It’s a funny thing, looking back at poems I’ve written several years ago. The poem of this week is one I wrote for my daughter, and now reading it again I find that it’s the secondary theme of this poem that strikes me first.

Both my ‘children’ now live in London, and I always look forward to their visits home. This weekend, it was my daughter who came with her boyfriend. There were a couple of things on their itinerary which we managed to achieve on Saturday – the first was a guided tour of her dad’s allotment.

It was several months since I’d been down there and I was overwhelmed by the amount of vegetables still thriving and demanding to be harvested. Of course, I knew about these, as he’d been bringing samples of them home for supper week after week.

The other was on the request of daughter and boyfriend: a trip to Imran’s in Birmingham’s Balti Belt. It was getting on for two years since we’d been there and it was even better than we’d remembered. I was glad that the honour of Brum was upheld!

So where does Dublin come in to this? It’s not even mentioned in the poem below. Daughter and boyfriend have been together for two years now, and the poem dates from about six years ago. This is a mother and daughter poem, so yes, it is about her, but it has a more general significance, in that it’s about the state of being in love. She looked so glowing with happiness when she arrived that it brought it all back to me (but not, I hasten to add, the previous cause of her joy) .

Take a look at the poem now, and if I tell you that I was at Trinity College in Dublin, and met my husband there, you might get the Dublin connection.

That Place

She’s a sunlamp! Her voice on the phone
emits a radiance that fills the hollow space
behind my breastbone, filters down

and my heart, a supernova,
flaunted itself on my face with such dazzle
that passers-by would flinch and shield their eyes.

Unlike some of my other poems, there’s nothing in this one that I’d want to change. It’s also a good one to read aloud and I find that most people who hear it seem to be moved by it.(It’s funny how little things like a back pockets of a pair of Levis can be forgotten for years, and then make such an impact when they suddenly surface.) Ah, youth!

Like most things in my life, I only get round to making a major change when I’m more or less forced into it by some outside intervention. In this case, it was having double-glazing installed in my lovely little writing room – not just the door and the big window overlooking the garden but also the French windows that we’d never opened in the twenty years since having this room added to the back of the house.

So most of today and all yesterday, I’ve been rearranging everything in this room. It opens onto the garden and is full of light on sunny days, so, with the doors and windows open it almost felt like being outside.

I hadn’t realised quite how long this would take me, and once I’d piled up all my books from the three bookcases onto the floor and every other available surface, I had to carry on. And it wasn’t just the books. The knee-hole desk I’m sitting at now has nine small drawers, and the tiny table I was using as a desk , also has a drawer, and then I’ve got a large carved camphor wood chest, and all these were crammed with accumulated papers and other odds and ends that had to be sifted and sorted.

I feel very pleased with myself now that it’s all finished, but I do regret not being able to catch up on other things I wanted to do, such as writing a post about R.J.Ellory’s inspiring talk to Bookcrossers on Friday night at Hudson’s – but that will have to wait.

Meanwhile, here’s my poem of the week:

Preservation

His mother’s fur coat sleeps under their bed.
Each night she listens as another stitch
that binds those skins together snaps.

Now sun slants in between the blinds
jostles motes of dust, and something
like a boulder is worked loose.

This is a poem that I first wrote at least seven years ago and was published in my small collection, Single Travellers. In spite of it also winning a place in the Ragged Raven Anthology, Writing on Water, (2005) I’d never been quite satisfied by that version (see below) so I’ve spent the last hour chopping and changing it. At the moment, I think this version is more effective, but when I read it again tomorrow,
I’m very likely to want to make other changes. (I’ve just read it again, and am not sure what I think now!)

I’d be very interested in your comments about these two versions.

Preservation

There’s barely room to navigate the decades of newsprint,
calcified narratives stacked on the carpet like
dry-stone walls. Does he believe

they can shore up the present? Beneath accretions of
photos and bric-a-brac, the clenched piano
is choking back old tunes.

Her mother-in-law’s fur coat sleeps under their bed.
At night, lying above those stitched-together
skins, she feels them stir.

Years back, on the edge of Lovers’ Leap, he
told her about limestone crags, billions of
fossils from aeons ago.

Now she’s found them on the net, sea-lilies,
feather stars, swaying and feeding in tropical seas.
All that life!

Sun edges in through smears of condensation,
its slanting shafts jostled with motes of…dust, is it?
or particles of

something more ingrained, intangible,
worked loose at last
from the boulder in her throat

I love the sea, but I’ve lived in the middle of England for more than thirty years.

I grew up in a small Sussex village which has its own mini-climate within a ten-mile radius of the family home where my mother still lives, just a few miles from the sea. When I’m at my own home, especially during the holidays, I sometimes find it hard to hear about the glorious sunshine they’re enjoying down there, while Sutton Coldfield is living up to its name, and is shrouded in cloud.

In keeping with Sod’s Law, when I drive down to Sussex after a week of fine weather, the sun usually goes into hiding as soon as I hit the A 23 and the downs come into view. So this weekend, on one of my regular visits to my childhood home, I was pleasantly surprised by the warm breeze and blue skies on Saturday afternoon.

I knew this would be my last chance of the year for swimming in the English Channel, so I took my chance, and the sun was hot on my shoulders as I trod gingerly over the grey stones to the edge of the clear sea. It wasn’t as cold as I’d expected and I relished again the feeling of freedom as I swam out towards a bobbing orange buoy, with the dazzling glare around me and several metres of water below my feet.

When I’d started going to the North Norfolk coast years ago on visits to my husband’s family, it took me a long time to get used to the sea there, with its treacherous currents, and the sun in the ‘wrong’ place, but I grew to love it for the wildlife and emptiness, particularly Blakeney Point with its colony of grey seals.

So this is the obvious candidate for my poem of the week:

Becoming a Seal

Becoming a seal takes dedication.
I’ve time for little else now
what with days in snack bars
accumulating layer on layer of flab
and evenings stretched out in the bath
holding my breath under water.

Night swells with dreams of blubber
light as airships, supple and strong
as branches of willow. Sometimes I lurk
by plastic ponds in garden centres.
After a little practice, Koi carp
slip down smoothly as noodles.

My place of pilgrimage is Blakeney Point.
Those massive bolster shapes basking
on sandbanks barely glance towards me
as I wriggle inch by inch a little closer.
Now that I’ve tuned in to their grunts and barks
I understand their conversations.

Lately I’ve noticed changes in my skin -
it’s thicker now and turning mottled grey.
Each plunging struggle against
North Sea tides creates a tingling glow
though I still have to coat myself with grease
before I slide into the waves.

When my legs have fused together
they’ll propel me faster. I’ll have no need
for arms – the sinuous seals caress
from head to tail. Soon I will smell
as they do. They’ll nuzzle me gently
gliding around me along the sea-bed.

This is not an autobiographical poem, but I have swum in the shallow channel at low tide ,while the seals’ heads bobbed around me,staring with their spaniel-like eyes.

An early version of this poem won 5th prize in the Poetry Life (2001) competition - since then I’ve tightened it by cutting out at least one other stanza and re-organising some other parts that I later felt were a bit clumsy. I still do like this version - it reminds me of those experiences and it’s fun to recite to an audience - it seems to go down very well at readings.

In recent years, the sheltered patio in my south-facing back garden has been dominated by large terracotta pots of leafy fuchsia plants. As with onions, my gardening husband has a tendency towards excessive zeal when it comes to growing things.Unfortunately, it’s usually September before the flowers show themselves in their full glory – by which time, I’m back at work.

In spite of my return to work last week, I’ve still made time to browse through more book/writing-blogs. I particularly liked the title of Fiona Robyn’s writer-and-reader’s blog for the way it connects writing to gardening – it’s also interesting in its own right.

As this is the time of year I tend to associate with the delicate drooping heads of red, pink, and mauve, I didn’t have to think too hard about my selection of the Poem of the Week.

THE VISITORS

The Head, who is not fond children,
has chosen for his office the small round room
at the top of the tower, where he cannot hear
the shrill recitations of tables or psalms or
into the valley of death rode the six-hundred.
He has no time for fairy tales and never wonders
about Rapunzel or the Lady of Shallott.

When he sees the first faint lines on his curved white wall
he thinks they’re cobwebs, tries to wipe them off
but they grow bolder. Scrawl themselves in tendrils,
stems, leaves, petals, calling out their names:
Fairy Cheeses, Cluckweed, Boneset, Larkspur,
Tetterwort, Clockdindle, Ripple Grass.
Rooted to the rug, he blocks his ears against the chanting:
Beggars Button, Cushy Cow, Rags and Tatters,
Foxes Cloat. Then colour emerges, and texture
and the smell of waste ground and damp woods.
Bad Man’s Oatmeal, Eldrum, Devil’s Milk.
As earth begins to fill his shoes
he shakes them off and stumbles to the door.
Kathleen, Kathleen, Kathleen

I wrote this a few years ago (2005?) when I and a few other local poets* were invited to take part in a project at the Ikon Gallery in Birmingham. We went round the different art exhibitions, absorbing the pictures and the atmospheres they created.

*I can’t lay my hand right now on the names of some of the other poets and artists, so instead of leaving anyone unmentioned, I’ll include them all in a later post.

The picture shows the exterior of the Ikon Gallery itself. I was intrigued to learn that it had started life as a school for deprived children, and that the room at the top of the tower was actually the Headmaster’s office.

Inside this small room with its rounded walls, there were raised beds of earth, filled with samples of weeds and wild flowers, while in a different part of the building, there was a complete data base of all the common names for these plants.

I couldn’t resist those wonderful names – and the mini-story-poem took shape.
It was published in 2006 in The White Car, the eighth anthology of poetry from Ragged Raven Press

I’ve had an exhausting and exhilarating day with H. J., one of my writing friends. We’ve talked almost non-stop since the moment she arrived yesterday evening, sharing our struggles with our different writing projects.

H J loves walking as much as I do, and this afternoon we had a three hour walk around Sutton Park. It was (apparently) a gift from Henry VIII to the people of Sutton Coldfield in perpetuity, so what ever else he might have done, I’m grateful to him for preserving this beautiful space. It’s one of the largest enclosed parklands in Europe – 2,400 acres of heathland, ancient woods and seven lakes. I feel so lucky to have this a mile or two away from on my doorstep.

It’s funny how a solitary activity like writing can extend one’s chances of meeting new and interesting people – anyone who’s read some of my earlier posts will know that my first residential writing course (at Arvon’s Lumb Bank Centre) opened up new opportunities not only for developing my poetry and novel writing skills, but also for creating new circles of friends. It’s been one of the unexpected joys of ‘coming out’ as a writer.

Once you’ve settled into adult life with a steady job and children about to leave home, it can be only too easy to trundle along in your comfortable rut, as horizons shrink, and you hardly notice that your eyes are fixed on the same old view. I joined the MA in Writing course because I knew I needed to be challenged – that was nearly twelve years ago and I’m still being challenged by some of my then-fellow students, and many other writers I’ve come across since then.(H.J. is one of the most challenging and inspiring -she’s a whirlwind of energy and a talented writer and artist.)

This afternoon, as we skirted muddy puddles, treading layers of last year’s leaves under beech and oak, holly and chestnut trees, I knew which of my poems I’d be posting today:

Down to the Wood

The table has grown smug. It smirks
at her, winks in the lamplight
as she lifts her fork.

It came with the house: dead wood
wedging itself between them, her
back, closer to the wall each

year as he inserts another leaf.
Mahogany. She hears it settle
dreaming of forest.

Sometimes she hushes it with damask,
the way a cloth drapes silence
over a parrot’s cage.

The fabric slides onto the floor, letting
the table hold her hands and face
in its deep sheen.

She’s lost her appetite for balanced
meals on a polished surface. She’ll
forage in the wood,

lips and fingers grained with
blackberry and juniper, no table
but the tawny floor of leaves.

This poem was first published in Poetry Nottingham International 2004, and in my own collection Single Travellers (Flarestack 2004) Since then I’ve changed the ending, and it’s this version which appears the anthology, A Twist of Malice (Grey Hen Press 2008)

I was delighted to have the chance to cut out the final stanza, as by that time, I’d felt that it weakened the whole poem. Here’s the original below in italics. See what you think!

lips and fingers grained with
blackberry and juniper, no table
but the tawny floor of leaves she’ll ruffle

with her palm and blue-veined wrist
the way she used to on the
tangle of his chest.

As I write this, the sun is shining down onto my husband’s onion and shallot harvest that is spread out across our patio, so I didn’t need to put much thought into my choice of this week’s poem. To say he’s a keen gardener is an understatement. (This picture shows just a small sample of this year’s crop.)

Some people might decide to reduce the size of their allotment, once half the members of the household have left home (in our case, a son and daughter). But though he’s always been good at maths (unlike me), he’s not one to do things by half, so instead of reducing his very successful production of vegetables, he has now acquired a second plot so that he can grow even more.

Not that I’m complaining, of course, and actually I do appreciate the year-long supply of delicious fresh veg, but occasionally the excess can prompt a poetic rant.

Storing Onions
The boiler room is out of bounds to her -
a Bluebeard’s chamber crammed with hanging rows
of surplus vegetables.

She used to cook him soups and casseroles
chopping the slippery white rings, half blinded.
It stings her eyes now, just to think of them.

Regardless, he produces more each year.
She watches him in silence from her window
unloading brimming boxes from his car.

He always waits till every plump green stem
fades pale as straw and flops exhausted
onto the nurtured soil of his allotment.

Back home he spreads a dust sheet on the terrace
and tumbles out his harvest
gloating over each brown globe in turn

rubbing it between his thumbs
fumbling through loose layers
brittle as wings of winter moths or flies.

He loops the twine around each fractured stalk
and tugs , to stifle any flow of juice
without quite severing the stub of neck

then calls her to admire his handiwork -
bunch after bunch of dangling heads
with grains of earth clinging to wiry hair.

She knows they’ll hang till swarms of tiny flies
feast on sterile shoots and rotting husks
while rust-brown liquid drips onto the floor.

I wrote this poem about ten years ago and as well as appearing in my own collection Single Travellers, it was first published in Weyfarers 2000. Since my husband (fortunately) has some understanding of poetic licence, he doesn’t take this personally, and in fact it’s his favourite poem of mine.

As it’s quite a dramatic narrative, it’s a good one to recite, and I’ve used it in performances with Late Shift. (I’ll be posting more about Late Shift soon)

It’s the month of August that links these two very separate items. The first is my aunt’s 90th birthday celebration lunch which was held today; the second is the title of the poem I’ve chosen for my Poem of the Week, Fat Woman on a Trampoline.

There were no trampolines in my aunt’s garden, where we enjoyed our pre-lunch drinks in the glorious sunshine, but I did mention this blog to some of my cousins, aunts and uncles when they asked if I’d got another novel published yet.

On my journey back home along the M 40, I was thinking about the group of friends from my MA Writing course, and how we arranged a writing weekend in a B & B in Derbyshire exactly ten years ago this month.

Fat Woman on a Trampoline

She waits until the children leave.
They haven’t noticed her
leaning over the stone wall
of the formal garden.

She saunters down the path
under an arch, past broken flower pots
and onto the rough grass
of the venture playground.

A walking holiday.
She sketches too. This B & B,
a family home to late Victorians,
broods above a wooded gorge.

Yesterday her heavy legs
hauled her, panting, up the ridge,
stiff boots guarding against rock
and contact with the springy turf.

She’ll just remove her shoes
and lie flat on this trampoline
large as the double bed
she sleeps alone in.

Above her a blue sky, white clouds,
sheep on the far green slope.
No one around. She stands
knees bent. Sways. Jumps.

Soars, arms outstretched
light, light, light
on taut blue plastic.
Light. Light. Light.

Several of my poems have a narrative strand, and often the first spark of inspiration comes from an emotion I’ve experienced myself. In this case, the actions and feelings in the final two stanzas are mine, though the character’s situation is invented. The description of the trampoline itself was accurate.
It’s not a ‘great poem’ but it reminds me of a happy and productive weekend with my friends. I was thrilled when it was a runner-up in the 2001 Kent & Sussex poetry competiton,. It was also published in Obsessed with Pipework, the magazine run by Charles Johnson, the then publisher of Flarestack, of which, I’ll be posting more soon.

I’ve always loved trees so a visit to Kew Gardens in glorious sunshine this Saturday was real treat for my birthday - even more so as we were able to walk there from our daughter and boyfriend’s new house, just a minute’s walk from the Thames. Better still, our son, who also lives in London, joined us for the weekend.

I’d looked it up on the website beforehand and was very excited to see that there was a tree-top walkway, over eighteen metres high.

I was surprised by how low the river was on our walk towards Kew, with a ‘beach’ of grey mud and stones. On our return, the water had been splashing over the path, and the whole atmosphere had changed.

This morning I went for a jog along the river before the others had woken, and the warm air was full of jasmine and buddleia.

This was the cue for selecting my Poem of the Week:
Lady of Shalott

I can forget the mirror sometimes
pretend I’m out there
strolling in the meadow by the river
Not looking straight at things is bad enough
not touching’s worse
I close my eyes and use my sense of smell
to measure seasons

Clods of mud release hints of
earthworm slither
fat white roots of grass and scarlet dreams
of dormant poppy seeds
I play the rain’s aroma like a scale
to harmonise with notes of mistletoe
fungus, moss and winter apple trees

When I catch the tremulous warm
breath of hibernating dormice
I leave my needle with its crimson thread
dangling from a ray of setting sun
in yet another landscape
curl up against the cushions and
adjust my breathing to that slow rhythm

but when summer’s sticky fragrance spills
into my rounded room
honeysuckle, lilies, buddleia
juice of cut grass, ripe corn, all
cling in my throat. It’s then
I quicken clammy fingertips
across the mirror’s face

I wrote this poem about seven years ago. I’m usually very visual in my use of images when writing poetry, and this time I was experimenting with using a different sense. I remember that I enjoyed ‘getting into’ the character of someone who can only experience the world from a distance , and I enjoyed focussing on all the different seasons, particularly summer.

Reading it now after all those years, I think that it expressed what I was trying to say then, but I don’t rate it very highly as a poem in its own right and I now find it a bit sentimental. I wouldn’t want to change any of it though - it exists as a part of my past.

In my last post, (see below) I mentioned that I’d been interviewed last Wednesday by Chris Morgan (the current Birmingham Poet Laureate) for his Poetry Show on Unity FM.
The time went surprisingly fast, during which Chris asked me lots of questions about my poetry and other writing. We paused in our conversation from time to time as Chris invited me to read one of my poems.

Being interviewed on the radio is a slightly unreal situation - during a ‘normal’ conversation with another individual, sitting opposite each other acoss a wide desk, it would seem a bit odd to punctuate the conversation with a poems. I felt very relaxed, but at the same time I was also aware that there could be several other people listening in. (And on the other hand, there might be no-one at all)

In a way, it felt a little like writing this blog - creating an illusion of communication with unseen readers )

I had selected several poems that I might want to read, but realised I’d probably need to make some kind of link to the latest topic of conversation, and I didn’t know in advance what questions Chris would be asking.

This Poem of The Week is one that I read during the interview - I’d been explaining why my soon-to-be-published-novel, Paper Lanterns, was set in Hong Kong, and this poem is one that I wrote after my first visit to Hong Kong with my husband and son, when my daughter was out there during her Gap year.

Snake Stall at the Night Market,Kowloon

I knew this was a language understood
by the rapt crowd of men and the man
performing and the woman holding
the bowl and knife -

not the Cantonese, rapid as gunshot
peppering shadowy figures on the pavement
nor the manic cacophony
of plastic alarm clocks from

three stalls away, nor tannoys blaring
White Christmas and voices bawling
Kalvin Klein jeans one hundred twenty dollars
and long-past-bedtime toddlers keening.

This was beyond vocabulary
an alien body language
of animal and human locked
in ritual more primitive than speech.

I’d have been swept along by the mainstream
alert for siren voices chanting silks
and watches, perfumes and leather
at must-have prices, but

my teenage son stopped
entranced. So I had to watch
as the four-foot, green and yellow snake
was gripped at the throat, its tail

pinned under the man’s boot, its belly
squeezed upwards, again and again
in the deft hand. The crowd knew
what this meant, what the man was offering

to one who was rich or brave or
foolish enough to buy what was about
to happen. All I could decipher
was the snake’s tail escaping

and the way the creature looped itself
into a knot until the man untied it
clamped the tail again, and took the knife.
I turned away, but still could hear

the many-headed monster suck its breath,
and commentary from my son’s mouth
that I would not interpret, for fear of
falling through a crack in the paving.

I wrote this poem a few years after the experience I’ve described. The incident had made a profound impression on me, but if I hadn’t made some detailed notes at the time, I would probably not have recalled it all.

I strongly recommend the use of a note book for jotting down a few words about things that you notice - however, I don’t do nearly enough of this myself!

It’s beginning to seem that whenever I’ve planned to write about poetry, I really feel like posting about fiction, and vice versa. Therefore, since I’ve designated Sunday for my Poem of the Week, it’s no surprise that I really want to tell you about the work I’ve just been doing on my novel, Paper Lanterns.

So here’s a short digression first. Although I produced the final version of this novel a few months ago, there were one or two of the early parts that I’ve kept tinkering with - especially the first part of Chapter One, and now I really do think it’s sorted.

The other thing I’ve been doing today relates to aspects of sign-posting (which I may, or may not keep to, when I’m laying out the final PDF version ready for self-publication). I’ve been experimenting with giving dates and titles to different sections, in order to present an initial overview for the reader. I’m very visual myself, and I like to see the overall shape of what I’m about to read.

I’ve also made a list of the 35 chapters, with just a few words about the content of each, in case I decide to give them all a title (that’s not very likely, though).

Not counting the brief prologue (Sutton Coldfield 1971), I’ve identified ten section headings – starting with:
Sutton Coldfield 2008 – Ann; (chapters 1 to 3)
Hong Kong 2008 – Vivienne; (chapters 4 to 10)
Hong Kong 1930 - Belle (chapters 11 to 13)

I now have an A4 page with the relevant chapter numbers and brief details arranged under the different section headings, and I like the shape of the book’s structure!

And now, it’s back to poetry again. My post last Wednesday mentioned the event at the Kitchen Garden Café, so here’s one of the three that I read that evening

Legacy
Through her camouflage of mohair
my fingers meet a sudden shoulder blade
and jut of rib. Bone of her bone is nothing new.
Flesh of her flesh. But this is new:
that stem cells of a foetus make their way
into the very marrow of their host –
renew themselves, year after year. So
I transmit my thoughts, electric pulses along
axons and dendrites out through my palms
and fingertips into her skin then down
to the dark centre of bone where my own
cells and my siblings’ cells and the cells of our
long-dead brother, her first baby, jostle each other
and I tell them push your strength into her.

I wrote this a few years ago, inspired by an article that caught my imagination (I can’t now remember where). It revealed that the bone marrow of mothers contains some of the stem cells of their own children – and these are still renewing themselves many years after the birth. I read this shortly after returning home to the Midlands after visiting my mother in Sussex. She was in her late 80s at the time, and I’d noticed that she seemed to have become thinner and more frail since , and I’d last seen her. (She’s now 92, and still doing well, so maybe those cells have been doing their job! )