What a lovely day yesterday – almost warm enough for swimming outside, something I’ve done little of this year. Living in the Midlands, I don’t get many opportunities these days for swimming in the sea, so for me, the combination of warm air, willows and alder, grassy banks and a wide expanse of clear fresh water is (almost) irresistible. However, neither the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal,

nor the Severn Estuary near Slimbridge Wildfowl Trust,would have been a suitable place for me to indulge in that particular hobby.

It reminded me of a different swimming experience a few years ago in one of the lakes in Sutton Park. Sometimes in May and June early in the morning, before there was anyone around to challenge me for breaking the park rules, and the sun was already hot as it rose above the willows, I’d quickly change into my swimming costume and wade carefully over the smooth pebbles until I was in deep enough to swim.

I knew that the water was clean enough at that time of year (before any possibly dangerous algae that sometimes appeared in long spells of hot weather had spread across the surface). When I splashed my feet around beneath me, I could see them gleaming white in the pale brown water, but I knew that this colouration had come from layers of dead leaves and pieces of bark.

The most exotic birds I saw that day were the flamingos,
but nothing there could thrill me as much as the two described in the poem below.

Heron

If you see me, it’s disdain
not fear that lifts your wings
in that slow beat,
legs stretched out behind you
like a spear, angled breastbone
a flint arrowhead.

Sun rises into hazy blue
above alder and willow.
The lake’s cool skin
exhales an earthy scent -
in the bark-brown depth,
my white feet gleam like fish.

Here, I’m on a par
with moorhen or grebe.
Kingfisher flames by, inches
from my face – jolts my heart into
my mouth so heart takes wing
almost settles - till you,

heron, reveal your self,
perched in a shrine of leaves,
not bird, but acolyte of sun,
icon, blinding wingspan
wider than a swan’s
or angel’s, even.

This poem was written about five years ago, and it’s a true account of what I experienced that day.

I still like it, as it reminds me of that ‘magic moment’, but I’m not really able to make a subjective judgement on its quality as a poem – Not that great, I’d guess, but good enough for what it is!

I was in Sussex visiting my mother this weekend, and for a change, Gardening Husband came with me. I’m always happy to let him drive, because it means that I can have a good long stretch of reading time. (Something I often find hard to do at home). I’d just started Breath, by Tim Winton, and was able to finish it by the time we arrived. I need more time to mull over this book – I found it enthralling, but haven’t sorted out my thoughts and feelings enough to write anything coherent about it yet.

My return journey took me about a third of the way into RJ Ellory’s A Quiet Belief in Angels. I wish we’d been driving up to John O’ Groats, and back to give me a chance to finish it. I don’t think I’ll get much of a chance to read more long chunks of it this week. I’ll just have to be patient, and wait to find out what happens next.

Yesterday was cloudy with an almost gale force wind. Coming down over the brow of the hill towards Seaford, I could see the white horses scattered across the dark green and purple sea, but today has been another one of those Indian summer days, with a clarity of light that I associate with fine weather in October.
That leads me nicely to this week’s poem – especially as it’s the traditional time of Harvest Festivals.
Light Harvest

October is the time to harvest light,
on days when lingering strands of summer
drift into a sky that rings like glass,
honing the dulled edges of your sight
to gather all the shift and shimmer
of slanting sun on trees and tawny grass,
gilding the familiar with surprise.

This morning I escaped into a park
where light lay ripe and waiting for my eyes,
trapped on wet black mud – splintering on dark
green spikes of holly into shards so bright
I’ll feast all winter on this hoard of light.

The original inspiration for this poem came while I was on my MA course at Nottingham Trent. We had one of the occasional Saturday meetings, and went out into the nearby countryside. The sky was absolutely clear and blue, the sun was warm, but there was a hint of chill in the air, and we gradually became aware of strands of tiny threads of cobwebs drifting around us and glistening in the sunlight.

I was delighted when this poem was accepted for publication in Acumen 2000. It’s one that I’m still happy to be reminded of at this time of year.

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.

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.

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!