A Poem for World Poetry Day 2016

It's no longer good enough just to be a day, one of the 365, getting out of bed, shining yourself up a bit to meet the masses - no, you have to be World Something-or-other Day too.  It's this celebrity culture, innit.

March 21st is the Kim Kardashian of days - first day of spring, Equinox, World Downs Syndrome Awareness Day, World Poetry Day. Here's a poem in honour of attribute 4 that has attributes 1 and 2 covered.  

Tipping the Balance

Let winter steal this March on spring

falling backwards into snowlight, 

its blinding victory. 

It’s not about green and yellow,

the glow of celandines or whether

miserly beeches are still pocketing their coppers

We’ll measure the turning year in light,

throw the wolf and lion into the balance,

let afternoons trickle into evening,

evening out the hours of dark

and as night comes

hurtling into morning,

wake to the beating of wings

warm as migratory kisses

©Deborah Harvey 2014

'Tipping the Balance' is from my 2014 collection, Map Reading for Beginners, which is available from Indigo Dreams Publishing, good bookshops everywhere, and Amazon if you must. 

My new poetry collection, Breadcrumbs, will be published in the next few weeks.

Rolling Away The Stone

Once again finding myself briefly at a loose end in North-East Somerset, I took myself off to a village with a church.  The first thing that struck me is how the seasons have turned since the last time I was in this area, about six weeks ago.  Then it was still very wintry, now - well, it's ever so slightly more colourful.

This is All Saints Church in Corston (not to be confused with Corston, Wilts). The present church dates from the 14th century and its stumpy 'candle-snuffer' spire (one of only 18 on mediaeval churches in Somerset) gives it a homely appearance.

 Much of the fabric of the interior has been swept away, however, and I found few traces of the distant past.  Though if you are a church in need of new choir furniture, these modern Gothic examples are a fine option (here with the Millennium tapestry behind). 

Bit of a surprise in the churchyard, in this monument of Jesus, rather than the more usual angel - in fact, I'm not sure I've seen one before, at least not this big.  He presides over a grave containing various Bartelts, a well-to do family of Prussian origin. 

Coming from a rather plainer religious  background , this old rugged cross was altogether more familiar to me.  

It was a beautiful day to wander about a bit, with views over the valley and marshy brook that gives the village its name.

There are always moments of melancholy on such meanders. The graves of children ... 

... and of those who left room for their loved ones, only for the ungrateful And Also's to carry on living and move on - and into another's grave.  

Though that's what it's for, isn't it? Living. 

Breadcrumbs coming soon

So this is what it's going to look like - the cover of my forthcoming poetry collection from Indigo Dreams Publishing.  Meanwhile, I'm angsting over commas and full stops, as is my wont. It will soon be time to Step Away From The Second Proof.  

Here's one of the poems that will be in it. It was originally published in 'Salt on the Wind', Chaucer Cameron and Helen Dewbury's anthology of poems in response to Ruth Stone, which is available from Elephant's Footprint.

Memory

after Ruth Stone

You scrabbled for

strands and threads

wove together

whatever you could

a piece of story

to keep you warm

cover your shame

But under the surface

something shifts

alters its colour

You turn it

all the ways you can

but all you thought

                     you knew is gone 

                                         Poem  ©Deborah Harvey 2016

                                         Artwork  ©Dru Marland 2016

A Wander at Snuff Mills

The dog has form for hamming it up. He spent the entire period of my recuperation from breaking my leg last year limping for attention, though there was nothing wrong with him. Recently, however, he started hobbling for real and the vet, who has no truck with our tales of limpathy, diagnosed strained ligaments. The last few weeks have been dull for him and for us, with enforced rest and subsequently only very short walks around the block.

He's seemed a lot better these last few days so today we decided to go for a wander at Snuff Mills in the Frome valley, with Ted on two leads and his headcollar so that he wasn't tempted to go cantering off and cause any more damage to himself.  This did confer some advantages, principally the fact that he couldn't dive headlong into all the mud lining on the river bank.

The poor lad did, however, manage a quick paddle.

Meanwhile, I was getting a little over-excited.  There were buds and catkins, celandines and lungwort.  The great process of renewal under way.

I could even smell the water. 

Ted rather liked the dogwood. 

Bristol is of course famed for the Avon Gorge, but some of its other water courses - the Trym, the Hazel Brook and the Frome  -  have their own, smaller gorges, through Badock's Wood, Blaise Castle estate, and Oldbury Court estate/Snuff Mills respectively. I love the way the trees here grow out of the rock. 

The Yorkshire man got very sniffy when I said that this was a post industrial landscape, being the site, from the middle ages to the early 20th century, of many mills.  He thinks only Northerners have ever manufactured anything. 

On the drive home we saw a woman sweeping the pavement outside her house, and then the woman in the corner shop really muddied the waters by calling him 'sweetheart'. I expect they were both Northerners too. 

Salvaging an A.W.38 Whitley

It’s 1941. My father, Lionel Harvey, is 19, RAF ground crew and stationed in Scotland. One day a pilot on a training flight gets into trouble over the Dornoch Firth and manages, just, to land his Whitley on the highest part of a sandbank.  The tide comes in but doesn’t quite reach the plane. The race is on to salvage it.

The authorities set about finding billets for the men, including my father, who are charged with carrying out the operation.  None of the locals will agree to take them, so when they try again, they are accompanied by a police officer and my father finds himself assigned to Summerton Farm, near Tain, then in the ownership of Jock and Annie Moore. He is accompanied by two other airmen, one from Newcastle, the other from Ayrshire. The polite demeanour of the airmen soon dispels suspicion and a rapport is established – although when, at one point, the young Scot describes himself as a highlander, Annie Moore draws my father, a Bristolian, to one side and hisses ‘He’s nae a Hielander!’

It is my father’s job to get the two engines out of the Whitley, and this is done using pulleys.  The whole of the plane is then dismantled, and a raft is built out of about sixty strong, iron-bound barrels to transport the pieces of plane over the water to dry land.  It's arduous work, as the sand is deep and unstable, and it’s tiring just reaching the plane. (My father is yet to become an expert at playing football in the Sahara.)  Rowing the raft is no easier, not least because the oars they have been given are of unequal length – one about six foot, the other closer to ten.  It’s really hard to row the raft and negotiate the currents and get it going in the right direction.

The heaviest part of the plane is the fuselage, and to help shift this, about fifty Highlanders who are stationed nearby are drafted in to help.  In the space of three weeks they manage to get all of the plane back onto the shore without getting a single piece wet.

Footnote 1: RAF ground crew were instructed to stop wearing their wellington boots in their habitual style, with the tops turned down, as the local lads were doing the same and their mothers had complained to the authorities that they were breaking their boots and causing unnecessary expense. This instruction was not heeded.

Footnote 2: My father kept in touch with the Moores for many years, until they died. He went back to see them with my mother after they married in the early 50s, and my sister and her husband also tried to visit in 1981, but didn't manage to rouse a then very elderly Jock, who had fallen asleep in his armchair and didn’t hear them knocking on the door. 

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.  

Cinderella - The Cillit Bang Years

Some photos from another stonking Stepping Out Production at the Alma Vale Tavern ...