A Poem for National Poetry Day 2020

It's National Poetry Day today and the theme this year is Vision. It reminds me of the time I was laid up with a broken leg back in 2015; in addition to the break itself, it also took me a while to get over the shock of such an unlikely accident (falling off the front door step) and the effects of the anaesthetic following the operation to pin my bone back together. I didn't suffer hallucinations but I did spend a lot of time asleep, and also in that strange place between wakefulness and dreaming, where I think this poem comes from. It's a sort of vision come inherited memory, I think.

After the Fall

comes the break 

with all that's normal

the dislocation of lying flat

watching the ceiling's every move

hairline cracks a cryptic

map of its intent

Hour by hour 

I shape my wait with sound

rain and hailstones blinding skylights,

the sullen mutter of the fire,

the twitching dog who dreams of grass 

beneath his paws

the soft-shoe stealth of creeping days

their velvet glances as they leave me

to the wolves

In fractured sleep, half-waking haze

I hear the click of nails

across the kitchen floor

©Deborah Harvey, 2016

from Breadcrumbs, published by Indigo Dreams Publishing

Plus a lympathetic Ted

National Poetry Day at Her Majesty's Pleasure

Two things I like very much - which also happen to coincide - are the Somerset Art Weeks Festival and National Poetry Day. On Thursday I joined with other West Country poets to mark both, by reading poems on the themes of imprisonment and freedom amid the art installations in B-Wing at the now disused HMP Shepton Mallet.

I'd visited the prison back in May, as soon as I was asked to be part of the project. I knew a place like that would have a grim effect on me, so I wanted to make sure it was a familiar grim effect. Although the addition of some very provocative art installations added another layer of challenge. 

So much of the prison already resembles ladders that lead nowhere, even without the addition of new ones. The only clear view, through non-obscured glass, is of the sky ... Oscar Wilde's 'little tent of blue'. 

Dominic Fisher

Poets waiting in cells to read

In addition to our own poems, works by Homero Aridjis, Dennis Brutus, Imtiaz Dharker, Osip Mandelstam, Harryette Mullen, Irina Ratushinskaya, Marina Tsvetaeva and Oscar Wilde were read.  

The delivery of the poems was excellent throughout; the audience intrepid in the face of distinctly chilly conditions. 

Even though I couldn't read it properly, as I was standing behind it, I was impressed by Kate Semple's poem Unheard Prayer, which was unfurled on a banner while the everyday sounds of prison life, hugely amplified by the acoustics of the place, were played. Its point - the inability to escape sensory overload in prison, and the withholding of silence in which to hear yourself think -  was cogently made, and later, when it started to rain and the noise was amplified on the high glass roof, I was reminded of it again.

The poets with organiser Rosie Jackson.

Afterwards we went up to the third floor where some of the poems were on display. They'd been printed on thin paper so that the light shone through them, and looked as frail and beautiful as hope.

Here's Rosie with her poem ... 

... and here's mine.

It might be presumptuous, but I would like to think that a small restitution had been made. 

A Poem for National Poetry Day 2019

It's National Poetry Day today and the theme is truth, which seems a timely choice to me, given that the sort of lying and gaslighting that often characterises abusive domestic relationships is now being demonstrated by heads of state on both sides of the Atlantic.  

Here's a poem about the sometimes elusive nature of truth from my 2016 collection, Breadcrumbs. 

Variations on the Theme of Truth

I am fluent

in thirteen languages

each one a lie

You force me to lie

by not making it easy

to tell the truth

My lies

are the questions

you don’t ask

I tell you

what you want to hear

I kill you with kindness

Nobody lies

more than you do

to yourself 

My lies are truth, my truth

the only thing that matters

is that you believe me

Truth is, I never lie

I’d say I’m sorry

but I’m not

Two Poems for National Poetry Day 2018

Today is National Poetry Day and the theme this year is Change, of which there has been a lot lately, and not all of it good. Nationally and internationally we've seen that progress is not linear, and change can set us back to a point where hard-won gains have to be fought for all over again. It's pretty dispiriting. 

A more welcome change for me recently was the annual observance of Flannelette Sheet Night, which always falls around this time and which is, I think, the best night of the year, when autumn starts to bite and the bedding becomes ever so slightly fuzzy.  

Here's a poem which mentions flannelette sheets, although the real changes in it are far more fundamental. It was partly inspired by the death of DJ Derek in 2015, and was highly commended in the International Welsh Poetry Competition 2018 earlier in the summer. 

where he lay undiscovered

In the never-quite-dark

of those first summer nights

I heard police helicopters sweep overhead

seeking the heat of suspects in hiding

trespassers, burglars, car thieves, murderers,

cannabis farmers.

                                

It was blow flies that found me.

After the buzzing, lascivious squirms

the memory of rotting plums forgotten in a fruit bowl,

then squadrons of beetles homing in

the family of foxes that fed on my lungs,

the bone of my shin.

                                                                                                                                     

As for you lot driving past

after tiles for your bathroom, this week’s fashion

upgrades for last year’s mobile phone

who don’t notice me in elders and brambles

on your daily commute to your home,

there’s no need for guilt.              

                                            

You’ve not ignored insects crawling on windows

snowdrifted mail behind a glass door

and I like it here. Already

a second year is turning,

I wait for dead leaves to tuck me in, ground frosts

soft as flannelette               

                                 untongued, undone

I don’t call out.

Another poem of mine about change, 'A Pint at the Shifting Sky', is published today on the poetry and prose webzine, Ink Sweat & Tears. Thanks to Helen Ivory and Kate Birch for giving it a home. 

A Poem for National Poetry Day 2017

It's National Poetry Day today and the theme is Freedom. So here's a poem on that subject from my collection Breadcrumbs, which is published by Indigo Dreams. 















Longships

for CB


We arrive 
hunched under history

dragging our pasts 
like phantom limbs,

stop 
when the land stops

Beyond sorrel, wild madder, gorse
cloud and sea touch,

a blind dissolving 
into nothing,

this last slab of granite 
becoming the first 

Put down your things, 
you say. Catch hold my hand 

Dance 

Dance 

©Deborah Harvey 2016

 

 

Artwork by Dru Marland

A Poem For National Poetry Day 2016

It's National Poetry Day today and the theme is Messages.  To mark this, I'm posting a poem from my latest collection, Breadcrumbs. 

Dead Poet at the Swimming Pool describes what is probably the most powerful dream I've ever had, back in 1999. I interpreted it as a message to my waking self that if I continued to ignore my creativity - specifically, if I didn't write - something vital inside me, which was already close to death, would perish altogether.

So I started to write - poems and a novel.  Not that this stopped my subconscious pumping out admonition after admonition; in fact, I continued to be inundated with stressful dreams about imminent exams for which I had done no revision/attended no lessons or lectures/had no idea of the syllabus until my first collection, Communion, was published in 2011.  But I will always be grateful for this message, which I heeded despite being incredibly busy at the time with four young children, two of them autistic, a part-time job, and a troubled marriage.  Ultimately, it changed the course of my life. 

Dead Poet at the Swimming Pool

  

Outside rain clatters through gutters

pays thick ropes through gratings, drains

and still he’s here, hunched on the steps, his head

hanging in his hands. No one takes any notice

Not the receptionist in her office       

pool staff swabbing dingy floors, slick-haired men

fraught mothers trailing dripping kids with neon wings

all too preoccupied

to clear his eyes of silt and withered leaves

his dirt-stopped mouth

It’s early autumn when she kneels beside him

drops a coin to gauge the depth      

ten more years before she hears it

hit the bottom

©Deborah Harvey 2015

'Dead Poet at the Swimming Pool' was shortlisted for the 2015 Bridport Prize

Artwork by Dru Marland

A Poem For National Poetry Day 2015

It's National Poetry Day today and the theme is light, so naturally I've chosen to post a poem about death and foxes, which has just been published in Hailing Foxes, the beguiling new anthology of illustrated poems newly published by Dru Marland of Gert Macky press.  Except that it's about light also.

 A few months after he died, a literary wake was held for Seamus Heaney in Festival Hall, London. Late that night, on the final leg of the journey home, I had an extraordinary encounter. 

Heaney’s Wake

All year 

from winter to autumn I see them 

most evenings  

on high streets, down side-roads

slipping through hedges

under the bunting of parked cars,

charcoal running stitches 

hemming the edge of dark.  In April 

vixens trail their kits 

                                       like knots 

                                                           in hankies

Come September 

   flashes of amber – intermittent –  

a youngster, trapped by headlights 

           panics on Southmead Road

                                     spins in indecision, 

     his current short-circuiting, every nerve and instinct                

                                                   scrambled

After the wake

and the long drive back,

two miles from home and my bed

the stupor in my head gives way to quick 

       anticipation  

a dog-fox on Horfield Common 

in Belisha beacon glare 

waits for me to brake, trots over the crossing 

with a twitch of his white-tipped tail. If I could

touch his fur, sparks would 

       jump and crackle  

    

my spirits kindled by this sight, 

this flaring matchstick 

       to hold against the night

©Deborah Harvey 2015

My next poetry collection, Breadcrumbs, is due to be published by Indigo Dreams in 2016. This poem isn't in it. 

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. 

Map Reading For Beginners (and a Poem for National Poetry Day 2013)

So lovely to get an email from my publisher, Ronnie Goodyer of Indigo Dreams yesterday, saying that my second poetry collection, Map Reading for Beginners, will be published by them in 2014.  I've had a lot of good fortune these last few weeks regarding poetry, with my reading at the Arnolfini as part of Bristol Poetry Festival still to come on Saturday night.  It's all been very exciting. 

And as it's National Poetry Day today and the theme is water, here's a link to a watery poem of mine, which will be in the above collection.  Have a great day, every poet - go forth and metaphorify!

The cover illustration © Dru Marland 2013  is also available as a print here.

A Poem for National Poetry Day 2012

It's National Poetry Day today and the theme is stars.  I tend to mention the moon more often in my poems, although I do have a couple that fit the bill.  There's one about the Perseids, but actually I'm more in the mood for a little eggcornery .... 

The Last of the Russian Stars

All we know

is that right at the end there was

shooting and falling.

Deborah Harvey © 2012

My poetry collection, Communion, is published by Indigo Dreams and is available from their website, Amazon, The Book Depository (with free p&p anywhere in the world - yay!), and good independent bookshops. 

A Poem for National Poetry Day 2011

For this year's National Poetry Day, I'm posting a poem about poetry - British Sign Language Poetry, to be exact. It's also about being a hearing, non-signing person in a Deaf environment.

Mute

                                                                  

for Jo G

The room is rapt, in silence,

unless the shepherding of air

makes a sound I cannot hear,

like the gasp of leaves in free-fall,

the shrill of flowers

as they are picked.

Words that filled my mouth

with their flavour

wither to husks,

stick in my throat. 

I am mute

in this place of poems,

plucked from nothing

and given form

with a clap like a dove

starting into flight,

while my hands hang,

dumb lumps of meat.

In time

I might trace

that shimmer of purple,

conjure voice from empty space,

sign the infinite shape  

the word poetry makes.

© Deborah Harvey 2011

My first poetry collection, Communion, is published by Indigo Dreams and now available to buy from their website, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com, and good independent bookshops. 

A launch for Communion will be held on 4th November 2011 at the Halo Café Bar, 141 Gloucester Road, Bristol BS7 8BA, with singer-songwriter Reg Meuross, and guest poets Alana Farrell and John Terry.  Entrance is free.  All welcome!