'Kin' - A Poem for Winter Dusks

This is me reading my poem about starlings roosting or murmurationing or whatever it is they do.  It's also about my extended family and our annual get-together in honour of Hilda Hill, my grandmother.  



'Kin' is from my 2012 collection 'Communion', published by Indigo Dreams Publishing, and also 'Inking Bitterns' - a book of poems and pictures for wild places, illustrated by Dru Marland.  It is published in association with Poetry Can and available from Gert Macky books and good independent bookshops.   

An Approximation

The second poem with a shiny sixpence all of its own is called 'An Approximation' and it's just been highly commended in the 2012 Sentinel Annual Poetry Competition.  It too will be published in the competition anthology 'tentatively entitled' 'The Genesis of Falcon and Other Winners'. 

Again, the desire to write this poem was knocking around for a long long time.  I adore the visionary artist and poet William Blake.  In particular, I am fascinated by a celebrated episode in his childhood.  I also knew I wanted to write a poem that ended with the words 'angels on Peckham Rye'.  I just needed a way into it, and eventually I found it.  

An Approximation

'Sauntering along,

the boy looks up and sees a tree filled with angels,

bright angelic wings bespangling every bough like stars'

                        from 'The Life of William Blake' by Alexander Gilchrist

Oh, there've been hints, intimations.

Cumbrous rustlings in twigs. A silvery

glister that might have been

more substantial than moonlight.

I've noticed drifts of feathers falling

from viridian fan-vaulting, 

heard gears creak

as flight machinery unfurls.

One morning

while I was out walking

I heard a lime at the roadside singing

It's a beautiful day.

OK, it wasn't the tree.

It wasn't an airy deity either

just dangling legs in scruffy jeans

and unlaced trainers.

I don't suppose

I'll ever witness an oak

list under a cargo 

of seraphim

yet late autumn days

out on the Levels

mistletoed trees in orchards flutter

star-scattered wings,

and as countless cacophonous voices fly

I might dream

an approximation of angels

on Peckham Rye.  

© Deborah Harvey 2012, 2013

Waiting in Vain

... because the starlings that always do their swirly starlingy thing at New Passage on the Severn were a few miles upstream tonight. And it was bloody freezing! But the company and views and the sunset were well worth the frozen noses and toeses.

Writing Music the Starling Way

Darkling starlings singing out the Old Year at New Passage on the River Severn ...