Sleeping alone, with a song.
Where have all the flowers gone.
Stalks of green straw, rough,
and petals decayed and floated away,
with pretty scents.
Leaving their harsh hay,
and the acidic perfume taste,
of old age.
They were always there, not here.
In a stall, or the sun.
The weak weak yellow push
of the beams of the sun.
Where have all the flowers gone?
Sleeping alone, with a song.
Nine acres of sharp, dry grass and a place; shuttered, closed,
green-mossed windows shield the still foam clouds
and flies on cluttered sills.
This life, your store of cold meat does not appeal to me,
and cherries hold sour memories;
A secret told in the root cellar
Was meant to clear the air
but sent me wild to city walls,
deaf with Verdi, sick with fear.
I sit in lakes, pick leeches from my hair,
wring water from my skin,
weighted by things I almost had.
Bad decisions made.
You start your life in mud.
You craft and learn new tricks.
Your spirit’s born in blood;
You hunt with rocks and sticks.
The day you lost your primal gills,
You worked with tools, you played with fire.
Good manners, words, fine motor skills
All techniques you must acquire.
Many wars and treaties later,
Paint your present like a painter.
Now you’re ready, swap the cavern
For the plastic house with pattern.
Earthly treasures please your pocket;
There’s nothing you’d not buy.
Tricks and lies live in your locket
Play your cards until you die.
Conquer new worlds! Your greatest ambition;
Greeting the nations became your new vision.
You live among stars, within iron and steel,
Competing and beating to find the best deal.
Oh, great deceiver, stir up passions!
Steal their lands and rob them blind!
Power games will be old fashioned;
Schemes and scams left far behind.
Your barren earth expels formations,
None of them are God’s creations.
You.
Too old to be human, too new to be rust;
Begin a new chapter before you are dust.
So Hen lays something
small and creamy perfect
as the sun’s slinging ellipse
certain as the shine of straw.
A Sistine hand collects, connects.
Sheltered by a green hedge,
Hen does not know the cosmic
supermarket stack of graded eggs –
free range, half range or barn –
does not know ballads
or builders breaking fields
or bald men cracking atoms.
She knows this egg,
this eye, this moon
and sea is the start
and stop of it all.
Sad we aren’t cluckmates anymore.
I hear that sickle tongue uproar.
Focused, she fasts on a lonely bed,
A tam’o shanter for five bald heads.
I see her steal my pearls, heel straw,
A miser swathing her fragile store.
Her eyes are deep wells. She needs
The alchemy of cracking seeds
To dandelion clocks. Tipped off the nest,
Today, she frets. Manster may know best,
But how she wails at the water bowl,
Twitching, scrambled, losing control.
When the seedlings have dispersed
We will play wormchew, spiderburst
And combwing, or perhaps it will be
My phase of the shellwarm lunacy.
I may have ended in these flower beds,
But I was farmyard born, grit-gut, half-bred,
Had seven broods and wore the crown,
‘Til Chauntecleer cropped up. I did stand down,
But never let him fully have his way.
I plucked along to his upstart assay.
A trochee – claws in – then a cretic,
Four crochets and a semibreve – pathetic,
And Mr Narcissus crowed on and on,
His scaly legs lit by the morning sun.
My theory is that’s why he’s now deceased,
But call me less a widow, more released.
This rooster crooning is a piece of cake.
Too much, of course, may make my red neck ache.
A few bars will suffice to pave my way,
A touch of primal scream to crack the day,
When hens are cocks and cocks are plucky hens
In a mixed up, shook up world of nearly men.
Lay lay lady crowla.
I wanted sitting ducks, dust-bathing.
My hands raked the air, erring.
Half-ruffled hens shook, shocked,
fled to shade, distressed, distrusting.
Watching, father said take time, tame.
Let the twitching hens come, calm.
Gently fold feather-fingers
to clasp pulsing bodies, buddies.
Now writing, I scribble, scrabble
to catch flighty thoughts, fight
to hold on. They elude, evade,
crouch in hedges aggrieved, afraid.
Envoi
Father’s echo comforts, confirms
not to chase chickens; luck follows fallow
times, melts on the mind, mine,
here to stay, not scared, stroked,
hatching memories that hold him close.
I wanted sitting ducks, dust-bathing.
My hands raked the air, erring.
Half-ruffled hens shook, shocked,
fled to shade, distressed, distrusting.
Watching, father said take time, tame.
Let the twitching hens come, calm.
Gently fold feather-fingers
to clasp pulsing bodies, buddies.
Now writing, I scribble, scrabble
to catch flighty thoughts, fight
to hold on. They elude, evade,
crouch in hedges aggrieved, afraid.
Envoi
Father’s echo comforts, confirms
not to chase chickens; luck follows fallow
times, melts on the mind, mine,
here to stay, not scared, stroked,
hatching memories that hold him close.
You have written a wonderful collection of verse called The Poultry
Lover’s Guide to Poetry. Can you tell us about your journey of writing the
poems and what inspired you at the time?
The pamphlet is inspired by my five silkie hens, but is also about childhood memories of my family keeping chickens. The first poem about never chasing your chickens caused me to think about how chicken poems could enable me to explore different themes in a new way. Some things I did not think of at first, for example, the gender issue and the role of my father.
You have also been working on poetry about dyslexia, being a tutor
yourself. Can you give us an example, or a snippet of a poem? What is it
about dyslexia that fascinates you?
So the first two lines of the dyslexia sequence could be this, but it may change:
in the beginning was a din of words
the lexical vomit of paint on salt dough
I think this sequence is a lot more emotional than the first one- I felt I have to write it. We all know what dyslexia is and lots of good things are being done to support dyslexic learners, but there are still many painful experiences and it can become overlooked. I also wanted to look at the creative potential of dyslexia and other ways of using language.
Being a Sylvia Plath fan, which poem would you choose and why?
Tulips. The way Plath responds to the kindly meant flowers in a negative, but creative way says so much to me about mental health.
Have you always written poetry from a young age?
Yes I have always scribbled poetry, though there were big gaps where other things, such as children, took over. At a recent school reunion a friend still had a school magazine with some of my poems in. I wrote my first hen poem when I was eight and can remember the first line: ‘a fluff or a puff is my silkie called Fairy’.
What is your creative space like? Do you have a study or write
on-the-go, or both?
We live in a small house, so my space is in bed with a netbook and a bag of popcorn or on the living room table. Being around my family keeps me grounded. I am a lark; my best writing time is between 5 and 8 in the morning.
What else do you care about? What themes keep cropping up in your
work?
I care about too many things, for example, I have written a few poems about what is happening in the NHS and other news items. I write about friends in hopes of healing pain or celebrating good things. People, and how they connect with places, are very important in my poems. Friends have to be beware that they might end up in a poem! I am also interested in environmental issues and the interface of town and country.
As a poet, you are perhaps very observant! What is the funniest
conversation you have overheard?!
I love conversations on trains, especially mobile phone ones, where you imagine the receiver. A few months ago, during one of those gales, I heard a drunk man on Wigan Station, telling his girlfriend that he wasn’t coming back and half an hour later he was saying he was catching the next train home. Odd how people spill out their emotions in public and how narratives, in this case, predictably, develop.
Which other poets inspire you?
I am inspired by many contemporary poets: Judy Brown, Hannah Lowe, Helen Mort, Jane Weir, Mark Doty, Ian Duhig. Yeats is always special. There are so many good poets; some are there to challenge me and others just open my eyes to something or embody how I feel.
Tell us about one of the best days of your life.
Well one of the most exciting poetry things was when I won the Wigan Greenheart competition in 2012. I went to the ceremony and I did not know I had won. The prize was £1,000 which was mine to spend on poetry.
What plans have you got for the future?
.At the moment I am spreading my wings to do a small performance based on the chicken poems. I am also trying help develop local poetry groups. I help with the poetry strand of The Words & Music Festival held in Nantwich every year. I don’t tend to think of long term goals. As you get older you realise things just happen.
Get your copy from Indigo Dreams
You can taste defiance
in her voice
like the bitter tang of Seville
zest. Screaming,
‘I’m pale strawberry!’
Fierce barbs have echoed
down the years
resisting casual comments
that suggest ginger,
not Titian red like
Pre-Raphaelite muses.
Wide gooseberry grey pupils,
like the texture of heelscrape
on sphagnum covered stones,
freezes them out.
Though she tries
to bleach the ginger,
the stray ends persist.
Not even dyed eyebrows
truly conceal, nor the bronzing
cream on cheeks and neck.
The ginger underlayers,
like a soft feline belly,
whisper down her nape.