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.