A Poem for World Poetry Day 2017

Strange, I thought, and rather unnecessary of the man working in my locallest Oxfam bookshop to pick the very moment I began to browse the one poetry shelf to start lifting books off to make a World Poetry Day 2017 display in an already crowded shop window. The day was half over anyway, and I probably would have bought more than just one slim volume, had most of the books not been whisked away from under my nose. I might have doubled or even tripled their total number of books sold on World Poetry Day 2017.

This was a pleasing find, though. 

Anyway, in a bid to up my poetry quota for the day, I'm going to post one I prepared earlier. It's the title poem of my third collection, Breadcrumbs, and it's about resisting those who would wield complete control over us, whether on a domestic or international scale. It feels particularly apt for these troubling times. 

Breadcrumbs

She’s finished her chores for the week

five spare hours cupped in her hand

takes her hoard to the bedroom

In the kitchen

he’s checking the state of the floor

runs his finger down the counters

slams each gleaming cupboard door

stamps upstairs to glare at her

from the landing

turns as she puts her pen aside

crumples poems into balls

fills her pockets

©Deborah Harvey 2016

'Breadcrumbs' is available from Indigo Dreams Publishing, good bookshops everywhere, and Amazon. 

Unsullied

If anyone had asked me the name of the pub in the Vale of Glamorgan where I'd attended ... oh I don't know, a wedding reception or maybe a wedding anniversary celebration some 30 years ago, I wouldn't have remembered, but googling for somewhere slightly further afield to go for Sunday lunch, I recognised it at once: The Captain's Wife, Sully.  

And in that moment I was right back there: heavily pregnant with my first child one warm Saturday in September, waiting in the dim, flagstoned lobby to depart while my former late ex-mother-in-law, who came alive in the company of her children and grandchildren, took her long-drawn-out leave of them. After a while, I began to feel a bit giddy and leant against the wall. 'You'd better get used to this,' said my ex-husband's aunt in my ear, her tone a bolt shot home. 'You're a G------- now, my girl.'

Ghosts to lay, then. Though there was no strong sense of returning. It's been taken over by a chain in the meantime, its former quirkiness Farrow and Balled into nondescription. In any event it was warm enough to sit outside: our first outdoors pub lunch of 2017. 

The beach is less than welcoming at first glance. 

This is on account of the proximity of Sully Island and the huge tidal range of the Severn estuary, which means the causeway connecting it to the mainland for three hours either side of low tide is covered by rushing water at a dramatic speed.  

By the time we'd eaten, the tide was already far too high for us to contemplate going out there, though Ted was undeterred. 

As it was, we didn't hang about on it for long. There was three minutes between this photo ... 

... and this one. 

Sully island will have to wait for another day. 

Flat Holm and Steep Holm wrapped in mist and the wrong way round

Back on the opposite side of the Severn, it was time to celebrate my father's birthday. He is 95 today, and this being the opposite side of the Severn, in an excellent mood on account of the rugby.

Not a bad day. 

Satellite of Love

Satellite of Love is a relatively new gig in Bristol for page and performance poets alike, but over the last year it's become very popular, and not just because it takes place upstairs at the Greenbank in Easton, one of the best pubs around. The hosts - Helen, Pauline and Stella - are welcoming, the audience attentive and appreciative, and it just feels good to be there.  

I was so pleased they asked me to be one of the two monthly guest readers (along with Tom Sastry) on International Women's Day.  My Breadcrumbs poems have acquired a new resonance with the election of Trump, and even though we've long known that the personal is political, I feel a lot more like a political poet these days. It turns out the overweening desire for control is pretty much the same whether it's exercised in the home or the White House. Apart from the nuclear bombs.

Also, the event, which is free to attend, has raised over £500 in donations in the last fourteen months or so for various charities supporting refugees. 

It runs every second Wednesday in the month. Get in touch with the organisers via Facebook for an open mic slot.  

Clearing: A Poem for International Women's Day 2017

Clearing

'Home is within you, or home is nowhere at all' 

                     Hermann Hesse

Know your empty place, make it home

Scar tissue’s intractable, dead

It’s your wound that will remind you

who you are. Walk its edges,

test its depth, map its contours

your geography of loss

The trees might seem distant

They’re eating sunlight, snagging cloud

When night comes they’ll slip a spoke

in the turning wheel of stars

They won’t mind if you touch them

print their bark on the skin of your face

listen for the fizzing sap

rising in your veins

©Deborah Harvey 2016 

Art by Dru Marland 

A Secret Ministry

Went outside first thing this morning to find that the frost had scrawled 'The frost performs its secret ministry' in frost lettering all over the windscreen of my car. 

Small Acts of Resistance

I came home from the tip to find a bumble bee flopped in our front garden. Early emerged from its hibernation, perhaps. In any event, it looked like it could do with some help.

Two parts sugar to one part water is the recipe - any more water and the bee might drown. 

Serve promptly on a plate or spoon. (I had to go a bit Uri Geller on my spoon to get it to balance properly.)

As soon as I put it down, the bee started to waggle its front leg in the air, but was too exhausted to move, so I shifted the spoon towards it instead.  It tucked in for a while, and then withdrew for a bit of a wash and brush up.

By the time it returned for seconds, a woodlouse had sneaked in ahead, but the bee was clearly a generous soul and didn't seem bothered. 

I didn't let them see the mug I'd mixed the sugar solution in, mind. Nor the actual dog, who was safely shut in the back garden.

After a while, the woodlouse lumbered off and the bee started to jack itself up like one of those ridiculous American truck things.

I decided to leave it to its own devices for a bit. 



Twenty minutes later it was crawling around and looking lively.

Twenty minutes after that it was gone. 

2017 Shepton Mallet Snowdrop Festival : The Big Day Out

I have vague childhood connections with Shepton Mallet. My uncle and aunt lived there for a time when I was very young, and driving past the chamois deer that was the Babycham trademark atop the factory roof was the highlight of long car journeys to and from South Devon before the M5 was built. The deer now stands on a bank sheltering under a tree, as Dru Marland and I discovered a few years ago. 

It turns out that Shepton Mallet is also famous for its snowdrops. I didn't know the story of its illustrious son, James Allen, the first person to breed new varieties of snowdrop from ones growing in the wild, during the 19th century. So it's as well there's now a Shepton Mallet Snowdrop Festival to bruit his fame. 

In fact, the whole town's really gone to town on snowdrops.

I was there as judge of the first Snowdrop Festival Poetry Competition. First, though, there was a walk, from Highfield House, where James Allen lived, to his family plot in the cemetery on Waterloo Road, for the planting of extra snowdrops.  

We were accompanied by the Big Noise Street Band from Taunton.

James Allen wasn't the most fortunate of men. Botrytis eventually destroyed his collection and only two of the varieties he bred survive today. I was much luckier ... the competition produced a fine crop of poems, from Somerset and much further afield. A pleasant few evenings in January spent sifting and winnowing entries culminated in a highly enjoyable set of readings by the shortlisted poets and presentations to the prize winners, washed down with mulled cider.

Best of all, I got the chance to look at the unassuming snowdrop afresh, through the lens of all the poems entered, and it was a delight.