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.

Our extremely large and heavy tabby cat, Heidi, is curled up on a cushion on my lap, purring like an engine. Without the cushion, I’d be at risk from her long claws – the slightest sound of footsteps in the kitchen, and she’ll be digging her claws through my thin summer skirt as she hurls herself halfway across the floor and out of the door with the speed and agility of a much smaller, lighter creature, determined to greet the real love of her life, my husband.

Now that she’s stopped gazing up at me, asking for her head to be rubbed, and appears to be asleep, I can get on with my Writing Matters. I’ve been finding it strangely helpful to look back on the various stages of my writing ‘career’ over the last 25 years. Reflecting on the pattern of my ‘two-steps-forwards-one-step-back’ journey, confirms for me what I already (partly) knew – persistence is even more essential when times are difficult, and, you never can tell what’s round the corner.

Although at the end of my last post, I said that I’d be talking about novel writing and the events leading up to the publication of my book, I’ve let myself be side-tracked to my other passion: poetry. At Erdington Library last Wednesday, I was being asked lots of questions about my poems, and I’ve just been browsing through some older files on my computer, and my small collection, Single Travellers; Flarestack 2004 –there’s a story behind that, and I’ll come to it sooner or later.

I’ve dabbled in writing poetry since I was a child, but it wasn’t till my Arvon Course at Lumb Bank in Yorkshire that I ‘came out’ as a poet.(see my post: an Arvon Course and a Poetry Prize….)
I think that some of these poems have stood the test of time and ‘work’ on me the way they did when I wrote them – others, are just not ‘me’ anymore. I probably wouldn’t write those poems in that way these days - my circumstances are different, and I’ve developed some different techniques, but they’re part of my writing history.

So I’ve decided to start a new category, ‘Poem of the Week’ where I’ll give an airing to some of my poems, old and new. I’ll aim for doing this every Sunday. I expect this’ll be a fairly random selection, based on something in my day or week that’s triggered a memory of the poem itself, or the experience that led to it, or simply because it seems in keeping with the weather or season.

This is a fairly recent poem, inspired by a wonderful creative writing course, led by Mimi Khalvati in Crete in June last year. I was delighted when it was selected by Penelope Shuttle for inclusion in the second edition of ArtemisPoetry, published this May.

In this hot weather, I’ve thought about that beautiful place, and how grateful I was for the patches of shade on a long walk up the mountain side.

Climbing to Livaniana

I thank the hands
that balanced
these small cairns
at each turn of the track

and the owners
of the olive trees
for their caves of shade
and those who tend
the hairy goats
for ripples of wind-chimes
in this airless heat

not forgetting
the keeper of the bees
that stream from their
white hives
each morning
to graze the purple
cushions of thyme

and I thank the thyme
for its crushed scent
the way it nudges
against something
I can almost
open