In The Poetry

Granny Is

Granny is
fried dumplin’ an’ run-dung,
coconut drops an’ grater cake,
fresh ground coffee smell in the mornin’
when we wake.

Granny is
loadin’ up the donkey,
basket full on market day
with fresh snapper the fishermen bring back
from the bay.

Granny is
clothes washin’ in the river
scrubbin’ dirt out on the stone
haulin’ crayfish an’ eel from the water
on her own.

Granny is
stories in the [...]

The Widow’s Lament in Springtime

Sorrow is my own yard
where the new grass
flames as it has flamed
often before but not
with the cold fire
that closes round me this year.
Thirtyfive years
I lived with my husband.
The plumtree is white today
with masses of flowers.
Masses of flowers
load the cherry branches [...]

Prayer Before Birth

I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.

I am not yet born; console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies [...]

In Britain when you make a phone call and hesitate before dialling a recorded voice comes on and says, ‘Please hang up and try again.’

The Excuse

Please hang up… I try again
“My father’s sudden death has shocked us all”
Even me, and I’ve just made it up,
Like the puncture, the cheque in the post,
Or my realistic cough. [...]

‘Soil’ takes place in England on a train journey. I was taking a ride I think from London up to Yorkshire and I looked out at the soil, the earth and I thought I recognise that colour – where does that colour come from? And what does it mean to me? It seemed to be [...]

My father took part in the D Day landings and this poem describes what happened to him on that day and subsequently in Germany during the Second World War but in fact is set in England and remembers a time when I was talking to him about the war.

Veteran

Across the field, the wood
shudders under lilac [...]

‘Talk Us Through it, Charlotte’ – one little thing I’d like to explain about this poem is that, for some reason, I have imagined Charlotte to be a Black Country girl. The Black Country is the part of England that I grew up in, a heavy, industrial area with its own voice, its own accent. [...]

I love looking at pictures and Rembrandt is my favourite painter among the old masters. And this poem is called ‘Rembrandt’s Late Self-Portraits’.

Rembrandt’s Late Self-Portraits’

You are confronted with yourself. Each year
The pouches fill, the skin is uglier.
You give it all unflinchingly. You stare
Into yourself, beyond. Your brush’s care
Runs with self-knowledge. Here

Is a humility at one [...]

The next poem, ‘A Bird in the House’, is a piece of autobiography and it’s a straight recollection of something that happened with my sister and me when we were small.

A Bird in the House

It was a yellow voice, a high, shrill treble in the nursery
White always and high, I remember it so,
White cupboard, off-white [...]

In this poem, a farmhand is coming off the land at the end of the day, reflecting on whether they have done enough. It’s written for someone who, at the time of writing, was leaving work due to ill health.

The Fielder

The day is late, later than the sun.
He tastes the dusk of things and [...]