Review of Map Reading For Beginners in Reach Poetry

Reach Poetry magazine contains a lengthy review by poet Lynn Woollacott of my latest poetry collection, Map Reading For Beginners, which I'm reproducing here.

Map Reading for Beginners is Deborah's second poetry collection and follows Communion, 2011 (Indigo Dreams) and a novel, Dart, 2013 Tamar Books (Indigo Dreams).

I was enchanted by the cover illustration of Map Reading For Beginners.  The image gives us a place to begin, under a blue sky, a river running through hills, deep places with symbolic creatures scuttling around and rooks flying overhead, mystery and surprise mirror imaging the opening poem and title of the collection '... the tunnelling lanes that take you down / to where the stories first began ... '

Cover illustration © Dru Marland 2014

In lyrical contemporary language Deborah's collection takes us on a journey through ghostly land/seascapes, historical stories and poems of a mystical/spiritual nature. For example, 'The Bakestone' in nine couplets and sparse punctuation, Deborah conjures history and mysticism from a simple object.  There are other half-familiar stories, 'Fallen Woman' (1885), whose skirts ballooned and saved her from a suicide attempt when leaping off a bridge, to 'Mr Brunel's Atmospheric Caper' (1848), the railway which ran for eight months.  Other poems drew me in with their intriguing titles, 'William Wyrcestre Dreams Of Brygstowe', for example, a topographer who lived in Deborah's home city of Bristol in 1480 and links in to the book title.

A most beautiful poem is 'The Poet And The Boatman', not surprising the poem came 2nd place in the Chipping Sodbury Poetry Competition, 2012. Here are the beginning stanzas:

Tidal here and salt

the final turn of Teign

before its fretful merging with the sea

creates a harbour in the lee of land,

this curved blood-coloured beach.

Through mist that lifts like linen wraiths

I glimpse the poet stripping off his white

ballooning shirt and britches,

bathing in a manner far from gentlemanly

the water's cold, he'll catch a chill

The story behind the poem is about Keats and his brother's consumption, the emotion comes through, and Deborah later in the poem refers to a boatman (mystical association with carrying the dead across water), and the symbolic colours, blood-coloured beach, linen wraiths, and later in the poem, a red-stained shirt. 

Deborah explains in footnotes on the historical poems to fill the facts. I didn't read them until after I'd read the poems, which made me re-read them, which is always a good thing, and though I understood the poems without footnotes there were moments of clarification.

Shipwrecks and land/seascapes feature: 'Cailpeach', a mysterious white horse at the shore, 'The Wreck of the Nornen' full of imagery, and there are contemporary ghosts, 'The Dream-Catcher' ... 'He's attached a discarded dream-catcher / to his trolley, now it is state-of-the-art; // the same sky above him swabbed of beauty / by an always falling rain that shines / a universe of gum on wet black tarmac', lines that leave an after-glow of images and sounds.

Couplets, triplets, sonnets abound, and occasional techniques such as anaphora, which propels the poem 'Winterset' forward, 'Between dark and dawn, the sleep-smudged sun / between sun and moon, the scavenger flood ... '  Other poems have a subtle rhyme, never forced because beautiful words are appreciated in the collection.

For me the contemporary poem, 'The Seventh Sign', sums up the links: snakes, corvids, coast/water, history, churchyard, love and the number seven. There are so many poems I'd like to have shown you, so please visit Deborah's Indigo Dreams book page and see some examples referred to here and others.

I leave this review with two stanzas from another favourite poem, 'An Approximation': 

... 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.' 

Reach Poetry is available from Indigo Dreams.

The Romantic Poets and Bristol: A New 'Lyrical Ballads'

Since I broke my leg, I've only got out of bed - or at least off the settee - for poetry.  A marathon 12 hours yesterday at Bath Poetry Cafe's annual event, Voices In The City, was preceded the night before by a remarkable gathering of poets at @Bristol, under the auspices of the Festival of Ideas.  

Both Samuel Coleridge and William Wordsworth had links with Bristol, and so to celebrate Bristol's year as European Green Capital, 23 of the UK's most prominent poets were invited to respond to poems from Lyrical Ballads, for this reading and a two-part Radio 4 documentary.  

The evening began with a series of introductions including one from Mayor George Ferguson, who spoke about how the evening would celebrate Bristol and the richness of its urban wildlife.  He also mentioned the city's commitment to promoting and developing poetry, especially for children.   Then it was the turn of the poets, the great majority of whom had been able to travel in person, to read their particular poem, each introduced by honey-tongued Ian McMillan, who also read a poem of his own.  

Gillian Clarke, the National Poet of Wales, remarked that it had been a long time since she had taken an entire reading from her pocket, and indeed it was odd to see such luminaries as Makar Liz Lochead, Sir Andrew Motion, Don Paterson, Alice Oswald, John Burnside, Paul Farley, Fleur Adcock, Jean Sprackland, Ruth Padel and Sean O'Brien shuffle on and off the stage as if they were at school assembly.  As much as I was delighted by the opportunity to hear so many of our best contemporary poets, I wished the event had been divided into several throughout the year, so that the poets had a chance to introduce us to some of their other work, to give these new poems some context.  My guess is that it was done like this partly to create a one-night extravaganza and partly to facilitate recording, but after a while I began to feel slightly sick, as if I'd opened a big tin of Quality Street and eaten all the orange and strawberry creams, one after the other.

My favourite poem was Alice Oswald's elegiac description of a dead swan, which she'd passed on her daily walk for a month earlier this winter, as a counterpart to the rotting albatross strung around the neck of the Ancient Mariner.  It was a beautiful, startling piece and I am in awe of her fearless nose.

Other quibbles - no, actually, these are complaints - include the description of the evening as a celebration of Bristol and its urban wildlife.  In fact, the city was largely overlooked, and when it was mentioned, it was in reference to the natives' 'somnolence' or as being a place where its inhabitants 'slur their words like drunks'.  Of all the poets present, none were born in the city and only one lives locally.  As for Thomas Chatterton, our own Romantic poet, Wordsworth's 'marvellous boy', he was completely ignored.

Finally, that far from promoting poetry, as the Mayor claimed in his introduction, the city council has this year ceased its funding for Poetry Can, the lone poetry development agency for Bristol and the south-west, thus jeopardising not only its programmes of work with school children and resident, council tax-paying poets, but also the biannual poetry festivals and the agency's very existence.  I saw quite a few seething local poets exit the reading, their faces almost as red as Mr Ferguson's infamous trousers.  

  Bristol urban wildlife

Photo montage © Dru Marland

Broken Leg Blues Part V: The 7/6d Woman

'Do you have any tennis balls?' asked the doctor as he issued me with a list of exercises to do while I wait for my physiotherapy appointment.

The answer to that is yes, though I might be pushed to find one that isn't all slobbery.

Meanwhile, my leg doesn't look like my leg at all.  Although the bruising's gone, my ankle's still double its normal size and the whole area seems to be wrapped in disintegrating cling film, which is, in fact, dry skin.  Plus, there's a disconcerting hardness under the muscle on the right hand side of my leg which must be the metalwork.  (I expect I'll get used to that.)

Most disturbingly, there's a very real disconnect between my brain and my foot.  When I try to put weight on it, it feels as if my shin is about to snap, and I am seized with the conviction that I am too old, too weak, too useless, and my tribe will leave me for the wolves.

The same member of staff who'd omitted to reassure me that the circular saw wouldn't actually slice through skin, flesh and bone while he was cutting off my cast, fitted me with what would be a really cool motorbike boot if it were made of leather and buckles, but is plastic, foam and velcro.  I still have to use crutches and can't drive yet, but will be back to work on Monday, which means there are some logistics to work out, like who's going to let Ted out for a pee as I won't be able to pop back home at lunchtime.

Back on the Settee of Suffering, I think back over the last six weeks, during which I have:

• acquired a plate, nine pins and a four and a half inch scar on my lower leg.
• read.  A lot.
• written fewer poems than I thought I might (though I've made reams of notes from my reading, and had a long overdue sort out of folders on my laptop).  For me, the link between walking and writing poems is even more symbiotic than I'd realised.
• become an expert on 'Wolf Hall' (TV series, not the novels).
• rediscovered my needlepointing mojo. I've nearly finished stitching a top for my sewing stool and dug out a wall hanging I abandoned in a state of near completion 16 years ago because my ex husband didn't like it.  I do, though, and will finish it for my new home.
• managed to control my frustration at not getting my house on the market. I am now six weeks behind schedule, but really looking forward to opening the front door of my new life, so what needs to be done will get done as soon as I'm able.  

Having been sequestered for so long, I'll define this time by sound.  Rain and hail battering the skylights, the click of Ted's nails on the kitchen floor, the quiet roar of the gas fire, the bleeping of a new hob I don't know how to use because it was installed the day I fell off the doorstep.  The endless chak-a-chak of police helicopters overhead, searching for a girl who will never come home. 

And light. Waking up from post-anaesthetic afternoon naps and not knowing what time it is because although it feels quite late, the sky's still blue.  Spring is on its way and I'll greet it with same in my step, metaphorically if not physically just yet. 

Broken Leg Blues Part IV: Pimp My Zimmer

It's a small world, after all ...

Remembering Colleen Ruth Elsie Fourie

My friend Colleen Ruth Elsie Fourie died yesterday, following a car accident a few days earlier. I never met her, as she lived eight thousand miles away in Pretoria, but we were in the same online peer support group for a time where we shared our stories, and the shared experiences in those stories forged what felt like a close bond.

As well as sharing our healing, we connected creatively.  Like me, Colleen was a writer.  Unlike me, she was also a very gifted artist and we mooted the possibility of producing a booklet of illustrated poems some day - because we thought we had time.  In addition, she had a passion for animals, especially dogs, and in this, she outdid me again, having, I believe, seven at the last count.  And she would mourn even the snouted and Mozambican spitting cobras they killed - even when they were lurking on her verandah or in her garage.

Tragically, Colleen passed away as her daughter expects her first child, across the other side of the world in London.  What a warm, funny and creative grandmother she would have been.  What a loss for her family. 



Colleen had a dream of coming to Somerset or Devon and walking through bluebell woods.  I'm posting this poem from my recent collection - a lament for a mole I encountered at bluebell time in a place on Dartmoor called Heaven's Gate - for her. 


Mouldywarp

This is Heaven.

It says so on the five-barred gate

and among these lime and bronze leaved trees,

the tidal bluebells of late spring,

I can believe it.  Why, even the dung here’s

starred with iridescent beetles.

But you, O Mouldywarp, are dead

and sky-buried,

your enormous delicate hands

with their concert pianist fingers

sieving, shovelling only air. 

And it’s no solace

that you might feed another creature or the earth,

I want you living

and if not here, then digging a tunnel

from this harsh clarity to another,

and let that clarity be Mole Heaven

where layers of soil are dark and moist

and fat worms fall straight in your mouth

like startled manna.

© Deborah Harvey 2014 

Rest in peace, Colleen.  I hope your heaven is full of bluebells and happy dogs.  

Broken Leg Blues Part III: Dawn Of The Cyborg

When you're incapacitated, your horizons shrink. The after-effects of anaesthesia linger like a creepy kiss, and a four yard hop on crutches to the loo is akin to pogo-ing across the Sahara. These last two weeks I've listened to hail pebbledashing the skylights and stretched my withered hands towards the living flame gas fire.  The fact that I can't jaunt hasn't troubled me the way it would if I were mobile, and in my  head the prospect of an appointment at the local super hospital took on the proportions of a climb up Everest. 

But round it came and off I went with my trusty neighbour Nurse Cathy, while Son the Younger's lovely and obliging girlfriend acted as our chauffeur.  At Gate 12 Outpatients we gazed at the Departures Board for notification of our destination.  Young men on crutches bounded past, graceful as gazelles, and I hated them, though I was quite excited to see that one of my fellow patients was called Peggoty. (Yes, I probably do need to get out more.)

In the Plaster Room I had the first glimpse of the my right leg for two weeks, and it wasn't a pretty sight, being bruised and horribly swollen still. 

But unlike Royal Marine Commando Andy Grant, whose story I told Ellie, the orthopaedic practitioner, to much horrified guffawing*, the tattoo of Braques' bird on my right foot was unscathed ... 

... and the scar itself was healing really well, thanks to Nurse Cathy's recommendation that I take a multivitamin with minerals every day.

With a choice of red, blue, pink or white for my fibreglass cast, I decided to cast my vote three months early and went for red. 

Then it was off to be x-rayed.

Back in Trauma and Orthopaedics, a familiar figure studied my x-rays. 'You won't remember me,' I said, 'but I'll never forget your face because You. Set. My. Leg.'

He laughed. 'I do remember you,' he said. 'I had fun doing that one. I must say, it's good to see you looking so well.'

Hmmmm.

'Nine screws, though,' he added. 'That's an impressive break. But it's healing fine.'




All that was left was to request a DEXA scan in case I have osteoporosis and for Cathy to push me and my newly acquired zimmer frame home across the park in my wheelchair. Door to door, a little over an hour and a half. Thank you, Universe, for good friends and the NHS.  

*I think it's probably OK to be amused by the story of this man's tattoo because I've heard him talk about it on the radio and everyone - including him - was laughing about it. More importantly, he's gone on to prove it wrong in spectacular fashion. 

Walking The Chains, The Passenger Shed, Temple Meads

I went to see 'Walking the Chains'*, about the building of the Clifton Suspension Bridge in Bristol (before I broke my leg).  Here's a review I've written about it for the local rag.  

You’d be forgiven for thinking that the 150^th anniversary celebrations of the opening of the Clifton Suspension Bridge had culminated with December’s firework extravaganza, but just over a month later, along comes this baggy and at times slightly exasperating celebration of our most famous landmark and the ‘little giant’ whose vision and drive brought it into being.

For the sentimentalist, the idea of staging ACH Smith’s play in the Passenger Shed at Temple Meads was inspired. More practically, the acoustics aren’t great and this meant it was occasionally difficult to hear what was going on.  Moreover, the way the action jumped back and forwards through time, with episodes such as the attempted suicide of Sarah Ann Henley (you know, the jilted Victorian woman whose voluminous skirts filled with air and parachuted her onto the muddy river bank) preceding the completion of the bridge, made me concerned that anyone unfamiliar with its lore and stories might be irredeemably confused.

But for all that, it’s a gutsy show, and with performers from theatre company Show of Strength, Circomedia and the Suspended Voices Choir – a cast which seemed to be of the clay of Bristol itself – you’d have to have a heart of Avon Gorge limestone not to be captivated by its exuberance.  

Perusing the list of financial supporters in the programme, I spotted a shocking omission. Sometimes it seems that Bristol has again been split in two, this time by a council that parachutes in expertise from elsewhere to promote our city’s status as Green Capital while ignoring the local talent of its citizens, and blows thousands on the nonsense of fake grass and trees in Park Street, a stone’s throw from Brandon Hill.  (Hardly very green.)  Meanwhile, Show of Strength, along with b-Creative, Bristol Ensemble and Poetry Can, have lost all their modest council funding. It took Brunel, an incomer, to bridge the great divide 150 years ago.  Now we have another, and maybe it’s time our Mayor reconsidered how best to support the arts, and the interests of those Bristolians who practise them.  

*'Walking the Chains' refers to the practice of 'interviewing' prospective maintenance workers on the bridge by making them walk its great supporting chains (without a safety-harness) to see if they had a head for heights. All other skills could be learnt.