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Stanza 35, September 2007
Editorial
Dear Members,
First of all I would like to welcome any new members to LPS and then to welcome back old members. I hope this will be a year in which you will be able to enjoy poetry and feel able to contribute to the Society.
I was very sad to hear that, after a cruel illness, Pat Corina had died, and to be unable to attend her Memorial Service. How we miss her skill and inspiration! I know that Karin Woodruff, D.A. Prince and Brian Fewster are working together to produce a collection of Pat’s work in the New Year, and I shall treasure my copy.
As a result of the AGM. there have been a lot of changes to the LPS. Committee. Sincere thanks must go to the outgoing members: Brian Fewster, Steve Morgan and Marilyn Ricci. Without them there simply would not have been a functioning Society. Likewise, sincere thanks must go to the new Committee members, and particularly to Graham Norman, our new Chairman. With your support, dear Members, we will be able to maintain the Society’s long tradition and high standards, and to look to the future.
I hope you all enjoy reading this copy of The Stanza. Many thanks to those who have contributed to it. Please continue to send me your poems (max. 2), letters, articles etc. The deadline for copy for the next issue of The Stanza is Friday, 15 February 2008.
I look forward to seeing many of you at the Reading by Anne-Marie Fyfe on 16 November. It should be a very good evening, as she is the current Chair of The Poetry Society, and a fine poet. Please bring guests!
Caroline Cook
Contributors
Prose: Editorial and review of Charles Bennett’s reading: Caroline Cook ; Jean Harbour on the June 2007 Members’ Reading; Norman Harrington on Pat Corina’s Memorial Service; Marilyn Ricci on the G.S.Fraser Lecture delivered by Stan Smith; Karin Woodruff’s eulogy to Pat Corina
Poems
Tina Bass Charles Bennett Mark Borg Mike Brewer Caroline Cook Pat Corina, (2)
Brian Fewster, (2) Anne Kind Maxine Linnell Siobhan Logan Graham Norman
D.A. Prince Marilyn Ricci Stuart Snowden B.J. Walklate Huw Watkins Andie Wingham
Line Drawing (for Shirley Easton)
Today she has us
mapping the universe,
tracing its lines and shadows,
trapping its light.
I have three globes, three
golden and green
striped gourds,
warty and ridged worlds
lolling in orbit round
an unseen sun.
My task is to
make them real
in this other dimension,
this snowbound plane,
as my pen’s
flat black tracks
outline the oceans’
inlets, coastal
erosions, the random
digressions of form
chaos allows.
So, as my hand
channels the eye’s
imperatives
I am learning
the lie of the land,
how the world turns,
the art of the possible.
MEMORIAL SERVICE — Thursday 2 August 2007
FOR PAT CORINA (22 Sept 1938 – 23 July 2007)
Although under great personal stress, Brian Fewster organised the funeral, in collaboration with Pat’s partner Werner and family. Brian spoke excellently at the beginning of the service about Pat, her poetry and her great contribution to Leicester Poetry Society. He then read Speaking to Silence. Her fine poems are her living and ongoing memorial. We can always “call her back” by reading them.
Her daughter Sarah read Passing Agny, written after Pat and Werner came close to visiting Edward Thomas’s grave in France, but in the end didn’t. Pat recalled some of the poet’s lines as we now recall hers.
Karin Woodruff gave an extremely well-delivered eulogy which included a résumé of Pat’s life.
It was fitting that Pat’s son Eliot was represented in the service by the playing of one of his songs: Illusions of Love.
Huw Watkins read Line Drawing and Bette Walklate read The Potency of Cheap Music.
After another piece of music by two of Pat’s grandchildren, Werner spoke simply. He said he loved her and she was his best friend. And that was the best tribute of all.
Norman Harrington
… “the known shape turning the corner at the far end of the street,
the presence of an absence that remains”…
Pat Corina: Eulogy by Karin Woodruff
 I’m very honoured to have been asked to speak about Pat today. The word ‘eulogy’ comes from the Greek, and means to speak well of. And while I have no difficulty at all in speaking well of Pat, I can sense Pat looking askance at me, and saying… whatever you do, don’t go rabbiting on about things that aren’t true … I wasn’t a saint you know…
Which is perfectly true. Pat was not a saint. She was a stubborn, bloody minded Yorkshire woman, incredibly proud of her roots. Throw into this a razor sharp intelligence, a huge knowledge of the world in general, and literature in particular, a deep sense of justice and truth, a hatred of pomposity, a wicked sense of humour, and huge energy before she became ill, and you’re beginning to get a little closer to what Pat was.
I first met Pat in Leicester 14 years ago, when I found myself sitting next to her at a weekly Creative Writing class. What on earth Pat was doing in that class I have never worked out. She was clearly sitting on the wrong side of the table. She had a folder in front of her literally bulging with poems she’d written, yet she never pressed her own work forward. She was extremely well-read, and a formidable poet. It’s not an exaggeration to say that her poetry ranks alongside the best modern poetry written in the last twenty years. But Pat wasn’t just a wonderful poet, she was far more than that.
Before I talk more about Pat the person, a few biographical facts. Pat was born in Shipley, just north of Bradford and went to school at the local Salt High School. She studied English at Liverpool University, and married Lesley Corina in 1963, travelling with him and their first daughter Sarah to Malawi in the mid-1960s where she worked as a lecturer in English. They returned to the UK in the early 1970s, settling in Leicester where Pat took up a full-time post helping set up and run the newly established unit in Southfields College teaching English as a second language. By now she had three young children, and it’s a testament to Pat’s energy that she managed to combine a full-time job with being a mother of 3 young children. There was a short period in the mid-seventies when the family moved to Reading, but by the end of the 1970s Pat was back in Leicester and working full-time at Charles Keene college teaching English and business studies. By this time she was a single parent, a committed socialist and very active in the Labour Party and the further education teacher’s union, into which she put a huge amount of energy, having constant battles with the head of Charles Keene as she fought for better working conditions for the teachers.
In 1981 she met Werner, and it’s true to say that Werner was the love of Pat’s life. They were totally devoted to one another. Not many people know that Pat spoke and understood French and German.
In 1993, which was the year I met Pat, she had just taken early retirement after 16 years at Charles Keene College. In retrospect this was the best thing she could have done — because she then had 10 wonderful years doing all the things she loved: gardening, archaeology, painting, pottery, pursuing her love of poetry and literature. And helping other people, in her usual selfless way. For a number of years she was a volunteer at a local home for elderly blind people, where she led poetry readings and quizzes. Her house filled up with quiz books as she did the research needed, and she enthused the residents to recite all the poetry they’d learnt by heart as children.
Pat was a wonderful facilitator of other people’s poetry. Her years as competition organiser, and then Chair of Leicester Poetry Society were golden years when the society got itself on a firm financial footing, and really flourished. She was a very fine editor, and she enhanced every poetry workshop she participated in. When we saw Pat’s pencil starting to make notes on a poem, we’d sit up sharpish and listen to what she had to say. Yet she was very dismissive of her own poetry, and was reluctant to take a compliment! Despite this, every now and again she’d send her poems out to competitions and magazines, and whenever she did they would win major prizes or get published. I don’t think she ever had a rejection slip. She helped found the Leicester-based women’s poetry group Soundswrite — and it was Pat who thought up the name. She helped co-edit the first anthology, and continued to come to Soundswrite workshops until early 2004 when she became too ill. One of the last poems she brought to Soundswrite was called Six Tests for Saddam Hussein, written in 2003 at the beginning of the war in Iraq. This was at a time when she was managing to get around with difficulty, using a stick … but despite this her poetry had an immediacy and sharpness and was outward-looking, with never a trace of self-pity.
As many of you know, to begin with Pat was told she had Parkinson’s Disease, but it soon became clear that something even worse was going on, and eventually Pat was diagnosed with the much rarer condition MSA — Multiple System Atrophy. That she lived with such disability for the last year is a testament to two things: Pat’s indomitable spirit and Werner’s totally selfless, uncompromising level of care.
A few months ago I spoke with Pat about the idea of putting together a book of her poems, and she was very enthusiastic. Despite having little strength in her voice her mind was still razor sharp, and she was able to tell me the titles of poems I was missing in my list, and I’m confident that we can bring out a book of her selected poems by the autumn. It will give us all a second chance to celebrate her life and poetry.
Pat was also a mother, and like all mothers she loved and worried about her children in equal measure. It was a source of great happiness to Pat that her adopted daughter Karen re-found Pat, and Pat discovered she had 3 terrific grandchildren, of whom Mairead and Douglas are here today. Her children and grandchildren are musically gifted, and Pat loved music..and was very broad minded - everything interested her…, rock, pop, classical, world music ... from Mahler to the Mekons … to Jerry Springer the Opera. In a few moments you’ll hear Illusions of Love written and performed by her son Eliot, and a little later a piece featuring her grandchildren.
I want to end with a wonderful example of Pat’s sense of humour when she brought to a poetry workshop what is called in the trade a “found poem” — literally some writing that already exists, but isn’t thought of as a poem until someone sees its true potential. Pat had spotted the following on the front of the automatic drinks machine at the Adult Education College where the poetry society held its weekly workshops:
IT IS NOT POSSIBLE TO OVERFILL YOUR CUP.
Pat loved and lived life to the full, and I know I’m not alone when I say that I shall miss her hugely.
Poem
all those years of climbing the north face
now I’m here on the plateau
is that it?
if this was what all the struggle was about
it begs the question
was it worth it?
the answer of course
is, I’m not sure:
there were other routes I could have taken
but they, most likely; would have got me
to exactly the same place:
maybe I should have
crossed that bridge I came to
ignoring the dark chasm;
now, I think, what I need to do
is put the crampons back on
and keep climbing;
the next resting place
may have a better view
may be less flat . . .
This poem was read at Pat Corina’s Memorial Service
When Hope Is The Memory Of Spring Flowers
Memories on the back of a train ticket
— a particular journey.
Written together;
More than a moment in time;
More than a casual piece of paper.
Delicate petals,
Perfume,
A faint breeze;
Dancing yellows, blues;
A soft mattress of leaves!
And nearby
Water flows,
A trickle of a stream.
Hope passing through.
Warm water across her back,
Rivulets he’d touched!
Wet hair.
A tear of pleasure,
A glance across the room.
Her delicate fingertip.
His lightest kiss.
She knew he meant it.
He knew she meant it.
Nothing else mattered.
Yet,
In the mind —
Now a memory!
A light for night time.
Wispy,
Aromatic,
Her word’s, “I love you!”
His words, “Alone. Alone without you!”
Blue ink shared.
Don’t let wither
The delicate flowers of spring.
Keep hold the ticket
Though the journey’s long over
Don’t let the colour fade.
BREAKOUT
Last night I jumped feet first at a window
To smash it into a myriad fragments
In a frenzy of pent-up anger.
But I noticed too late that the window had been opened,
And out of it I flew,
Soaring into the soft velvet blackness under my own momentum.
My toes split the cool air, which flowed over my body like balm,
My arms were twin rudders to guide me where I pleased,
Scudding through the trees.
Suddenly the moon appeared from behind dark clouds,
And I was scything through the silvery sky,
Harnessing the wind with my tilting palms.
Till dawn I flew,
Startling owls and cats with weird gyrations;
Then I returned, back through that same window.
But I noticed too late that the window had been closed,
And I smashed through it, onto the floor,
A tangled mess of blood, glass and oblivion.
Six ways to see seals
II
On the path past Treveal by the Carracks,
Looking for seals out to sea,
I tripped and broke my neck.
Dead, I never saw seals, or Zennor,
My last sight a flash of gold lichen.
II
Stopping on the track, I pretend to see seals.
Clumps of brown seaweed make good substitutes.
If seals were there, hiding in the waves,
They were too far from my path,
Too preoccupied to be seen, not wanting it.
III
I saw a cormorant, right to left in the rollers’ trough.
I saw a falcon fight with a raven,
Kite fighting, the strings snapped out from my eyes.
Falcon dived. Raven flipped over, upwardly raking.
They tumbled backwards down the sky’s stairway.
IV
At night I dream of seals
Clinging to rocks like black slugs,
Slipping into dark green water,
Browsing for fish that will leap from my head,
Come morning, fresh as foam.
V
Later on the cliffs at Zawn Reeth,
A couple sat and pinked in the spring sun,
Passed time of day and showed me their seals,
“There, out by the rocks off the point!”
I could not see but said I could,
Just for comradeship. They were seal people,
Smooth, plump, definitely mammal.
VI
Further on at Nanjizal, two men from the Midlands
Stood with me, chatting about walking,
Clothing, day sacks, practical matters,
And leaving the wives at home and all that.
One pointed down to the cove below,
“See that seal? I think it’s sleeping.”
Twenty yards from the shore it floated,
Its snout buoy-like, anchored to the bottom sand.
I walked out on the beach to have a closer look.
It looked back angrily and sent
Its blue green rollers roaring round my feet.
Fire-bridge to Sky-shore
If you could put your feet upon pure light,
kick away the earth for a path of sky,
walk the Trembling Roadway,
called Bifrost, bridge of green fire,
shafted with rails and struts of shine;
if you could swing out dizzy
on ropes of colour, swaying free,
hear yourself out there in the silence,
gulp air charged with icy brilliance,
smell frost-needles fastening hair;
if you could lean down and stare
at far cities mapped in neon,
old Midgard, land of men;
the lock of nine worlds now ajar
to warrior gods, spiralling valkyries;
if you could go bodily into air
without suit or shield or charm,
grazing an ionosphere ablaze
with burning colour, oxygen green,
nitrogen blue, a violet belch of gas;
if you could go mouth open, eyes
blind with so much vision,
star hunter, spirit hiker, sky wight -
you would be beyond our kind,
ecstatic, dream-bound or dead.
History lessons
Peace had no dates — it sprawled
shapeless through gaps between the wars,
dragging its chapters into emptiness.
Foreign relations rearranged the maps
in black and grey and tired constitutions tried
to understand themselves, while twice a day
the quarry shook our windows, coughing dust
as white as blackboard chalk. Under the town
black seams were emptied, and their coal was drawn
until the pavements buckled. Hours
stretched as two hundred years ago:
a textbook page could hold five decades
curled in its corners, blurring to the space
contained between the end-of-lesson bells.
So it was war, staking out the centuries,
holding it all together, got us through
exams: the dates of Jenkins’ Ear, or that long
trail through The Peninsular. We had
our favourites pinning the years when time
had bullied faster through whole chapters,
when all the maps turned red. Wars made sense,
each with a list of causes to tick off,
linking the battles. The Lines of Torres Vedras
were inked across our notes, and armies
arrowed across the shrunken continent
to win in half a sentence. Lesson over,
scraping back chairs, we’d pack
the foreign names of victory
into the scuff of satchels. Done.
STAN SMITH: G.S. FRASER LECTURE
11th May 2007
“Remembering Auden and Isherwood”
Professor Stan Smith from Nottingham Trent University stood in at very short notice when our scheduled speaker for the G S Fraser lecture, Professor Richard Burns, was injured in a car accident (he’s fine now).
This being the case, it wasn’t surprising, perhaps, that the lecture had a decidedly ‘academic’ feel to it (we had two handouts). Stan may not have had time to gear the talk to a more diverse audience. He was also hampered by the fact that a slide projector could not be found in time and so had to hand round copies of pictures integral to his talk.
Despite all this, I got a lot out of it. Stan is an expert on modern poetry
generally and has written books on Auden. In his talk he focused on both Auden and Isherwood. The public and the private was a theme. Stan is interested in the way these two writers interacted through the privacy of their friendship and their work in the public domain. As part of this, he unpacked the notion of ‘Commemoration’ by examining the ways in which both writers were preoccupied with the processes of remembrance and forgetting, citing Auden’s The Orators: An English Study (1932) and Isherwood’s novel The Memorial (1932) as instances of this. Both men, he said, were interested in the way apparently ‘private’ memories are also constructed, and are part of, the forging of ‘public’ identities. Commemorating events — wars for instance — is essential if people are to be galvanised into dying in the name of abstract concepts, such as, say, ‘Freedom’ and/or a particular identity described as ‘Englishness’.
Both Auden and Isherwood had a subversive, satirical take on the British Establishment. This showed in works critical of WWI and Stan took us through the Prologue of The Orators analysing each quatrain detailing how the disabled ‘heroes’ gradually become unwelcome reminders of the bloodshed and brutality and are viewed with hostility — ‘And yet this prophet, homing the day is ended/Receives odd welcome from the country he so defended’. He also analysed parts of Missing (1930) which speaks of war memorials through ‘voices in the rock/Are now perpetual/Fighters for no one’s sake/Who died beyond the border’.
At various points, Stan passed around pictures of Auden suggesting how faces contain traces of personal history. We saw Auden’s famous wrinkled visage which apparently Noel Coward said ‘reminded him of an elephant’s scrotum’ and someone else had likened to “a wedding cake left out in the rain”. But we also saw formal pictures of both Auden and Isherwood and compared these to private ‘snapshots’ of them together. Finally we saw a picture of Auden at around ten years old which was the year his father returned from WWI of which experience he later wrote: ‘Father and butter came to the table.’ Stan reminded us of the way in which both writers often used a ‘double focus’ of deadly seriousness and humour in their work — ‘How rich life has been and how silly’ wrote Auden, summing up much of his life and work .
At the end of the talk Stan responded to questions from the audience. There was one from Brian Fewster who asked whether Auden should be commemorated in the centenary year of his birth considering his own feelings about commemoration? Stan felt he should be as he has often been much maligned and ignored by the literary industry — partly because of his move to America in 1939. The significance of the latter, he said, has been exaggerated. Auden fell madly in love with a young American. In fact, he offered to come back to help with the war effort but was told not to — after all, he was flat-footed, openly gay (viewed with suspicion in those days) and pretty incompetent at anything practical. Stan seemed to relax once the lecture was over and he talked more conversationally. I think a lot of people particularly enjoyed this part of the evening.
So, was it a memorable evening or one to forget? For me, memorable. I enjoyed both parts. I rather like my intellect stretched occasionally and having to run to keep up but, most importantly, Stan placed the works of both writers into their original contexts, which thoroughly enriched them for me.
A Woman’s Heart
It all depends
On a woman’s heart
For an affair to start,
For wedding bells to ring,
For a child to be born;
Love-lorn you may be,
Suffering and pale,
But all your efforts will fail
Unless your dart has landed
In a woman’s heart.
Transverberation
Tell me, Teresa, just between
us, did Bernini see you right?
Was that ecstasy down to angels or
more earthy meetings? Did you know
your body, Teresa, work its truth —
where the heart could be let go —
waves beaching you with tides,
lapping back to rocks and depths?
You say you sinned, but not quite how —
wise to stay quiet — I won’t think less,
more that you lived in an arid place
dammed by those dried up from being right.
MAN AND BOY
As strong as Samson
he moved the house around
brick on brick until it was
to her liking.
Every hammer blow remembered;
nails put in with strength
that would never yield;
was that love?
Garden walls are crumbling now.
In Spring
all he planted comes up again
daffodils, tulips, red currant bushes
“What’s the project this year?”
and when she told him
as soon as said
was done.
And in the house
the corner shelf,
measured to the last millimetre
lighting below
light everywhere.
Where there was space
there was a cupboard;
sockets for convenience
the house his meccano-set.
He was playing
like he never did as a boy
to an audience of one.
Members’ Reading June 8th 2007
 Tina Bass is a Soundswrite poet who has recently published a book of poetry, “Fat Man Dancing.” She started her reading with the title poem, which moved from grossness to pathos to celebration. In “I think I want to kill you” the mood is darker and more intense which contrasted sharply with the poet’s gentle, almost tentative delivery. Her many short poems convey an appealing mix of the natural world and a perception of others’ points of view and her message is direct and uncluttered.
Mark Borg was welcomed back to Leicester Poetry Society to read more of his work. His delivery was secure and understated and his work touches on the deep and painful experiences of some of the most vulnerable members of society. He reveals their hurt in a quiet persuasive way so that the message is realistic, almost matter of fact and therefore intensely powerful. The bleak greed of “The Wolf” and the quirky humour of “The fifth toothbrush” combine to demonstrate the breadth and range of his thinking. Mark Borg left his audience aware of issues that are rarely uncovered and always uncomfortable, even when highlighted with subtlety and compassion.
Marilyn Ricci brought an engaging style of delivery to her audience whom she led into the intimate world of relationships. The openness of her manner enhanced the subtlety of her observations and well-considered opinions. Her affectionate descriptions of her parents and sister, as in “Seeds”, and the everyday event of a visit to the cinema in “Picture Palace Tearoom” are full of both nostalgia and resolution. Marilyn also has a clear perception of the uniqueness of ordinary objects, which is evident in the poem “My Shoe” where she also explores wider contemporary issues.
This Members’ Reading was enjoyable for the range of subjects that were covered and the variety of both styles and delivery.
Englishwoman Abroad
I did it once
The American-abroad thing
Except I am English, so
I did an English alternative-thing.
Instead of talking loudly in pinch-nosed tones; occasionally checking
that several people were listening,
I sat in the darkest corner of a German pub reading ‘Crime and Punishment’.
Waited motionless for Germans to make a friendly move.
Speaking to Silence
In those few seconds waiting for the tone –
and for your rather toneless message to run out –
I wonder where my words will go
once I release them. My muddled physics sees
them funnelled down a microphone,
transmuted by some tiny processor (the sort
with blades) that flings their fragments down
the vortex of a twisted wire, then hurls them out
on to a sticky verbal fly-paper.
How will they reassemble? How
can adjectives seek out their nouns,
nouns home on to verbs? Will they make sense,
these deconstructed particles of thought?
I’ve never been a resurrectionist,
finding it far too much to hope
that bones could summon back the flesh,
thread it with nerves and blood, clothe
it with skin. And yet I know
later you’ll call me back, confirm
that we can meet, that all these blown-
to-bits minutiae of speech
have reached you whole.
Pat Corina
Walking on the Glacier
Keep to what’s level, they said, avoid the slope
that funnels to the centre.
Seeing you on the ice, we waved and shouted
but you kept steady in the wrong direction,
ignored our urgency
for fear of panic.
(Your voice is brittle down the telephone.)
Skirting it now
I test the slope and traction,
am conscious of the treacherous sideways pull,
hear the insistent call of the ice funnel.
Ice Age
I dreamt the earth was under ice again
and we were left a continent apart
with glaciers between us. Where and when
our ways had forked and what was at the heart
of that divide were undisclosed. The past
was out of reach and time had blanked your track.
I dreamt I told a woman of my quest
to cross the frozen peaks and bring you back.
I’m friends with my four husbands, she replied.
I held her warmth as we lay side by side.
Her Wish List (after Brecht)
In gifts, the drinkable.
Joys, the unthinkable.
In pastimes, pointlessness.
Gymnasts, jointlessness.
In children, to be "full of 'satiable curtiosity".
Peace-protesters, some spark of ferocity.
In art, truth.
In naked bodies, youth.
In sport, restraint.
On poor complexions, paint.
In music, passion.
Self-love, ration.
Lives, something that gives delight.
In deaths, quickness, those out-of-sight.
In all machines, simplicity and sense.
And in a marriage, mutual defence.
In dogs, propriety.
Clerics, a lack of piety.
In women, valour.
Men, a pretty face.
In farewells, brevity.
In serves, sometimes an ace.
Charles Bennett at L.A.E.C. 12 October 2007
Postcard to WS Graham
Stopped at your house on way to Madron Well.
Knew you were out so went to shake hands
with cool smooth doorknob. Sorry
we couldn’t take you and Nessie to Mousehole –
like to think of you eating a liquorice ice cream.
Way to well was muddy and overgrown.
Thought you might have been there now and again.
Knew you were gone so came to shake hands with water.
Rags were dripping in trees. All of them wishing
you were here and weather glorious.
Charles Bennett
Reading by Charles Bennett
12 October 2007
Charles Bennett entertained us with his Reading. He seemed eager to please. He even climbed on to the table. Several members remarked upon the accessibility of his poetry.
He read poems about the sea, rain, trees, the countryside and angels. In other poems he recalled his childhood. His tone was light, sometimes slightly jokey. Unlike some readers, he introduced each poem, which was helpful. I found most interesting and evocative his sequence spoken in the voice of Hereward the Wake — full of Anglo-Saxon place names, and his atmospheric poem “Snow Hare”.
The poems he chose to read were in the English lyrical/pastoral tradition. Perhaps he thought it best not to be challenging, or, perhaps, as he said, he prefers to see the world in a kind light — full of wonder and beauty. His own favourite poet is Thomas Hardy.
He answered freely questions from the audience as to how he had become interested in poetry, and how he wrote. He was less willing to speak about his time as Director of the Ledbury Poetry Festival, and his views on the current state of British poetry proved to be mixed.
He is currently Senior Lecturer in Creative Writing at the University of Northampton.
Charles has two published collections to date:
“Wintergreen” (pub. Headland, 2002)
“How to Make a Woman out of Water” (pub. Enitharmon, 2007)
Caroline Cook
Hands
Like the flippers on a penguin,
my hands will not pick up my needs,
but flap and wave as fish are wont
to do when grieving water.
I don’t meet penguins in my position,
and they don’t meet me in theirs; still,
I would like to be the only gawper in the zoo
not laughing at what they can’t do.
And I would prefer even their pin-eyed, dim-wit
blinking, to your fixed and dewy gaze. Give me
back my fingers and I’d close them round your
throat,
even as you stooped to button
this over-bearing coat, crimp these mittens
over hands
that cramped, at first, from pure disease, now
crab and claw compulsively, clutching less at
straws
than at fat, voluminous air.
Mark Borg
My Shoe
My shoe is black.
It has frayed laces,
and is poorly heeled.
The tread is uneven, worn
on the outside.
The leather is lined from wear -
and rain.
It is not new, and yet,
it does not need a
make-over.
It does not need
to be buffed,
tacked, twisted,
or stretched
to make
it appear new —
that, I fear, will lead to a showy
surface and holes in the sole.
Marilyn Ricci
ON SEEING A DRAGONFLY AT MADINGLEY HALL
You zing around with the sun's infection
while across the lawn, along the cobble path,
a workman walks; white shirt, blue shorts
and stubble legs that emphasise your zany flight.
Then both of you are gone leaving
still setts of bricks and bags of sand,
and a sterile row of painted posts for parking lots.
I think back half a century
to a lush Carmarthen countryside,
where I searched you out for illustration
in my Wild Life diary. Came across you
only recently, in a state of preservation, glued
to the white page of a hand-bound cartridge book;
first choice in a tome of leaf and flower
registered by name and habitat.
You paid the price of student zeal,
were made a sacrifice by some unthinking fool
who sought to move a D to C, or C to B
with plus or minus rankings. Did you succeed?
This is the only record of your part.
Today's and yesterday's enthusiasms
are centuries apart. But seeing you, my zany replica,
on this sunlit afternoon, I have to think
how that youthful arrogance, disowned by age,
was an error that has multiplied in a world
that many see as only property, and theirs.
Huw Watkins
FIRST PRIZE (Shared) Envoi Open Poetry Competition 145 (2006) (published Envoi 146, February 2007)
NEWS
It seems unlikely, but Derby has recently enjoyed what looked like a high-profile, lively Literature Festival. Nottingham, too, still seems to maintain an enviable presence in the poetry sphere. Leicester, by comparison, seems dull. Are the other two cities better funded or better organised?
In Nottingham there has been a series of Poetry Events at Lakeside Arts Centre. Events still on the programme this year are 21 November Joanne Limburg, 12 December Penelope Shuttle — both Bloodaxe poets.
There are also the Flying Goose Café Readings in Beeston, Nott’ham, organised by John Lucas (0115 925 1827). George Szirtes reads there on Tuesday, 18 December.
Nottingham Poetry Society meets at the Mechanics Institute on 24 November for the Adjudication of its Open Poetry Competition, and a reading of the prize-winning poems. Info 01773 712 282.
“Shoot the Moon” is the Leicestershire Literature Booklet. To obtain a copy phone 0116 267 8004, or e-mail kfeatherstone@leics.gov.uk.
You may have seen a rather large, new publication called Tripod. It is described as “a new magazine showcasing the best of written and spoken literature around the three cities of Derby, Nottingham and Leicester”. Issue 3 is due out shortly and the work of several members of L.P.S. is featured. Look out for it in local libraries etc. It’s still free! Or e-mail at info@tripodmagazine.com.
Another local poetry newcomer is “FIN”. Issue 1 has just appeared. To peruse a copy write to FIN, PO Box 9207, Nottingham NG14 7WP.
Don’t forget to get your copy of The Forward Book of Poetry 2008. It’s out now, and “simply the best”!
So much to do, so little time to write
that perfect rhyme!
Editor
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