Poetry byways and desire paths

I've taken some time to regroup lately, following a year of readings from Love the Albatross (IDP), my collection about estrangement. Engaging with such personal poems in front of an audience takes a big emotional toll, so a break has been due, and really welcome.

That said, I have been involved in a couple of group readings, both of which allowed me to read some of my (less exhausting) Bristol poems, from earlier collections. The first was a rerun of last year's 'Ten Bristol Poets' at the Bristol Literary Film Festival, in aid of St Peter's Hospice. This time we were promoted from the cafe to the main hall, where the lighting wasn't as conducive for taking photos; nevertheless, here's a few of the poets involved: clockwise from left, Tim Burroughs, Melanie Branton, Pete Weinstock, me, Charles Thompson. 

The other reading was with the IsamBards at Brunel's Underfall Yard in Bristol's Floating Harbour. 

The Matthew, seen through the round window

Fellow IsamBards, Pamli Benham and David Johnson

First set, with David, Dominic Fisher and Pameli

During the interval between sets, I took the opportunity to have a wander along Baltic Wharf, with its view over to the painted houses of Cliftonwood. My route took me past Albion Dockyard, with its familiar clock tower and the Banksy, Girl with pierced eardrum, which is now, sadly, beginning to fade. 

After our second set, it was home on the bus, via Hotwells Road and Jacob's Wells Road, where we had the delight of seeing a fleet of Santas on a bike, raising money for West Country children's hospices.

Elsewhere, I've had some of those aforementioned Bristol poems included in the Street! project run by Ralph Hoyte and Bristol Libraries, which has created soundpools containing site-specific poems outside various libraries in the city, which people can listen to through an app. Obviously I haven't, because even the thought of downloading an app brings me out in a rash, but I understand the soundpools are a joy and a delight, so that makes me happy.

Finally, after three long years of 'not writing any poems at all', I was shocked at the end of August to realise that I have actually produced some this year. Most of them appear to be on the theme of neurodivergence, and the first of these has now been published in Jawbone Journal, which I'm so pleased about, not least being amongst my friends-in-poetry, B Anne Adriaens, Melanie Branton, Rosie Jackson, Clare Morris, Alasdair Paterson, and Susan Taylor. Truly an honour.

Tail Feathers from Storm Dennis

The plan had been for Son the Younger and I to drive separately to his garage in Newport, leave his car there for servicing and head to Llantwit Major for a walk, but Storm Dennis put paid to that. It also nearly put paid to me when my windscreen wiper motor failed during a ferocious squall on the M4. It took me about five minutes to prise my hands from the steering wheel once I reached my destination.

The worst of the rain having passed, I ordered a new wiper motor from eBay, booked my car into the garage on Friday, and drove to Llandaff with Son the Younger giving the wipers a helping hand, as necessary, through the passenger window. We detoured around a few places from our past, and then visited the Cathedral. Unlike me, it was the first time StY had been back since his grandmother's funeral 14 years ago.

The Rossetti triptych

Sir William Mathew (d 1528) and his wife, Lady Janet/Jenet

The Celtic cross is the only surviving remnant of the first church built on the site in the 6th century. It was rediscovered by the then bishop of Llandaff in 1870, 'embedded in the back wall of the shed over the Dairy Well'. 

I really like the newly installed painting 'The Virgin of the Goldfinches' by Clive Hicks-Jenkins, though Son the Younger said it reminded him of 'The Green Lady', a copy of which used to hang in his great-aunt's house.

The font at Llandaff has had a chequered history. The one in service during the civil wars was appropriated as a trough for pigs by a local Puritan, who also set up a tavern in the Cathedral and penned his calves in the choir. The predecessor to this one, which was designed and sculpted in 1952 by Alan Durst, was destroyed by the parachute mine which caused such damage to the cathedral in 1941. 

We headed on to the newly revamped Welsh Folk Museum at St Fagan's, which neither of us had visited in years. (That's not what it's called any more, but old habits die hard.)

I was excited as they'd moved and rebuilt a mediaeval church, complete with wall paintings, since I'd last been, but first we stopped off at my favourite of all the buildings there, the Kennixton farmhouse from Llangennith on the Gower, which was built in 1610 and re-erected at St Fagan's in 1955.

Red paint to ward off evil spirits

I've always wanted a bed like this. Well, maybe I'm too old and arthritickal for one now but I would have loved one years ago. 

Outside it was raining again. We headed for the reconstructed Iron Age hut but the path was closed,  so we visited a couple of other places and then made for St Teilo's, upon the wall of which a robin was singing loudly. 

The exterior is amazing. You have to boggle at the feat of planning that involved numbering every stone so that it could be reassembled correctly, over a period of 20 years. 

Forty percent of the original wall paintings were discovered under plaster, and I'd been looking forward to seeing them in situ, since miraculously, they were able to be moved, but apparently they are in storage. Instead, the interior has been painted to recreate how it might have looked pre-Reformation. 

I can understand why the curators might have decided to do that, but I was left longing for the atmosphere and authenticity of St Cadoc's Church in nearby Llancarfan.

13th century font

Over a lunch of Welsh rarebit in the cafe above the hardware store, we studied the weather forecast. Another belt of rain was due to pass over the area at 3pm, so we decided on a quick skip around our other favourite buildings and a leisurely return on a more auspicious day.

Llawr-y-glyn smithy

One of the terraced cottages from Rhyd-y-car

The communal bread oven from Poplar Place, Georgetown

The cast-iron urinal from Llanwrtyd Wells

We still have three of these in Bristol, Grade II listed and no longer in use but still in situ.

I like the prefab from Gabalfa and wondered aloud if a modern version that complied with building regulations might be an affordable solution to the housing crisis, but the guide explained that a prefab takes the same amount of land as two three storey town houses. 

The library of Oakdale Workmen's Institute has exactly the same computer system as our local library when I was a kid. 

The toll house from the southern outskirts of Aberystwyth

Maestir school, complete with stove and canes 

A traditional slate fence, reminding me of Ernest Gimson's Cotswold stone slab fence at Kelmscott














Two minutes of the softest drizzle smudged the windscreen as I drove back through Almondsbury interchange and I flicked on the windscreen wipers more in hope than expectation. They managed just one curmudgeonly sweep, but that was enough to see me home in crystal-clear style. Roll on Friday. 

A Poem for World Book Day 2016

Leaving aside that every day can and should be World Book Day, here's a poem about books, and the compulsion to read, and the need for municipal libraries, and my grandmother, Hilda Hill. 

Hilda went on to raise eleven children between the wars but still somehow found moments to read and write her own poems. 

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.

© Deborah Harvey 2014

This poem is part of a sequence of three published in my collection, Map Reading For Beginners. It and my first collection, Communion, are available from the Indigo Dreams website and usual outlets.  

My new collection of poetry, Breadcrumbs, will be published this spring, again by Indigo Dreams Publishing.