Month: June 2016

family portrait

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They learned to drive
a tractor at the age of eight.
could deliver a lamb
(or a calf probably)
before they went to school.
When I arrived at their house
I dodged dogs barking: ‘oh
he’ll never hurt you’ at odds
with my fear.
They always cooked for twelve.
We could play in barns
full of hay and straw, taking care
not to be crushed to death
by falling bales.
Their cats lived outside,
their litter tray a pile of sand.
They ate
everything on their plates, even the fat.
Grew their own vegetables and fruits,
enumerated runner bean hauls,
raspberry baskets, plum punnet
and made loganberry jam, whatever that was.

I liked books.

absence of things (small children)

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There are no small children in my house today.
I shall describe them: tiny newborn crying
baby tears and ‘needs changing’.
Eleven and a half month old
holding onto every edge, nappy hanging.
No dainty little girl, proud
with a ‘real haircut’, a red-cherry hair clip
and her mummy’s handbag.
There is not one serious little boy,
five years old perhaps, just started school,
new shoes a single scuff and
wants a knight sticker book and a playdate at Zach’s house.

I have, of course, held open a heart of hope
and my longing is so deep, so true, and there is so little time.

Note: This is from the ‘poetry retreat series’. We read David Hart’s ‘There are no chairs’ and were asked to write a poem about the absence of something in about four minutes.

ode to the teapot

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Every morning you
wait, hear my
step
step
step
down the stairs
glimpse the dawn
of the dishwasher door
pulled open.

You, teapot, are
fully alert
lest, by an early morning
misstep
of crack or knock
you are relegated from
‘daily’ to ‘occasional’.

sitting proudly on
your dove blue
tray and blossom-patterned napkin
you listen
to the music of bubble
and steam, the faint
pliff of teabag
dropping
from a short height.

And welcome the
sharp, hot, dark stream
into your
shallow depths.

Oh teapot, how
content you are:
two or three minutes
pondering eternity
full of mystery
and mastery you
brew
nestled in your cosy.

And now, revealed
you relinquish yourself
to tilting, tipping,
teeming with
tea perfection.
Your sidekick
mug and you
a happy
mismatched couple.

A moment’s respite
white porcelain
teapot to consider
your antecedents
your factory provenance
and the luck that brought you
to me.

Another cup?

Teapot?

Note: this poem is from the ‘poetry retreat series’. We read Pablo Neruda’s ‘Ode to the Clothes’ trans. by W Merwin and were asked to write a poem about a familiar object in six minutes.

retreat: over half way

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So, extraplorers…

A short(ish) post I am supposed to be:

  1. Working on poems to read tonight
  2. Writing up three poems to put in the class anthology tomorrow morning at 9:30am
  3. Working on poems to be read out at our ‘reading’ tomorrow night
  4. Getting more questions ready for tomorrow’s ‘drop in’ tutorials.

Somehow despite my poem enthusiasm I seem to have spent free time in very rascally ways like walking into the local village for a cream tea, going for a run in which I got lost and having my portrait taking.

I.e. not writing (but perhaps this is the most writerly thing I have done all week?)

Anyway, to summarise my actual writing progress so far:

  1. My poem about my granny (‘someone I don’t know well‘) turned out very nicely and was received with enthusiasm from the group and positive feedback from the real poets.  I still have some feedback to consider about this such as decide whether the order of stanzas could be better.
  2. I met one of my goals by writing and reading an intensely personal poem this morning.  I have wanted to be braver about this and I had several affirming comments both on bravery and quality.
  3. I had a quietly incredible tutorial this afternoon where some of my lurking questions (‘is this too self-absorbed?’, ‘does this even work as a poem?’) were met with wonderful responses about the quality, potential and validity of my writing.  I don’t think I have yet recognised the full weight of this.

Right!  Back to work.

 

 

someone I don’t know well

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Betty

Scoured by grey metal catering pots
and pans.  Grown by the
runner beans incessantly.

Worn in by ninety-two
pairs of size four slippers
(latterly, velvet).

Lit by infinite log fires
sussex beech and oak
no longer chopped by him.

Read by books, new, secondhand,
or borrowed, suspended by
an embossed
red leather bookmark.

Captured by photos of an
African safari, Andrew’s family
from Australia and ‘our dear friend’
Nils from Norway.

Fed by a marathon of meals,
fish finger breakfast butties,
roast lamb (fat included),
homemade fruitcake on
forget-me-not plates.

Pinned neatly into position
by a slowly diminishing
grey-white bun.

Loved.

Note: This poem is from the ‘poetry retreat series’.  We read ‘On hesitating to depict my grandmother’ by Gillian Allnutt (amongst others) and were asked to write a poem about someone we didn’t know well enough in six minutes.