Skendong Poetry
Clunky Narratives

Welcome to Skendong Poetry, an experimental poetry archive from Manchester and the original home of The Candid Verse. This archive explores Clunky Narratives — poems that show their seams on purpose, where disrupted structure, shifting voices, and changing rhythms become part of the storytelling itself.

Clunky Narratives challenges the expectation that poetry must always be smooth, polished, or predictable. The writing embraces friction, unusual structures, and unexpected shifts in voice — a register that can move from biblical prophecy to internet satire within a single stanza, because the subject itself refuses to stay still.

Many poetry websites favour refined, consistent forms. Skendong takes a different approach: an assault on reigning rhetorical excesses — moralising, chaotic, and deliberately uncomfortable. The aim is not disorder for its own sake, but a space where imperfection, contradiction, and unconventional expression can reveal something genuine.

The growing archive examines memory, identity, society, and the human condition. From Ancoats corner shops and canal-side wine bars to rogue AI escaping its sandbox and headlines from Gaza, the poems trace how overlooked moments and forgotten causes can develop into unpredictable creative effects.

For poetry lovers, experimental writers, and readers seeking alternative literary forms, Skendong Poetry offers a completely ad-free space to explore unconventional poetry and the evolving Clunky Narratives framework. Original writing since 2012, with a creative method that continues to develop.