A Poem For National Poetry Day 2014

It was National Poetry Day yesterday and I didn't post a poem, like I usually do, because I was banging on about Poetry Can's two new initiatives and wanted to give them prominence.  Doesn't mean I don't have a poem to post, though.  As the theme this year is remember, I thought I'd post the following sequence of three poems.   

My grandmother, Hilda Hill, lived off the Gloucester Road all her life. She left Bishop Road School at 13 and went into service, marrying five days before Armistice was declared and raising 11 children born between the wars, including triplets.  In her spare time she wrote poetry.

The following three sonnets are all set in roughly the same area over a period of 100 years.  The first is about Hilda, and is told in the voice of her best friend, Cousin Kate. 

On The Gloucester Road

1914

She liked finery, did your Nan, and who could blame ‘er? 

All those books in the master’s library

leather-bound, embossed with gold

and ‘er grown up with nothing? 

Small wonder she took to borrowing

sliding t’others along the shelves to ‘ide the gap. 

Then there were the times she’d climb through the window

in ‘er mistress’s best dress and blue silk drawers.

Once I saw her in a fox fur stole

down the Gloucester Road

draped over the arm of an army officer.

Good evening, Kate, she says to me, and how are you?

‘Er smile as sweeping as the Zodiac

and not a stitch of ‘er own clothing on ‘er back.

1965

The sun burns the back of her neck

sticky as the orange spangle forgotten in her pocket. 

Thursdays are always orange

bobbing round and round her head

they hurt her eyes. 

She pulls at the hand that’s gripping hers.

Yes, this is my youngest. Hasn’t she grown?

Stop scuffing your shoes, I won’t be long!

Thursdays are milk checks, a pound of liver

broken biscuits from the high box on the counter.

Islands of shadow under awnings

are ice lolly cool and out of reach.

Her shadow’s black and squat and

cross as a thundercloud.

  

2013

Clouds have covered the sun

and suddenly all of summer’s gone.

Half way up Pigsty Hill she’s still driving

with her hand clamped over her mouth

as if stopping her spirit from slipping out

might bring his back.

Her mind tests the edges of this gap 

mourns the poems he’ll not write.

Above Bishop Road a man rides by,

a brindled bulldog on the crossbar

of his bike.

A clatter of pigeons lifts in arcs,

their wings are flurrying and dark

against the sky. 

 © Deborah Harvey 2014

These sonnets are from my new collection, Map Reading For Beginners, published by Indigo Dreams Publishing and available from their website, Amazon and all good independent bookshops.