
I know it’s the glow of “In the Beginning”
But his herbs and spices are just finger licking





Man Arms

Strong arms
Thick arms
No lanky monkey arms

Bronzed arms
Veined arms
Wrap me up and squeeze me arms

Arms for manly pursuits
Like arm-wrestling and posing
Arms to bring me flowers
And to cushion me while dozing

Warm arms
Kind arms
Amnesty International arms

Smooth arms
Soft arms
Gentle feather duvet arms

Arms with chest attached
Flat to lay in bliss
Arms with hands attached
To hold my face and kiss

Wise arms, thoughtful arms
Arms that won’t upset me
Faithful arms, trusted arms
Arms that won’t forget me

All these arms It seems is hard to find in just one man
And so I think I’ll settle for as many as I can.