Poem - My Grandfather and Uncle

This poem was first published in Pennine Platform magazine. It remains one of my favourites.

MY GRANDFATHER AND UNCLE

My grandfather and uncle

both returned to the earth

with untimely haste.

Although they worked it,

broke its back

for snow to bite into,

dragged sedge from ditches,

clawed back

lambs from snowheaps,

they did not inherit it,

unless it was

in the length and width

of a man's form.

And it claimed them

early,

reaching up through the chest,

pain filling the arms,

which had gathered harvests.

And still they loved it

and still they cursed

on cold wet mornings,

as it worked

like ringworm into their hands.

In death

they shall inherit the earth.

Until this time

they have been living

on borrowed land.

Ultrasound

Ultrasound

(To my unborn son)

Refracted by water

like a silver fish,

not pausing beneath sounds,

turning which way.

Through darkness,

through warm waters,

and the constant beat of my heart,

you flash fast.

“We’ve a wriggler here,”

she said,

seeking you out

like a shoal of cod.

The suddenly you are still

and stand clear

upon the screen

– a small child

with head and flickering heart.

We measure the circumference

of your skull,

your femur and spine.

It is not time yet

to draw you in,

into this cold airbound world.

This poem was first published in The Rialto

Walls

WALLS

Through the walls

my neighbours

make love.

Her cries

cling

like the trail of snails

upon the kitchen floor,

clear, transparent,

hard to brush off,

as I lie

empty in the night.

This poem was first published in Joe Soap's Canoe and was included in the Grandchildren of Albion anthology. It was performed on BBC Radio 4 for which I received a cheque for less than £10. I didn't cash it, but kept it as a souvenir to show my grandchildren.

A Poetry New Year Resolution

For my magic realism review blog I recently read and reviewed Larque On The Wing by Nancy Springer. In it a middle-aged woman is forced to confront her 10-year old self. The child reminds the woman of the early dreams and aspirations that she has abandoned. It made me think what that girl in the centre of the photo above would have thought of the adult me. That Zoe was confident in her ability as a poet with reason. By the time I was 13 I had been published and was getting noticed. I had no fear about what I wrote, no self doubts. I took the plaudits without embarrassment or question. When the Director of the Cheltenham Literature Festival told me that Philip Larkin, no less, had said I was the best young poet in Britain, I was pleased but not surprised. I didn’t realize what a big deal it was and made no effort to get that in writing. How many times have I regretted that since!

What happened? Well – life in many ways. My gift was too easy, too natural. It came and went without my being in control. I can go for years without writing a poem and trying to force it just doesn’t seem to work. I have intermittently written several major pieces of poetry in a flurry of white-hot words, sufficient to make a body of work, but there are long periods of non-production. These periods were filled with career, motherhood and all the other joyous demands on my attention. But shouldn’t I also be doing something about placing my poetry in the public domain?

Two years ago I had a serious and life-threatening health emergency. I had always thought that I had time to promote my work, but as I lay in the hospital bed hitched to a monitor it was pretty clear that that was a false assumption. I published one of my long poems for voices –Fool’s Paradise – as an ebook with Amazon and won the EPIC (Electronic Publishing Industry Coalition) award for best poetry book in 2013. But I have not published it as a physical book.

As a poet I am very aware that even the books of the most successful poets have limited print-runs, so I know I won't make a great deal of money from poetry. But poetry is my first love.  But what must I do to reach out and make my audience aware of my presence? It means going public, of marketing, of pushing my work and that does not come easily. How I wish I had that young girl beside me, to give me the confidence and the necessary chutzpah I find I am so lacking now. Ironically it is not that I doubt the quality of what I have written, I have never lost that inner belief. It is the translation of that into some public action that is so difficult. So here is a New Year Resolution – I will get off my insecure butt and face this. I am not yet sure how, but I will do something.

Poem -The Breaking of the Blood

The Breaking of the Blood

It is very clear to me,

as it is clear to all of us,

that memory

of the first trace of blood.

It was a surprise,

as it is always a surprise,

for each woman

who comes upon herself

with the breaking of the blood.

And I thought as I gazed

at my blood upon the water 

of the time

when reaching 

into fine white snow

my hand found glass.

I thought

of a child’s fairytale

of a queen at a window

wishing herself a child

snow-white

and lips of blood. 

This poem was first published in Grandchildren of Albion ed. Michael Horovitz

Fool's Paradise

The illustrations for my poetry book Fool’s Paradise are prints by my friend and mentor Hannah Kodicek. Hannah produced a whole series of prints in response to my writing and it was always our plan to publish a special edition of the poem and the prints. We did not have in mind an ebook, but rather a beautifully produced limited edition paper book. But one thing stopped us: when Hannah moved back to Prague she mislaid the first quality prints (the ones I have used in the ebook being her second or third choices) and never found them again. Her death last year almost certainly means that they will never be found.

Nevertheless the ones I have chosen for the ebook do her justice. They were created by painting on a sheet of glass, often I think with her fingers, and then placing the paper on top.