Rearranging the Cosmos

I liked the idea of a cosmos, but in practice it didn't work.  Upon reflection, sitting on the settee with the weight of the universe on my shoulders was less than restful.  So yesterday I moved it in its entirety into the hall.

I like it better out here.  For one thing, the music of the spheres is more muted when I'm trying to relax.  For another, you get an astronaut's eye view when you're coming down the stairs.  It's a bit like having your own Hubble telescope.  

The only problem being that I now have a lot of black holes in the front room, waiting to be filled with polyfilla.

Lunar perigee

In honour of the lunar perigee, a poem about the moon. 

A Moon Like This

You’ve called it a day.

Decided to settle

for a walk in the park

with the dog at twilight.

And this, you tell your dog,

will be enough.

And for a while it is

until, above the lollipop trees,

a lunatic moon hurls herself

in the sky’s blue well.

A tuppenny bit to wish on,

and a small wind rises,

riffles your blood.

You clear your throat,

it makes no sound,

but another night,

on a moon like this,

you might hear yourself

howling.




Deborah Harvey © 2010, 2011




My poetry collection, 'Communion', coming this spring from Indigo Dreams.

Billy Cans and Bats

I knew there were caves in Avon Gorge but other than St Vincent’s (or Giant’s) Cave, which every local’s been to, I’d never visited any, nor did I expect to, being far too old and substantial these days to want to squeeze myself into any more tight spots, literally or metaphorically.  Dru, however, claimed that access to Burwalls Cave was easy and offered to take me there.  I wasn’t so sure it was a good idea after reading her account of her visit – anyone who can nonchalantly hop over the parapet of the Clifton Suspension Bridge is a far braver soul than I – but she assured me there was an easier, albeit illegal, route over university property, so Thursday saw us nipping through a hole in the fence and scrambling down the well-trodden path to the cave, perched about a third of the way down the steep cliffs of the gorge, while buzzards soared overhead. 

And there we were, ensconced in what is probably the oldest domicile in the city and still in use today – in fact, the ashes of the fire were still smouldering.  It’s hard not to feel as if you are intruding in someone’s private space when you are confronted with their sleeping bag, books and billy can, but there’s also a guest book (marked 'guest book') and a palpable feeling that this is a place which belongs to everyone, underlined by the presence of shrines to Buddha, Krishna, and Jesus, prayer flags, dream-catchers, a shaman stick, a little Aztec-style carving, and everywhere hearts - chalked, painted, hanging from crevices, or wedged on ledges. 

Dru brewed some tea and we contemplated the view, something which the well-heeled denizens on the opposite side of the gorge pay a fortune to enjoy.  It  wasn’t long before the white noise of the traffic-clogged A4 a good two hundred feet below us became the roar of an ice-age torrent cutting through rock, and a feeling of peace descended.  

‘Keep the secret,’ urges the guest book.  I resolved to do so, and managed for all of three hours, when a friend at a loose end stopped by and I found myself heading back over the bridge.  And this time we were lucky enough to get up close and personal with one of the inhabitants.

Full Circle

Full Circle

In ancient China
the moon is made of figured silk,
woven with the pattern of galloping hares,
three conjoined by a single ear,
together whole.

An eternal circle
embroidered on bolts of cloth,
carried by camel through singing sands,
the booming dunes of wind-whipped
Xhiang Sha Wan,

where Silk Road
frays to quick oasis, and
wondering artists paint three hares
on sacred temple cavern walls.
The Buddha’s wheel

of life and death
rolls through Persia’s burning plains,
eclipses sere, salt-desert suns: a brazen tray
engraved with hares, a stamped,
Islamic copper coin.

Crossing rivers, bridging rifts
in hidden groves of moss and stone,
these three hares chased on Jewish tombs
and makeshift tabernacle roofs,
the blackened beams

of Dartmoor churches
at the edges of the earth, bear
a trinity of hares, three in one, the risen son,
beneath a moon that pins
the universal oceans.

Deborah Harvey © 2011



Hares by Dru Marland, words by me.

More trinities of hares here

My poetry collection, 'Communion', coming this spring from Indigo Dreams.

Kings, Collies, Clevedon, the Wordsworths and World Book Night

I wish every week was like this last one.

Wednesday night I ventured to Bedminster to see Richard II at the Tobacco Factory – an excellent production, as always, with an outstanding performance by John Heffernan as the deluded and decadent king whose eventual self-knowledge is all the more moving for his former folly. One day I would love to see each play in the tetraology one after the other – Richard II, Henry IV Parts I (one of my O-level set texts) and II, which contains the funniest scene I’ve ever seen in the theatre, and Henry V, which has so much resonance for my uneducated war-veteran father that I would hold him up as an example to anyone who thinks Shakespeare irrelevant.  The Bristol Old Vic put on the two Henry IVs back-to-back some years ago and that was hugely enjoyable, but the whole sweep of story would be even better.

Thursday it was Can Openers at the Central Library, the guest poet this time Ros Martin. As usual there was an eclectic mix of poems.  Piece of the day for me was Dru Marland’s, about her border collie, Bessie.  It’s no mean feat to write an unsentimental poem about a pet; this one is touching but hilarious also. 

On Friday, having despatched both my poetry manuscript and the contract for my novel to Ronnie and Dawn at Indigo Dreams, and had a look at Dru’s progress re the artwork for the latter, it was off to Clevedon in her Morris Traveller - the perfect ramshackle vehicle for such a genteel watering-hole.

First, we visited the Sheela-na-gig at St Andrew’s, Clevedon, who was looking simultaneously acrobatic and self-possessed: 

Then, as the church was locked, we followed Poets’ Walk around the headland to Clevedon Pill (the poets in question being Coleridge, and Tennyson whose friend Arthur Henry Hallam, for whom he wrote In Memoriam, is buried in the church).  It was a sunny spring-like day and the views over the mud to Worlebury Hill were magnificent.  Dru’s a great person to jaunt with because she knows stuff.  I’ve always envied people who can identify birds at 1000 paces and recognise their songs. Now, thanks for Dru, I can pick out the the yaffling of green woodpeckers and the lovely bubbling call of the curlew. 

Back at St Andrew’s the organist was practicing, so we sneaked through the door.  Unfortunately he’d almost finished and told us so, whereupon my brain immediately went AWOL and I didn't see anywhere near as much as I'd have liked, but apparently the church is open more often in the summer.  I only wish I’d listened to exactly when.   

Then on to Seeley’s Bookshop as Dru had some books to drop off.  What an amazing emporium!  It clearly hasn’t changed at all since the 1970s, inside or out.  The fittings, the flooring, even the stock is dated – when did you last see an old-style Dymo machine on sale?  

 Back to Bristol feeling as if I’d travelled 16 miles down the coast but decades back in time.  Before taking my leave of Dru, we stopped off in Shirehampton to see what she describes as  ‘the Co-op where the Wordsworths stayed’.  And it’s true, look!

Alack, another black hole in my Heducashun!

In Durdham Down Bookshop, whither I popped to pick up my copies of ‘The World’s Wife’ for World Book Night, I got talking to the owner, Kathryn, and she offered me a literary evening for my poetry collection when it’s published.  Pinch me someone, quick.

Finally it was off to Chepstow yesterday in the company of my old friend, Liz, for a poetry reading in the Drill Hall by Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke – a very pleasing bit of synchronicity considering I was giving away 48 copies of the above mentioned collection.  Both Gillian and Carol Ann were very obliging in person, though I did cringe a little when the latter asked me how I’d settled on ‘The World’s Wife’ as my first choice of book for World Book Night.  George Washington-esque to the last, I blurted that actually, ‘The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time’ had been my first choice, on account of having autistic offspring and being keen to do what I can to raise awareness of the condition.  To her credit, our Laureate laughed heartily at this, and I was able to add, swiftly, that on the whole, I much preferred poetry to prose and it had been in no way disappointing to be able to scatter her poems far and wide. So hopefully I won't get sent to the Tower.

And I came away with eight signed tomes to intersperse with the others, so that some lucky recipients will get an unexpected bonus.  Though it’s going to be hard to part with this one:

Kin

I was born into a very large Bristol family.  My mother was the eldest daughter of thirteen children, eleven of whom survived to go forth and multiply.  As a result, many of my earliest memories are of being surrounded by a throng of people who looked like me and sounded like me, but whose exact identities were lost in unholy confusion.  


My grandmother was the heart of our family; her modest Victorian villa the place to which we would all gravitate.  When she died at the age of 93, we realised that unless we all made an effort, we would lose that close family connection we'd always taken for granted.  And so we took to hiring a hall once a year, on the Saturday nearest her birthday, to throw a large, raucous party.


Yesterday was the 113^th anniversary of my grandmother's birth; tomorrow we shall again flock to fill the genteel suburban avenues of Stoke Bishop with hail-fellow-well-mettery and hullabaloo.  This is a poem I wrote about our gathering, dedicated to my once and future kin:

Kin

Every November they gather together,

raggedy black with petroleum sheen

and sparks in their feathers.

Most live local,

drifting from suburbs like bonfire smoke,

although others hurl in from further afield,

storming up songlines,

until, like a genie freed from a lamp,

they swirl, and set the sky alight

with their crackling dance.

A parliament of starlings,

cacophonous cousins,

an argumentation of uncles and aunts!

Then one venerable elder

hunches his shoulders, opens his throat

and lets fly a hymn in notes

grown richer over years,

swelled by a hundred kindred voices,

all singing in different keys

their shared story.




Deborah Harvey © 2008, 2010

Kin will be published in my forthcoming poetry collection, Communion, due to be published next year by Indigo Dreams.

The Power of Poetry

There's a huge old pear tree in my garden.  As it towers over the boundary between my and my neighbours’ garden, it’s tempting to conclude that it was planted in 1939 when the farmland it stands on was parcelled up into plots and turned into suburbia.  It looks so venerable, however, that I fancy it has flourished here far longer.

For all its gnarled beauty, it’s been a bit of a disappointment over the years when it comes to fruiting.  The pears are large, golden yellow and good to eat and stew, but the harvest is generally meagre.  What’s more, the tree is infected with scab and large numbers of its pears develop crackled skin and chocolate brown patches.  Most autumns, by the time you’ve cut the bad bits out, there’s barely enough to make more than a couple of pear crumbles.  

Last year, we had a strange but memorable Easter.  I was newly single, the kids fatherless.  To fill the gap left by my husband’s departure we’d acquired a boisterous border collie puppy who had yet to receive all his inoculations and was thus confined to base along with the rest of the family.  My dear friend Teresa arrived with a suitably shaped Easter present which was, in fact, a large iron cannon ball I’d long coveted and she’d managed to rescue from imminent skippage.  And the pear tree was in glorious, incandescent blossom.  All of this combined to give me a first glimpse of a better life, and I preserved that feeling of optimism in a poem to help me through the dark days that still lay ahead.   The fact that it subsequently won a prize in the 2009 MsLexia poetry competition was an unexpected bonus.

  

It was a pacific spring with little wind to strip the blossom and so, unusually, we had a glut of pears come September.  I duly stewed as many as I could store in my freezer, and gave away bucketfuls to my neighbours.  The remainder were left for foraging birds.  I briefly wondered if the tree had responded to my poem, in which I’d disparaged its bounty.  At any rate, it would surely be a long while before such abundance were repeated.

This year winter was hard and spring came late.  Our tree blossomed, but not spectacularly.  No matter, I still had tubfuls of frozen fruit left from the previous year.  Except that all this autumn pears have tumbled from the sky.  I gather them by the bowlful, and as I walk back into the house I hear more dropping, while still more hang from the branches like glowing lanterns.  Every night I stew a vast panful in diet lemonade and crushed ginger, while my youngest son and I are reduced to eating ancient chicken kievs of dubious provenance and fillets of frost-burnt fish in a bid to make space for yet more containers of the stuff.  Money might be tight but we shan’t starve this winter as long as we can continue to stomach porridge with pears; and pear cobbler; and butterscotch pear crunch; and pear walnut muffins; and French pear pie; and pork chops with pear chutney; and pears with spam and pears; and pears, spam, pears, pears, bacon and pears … 

The Wedding Tree

In autumn she huddles old bones

against the equinoctal storms,

discards a parsimonious harvest

of tarnished pears with crackled skin,

fit only for starlings.

A crabbed munificence I’ve forgotten

in this ragged April dawn

as she spreads her blossom-clotted arms,

as white,

as mad as Miss Havisham’s ghost,

and strips herself of wedding petals

at the insistence of the wind.

Watered silk and crimson seed,

throughout this Easter perfumes

bleed into my days.

And in a blessing of confetti

I am purified of love,

and rise,

a bride to the remainder

of my life.

Deborah Harvey © 2009, 2010