Confessions of a Traitor: Trials and Tribulations of Translating Poetry

A Close Reading: 'The Straight Jacket' by Pascale Petit

In Conversation with Beth Soule

Turning Japanese – Tanka

Found Poetry NNotice to Contributors CContents 13th March 2020 is the deadline for poems Contacts 2 from SPS members for the next issue. This Thoughts from the President 3 will enable them to be circulated to our Words from the Chair 3 referees for their recommendations. If you Notes from the Editor 4 are sending poems please put your name Confessions of a Traitor 5 and contact details (preferably email A Memory of George Crabbe 6 address) on each page. Submissions not A Close Reading 7 conforming to this requirement will not be Found Poetry 8 considered. Turning Japanese 4: Tanka 10 10th April 2020 is the deadline for the next Letter to the Editor 11 issue for all items other than poems: In Conversation with Beth Soule 11 articles, write-ups of events or workshops, Selected Poems 13 reviews, etc. The preferred format is an 6th Festival of Suffolk Poetry Review 16 attachment to an email to A Clutch of Larks 20 [email protected] but you may SPS Events send them by post to: Border Crossing 22 The Editor, Bridges and Crossings 22 64 Broom Street, Inspired By The Rubáiyát 24 Great Cornard, Tea at The Priory 24 Sudbury, National Poetry Day 24 Suffolk, Other Events CO10 0JT. Bugs and Blossoms Workshop 26 They Toil Not Workshop 26 It is very important that your name and Brandon Pop-Up Poets 26 contact details (preferably email address) Book Reviews (BR) are written on the item you are sending. Nine Days (BR) 27 Images, drawings or photographs are Exposure (BR) 27 welcome. Please send them, in as high a After-Images (BR) 28 resolution as possible, to Dreams of Flight (BR) 29 [email protected]. Other Items Remembering Stephen Glason 29 Front cover: Café Poets' Corner – Sudbury Café Poets 30 Photograph by Derek Adams. Future Events – 2020 31 Lavenham Press workshops 31 CContact details :: suffolkpoetrysociety..org..uk Chair Florence Cox chair@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Vice Chair Beth Soule vicechair@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Secretary Sue Wallace-Shaddad secretary@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Treasurer Colin Whyles treasurer@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Membership Diane Jackman membership@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Tel: 01379 642372 for new membership enquiries 12 Rivers Editor Fran Reader editor@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Publicity Derek Adams publicity@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Portfolio Secretary Pat Jourdan portfolio@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Crabbe Competition Rosemary Jones crabbe@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Stanza Rep Derek Adams stanza@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk Webmaster Colin Whyles webmaster@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk

Published by Suffolk Poetry Society, c/o Fairweather Law Ltd, Solicitors, Copyright © 2019 Suffolk Poetry Society 16 Wentworth Road, ALDEBURGH, Suffolk, IP15 5BB, UK Registered Charity 1162298 2 houghts from the .... or rather it hasn’t yet gone wild doubt that whether we are President but with typical quiet attention imported or native Suffolkers, the TT some local Quakers are reflecting contrast of our deep, quiet The Quaker Graveyard Has on what that might mean for wild landscape with the sharp-edged, Gone Wild life, visitors and, not least, pervasive noise of present-day mourners, if it were to be ‘re- politics is especially poignant. wilded’. grasses clamber on the deep-cut What do you think? Is it either or? simple stones, This beautiful county of ours quite Should we as poets turn away from flashes of colour clearly and in many places the racket of the newsroom and light up the path demonstrates the same dilemma. celebrate our heritage of natural and where there was once ordinary The small woodland path, once beauty? Should we grapple with silence neatly barbered, that I walk on the big questions of our national the deep voiced ministry almost every evening when in life in our poetry? What is a of bees Suffolk is now overgrown. It ‘political’ poem? Is there such an blazes with straggling plants, animal? speaks. many with sharp teeth. We have Having accepted the privilege of Now we are scattering the ashes perhaps got used to a rather more being your current president and of that plain, silent, image tidy version of husbandry than we see in the hedges that lean and heard, seen and read your work, I of ourselves don’t doubt that you have the skills we like to believe flash their changing leaves over the roads - and yet it’s beautiful. Is and the heart to do what poets is who we are change always a paradox? must and shine the light of poetry and a small, bright eyed wherever it needs to fall. hedgehog joins our Meeting All of us are grappling with that Kate Foley and the bees. question at the moment and I don’t

ords from the Chair I passed the test to get on the Now I usually gather the course but, although I heard elements of a poem in my head, WW there were some unfilled spaces, sometimes letting it stew for as I’ve been thinking about how a I didn’t receive the offer of a long as three weeks. Then I sit at poem gets into its final shape. place. I sat on the steps outside my computer very late in the When I was younger and a poem the college and wept. When a day, literally and metaphorically, was demanding to be written, I man walking past asked what and type it up. I love the ease of would scribble it down on the matter was, I sobbed,‘I want re-drafting on the computer and whatever came to hand: the back to study here!’ Unbeknown to I save each draft as I go along. of a cheque book, an empty cake me, he was the Director of the Sometimes, after a lot of box, the edge of a page of my college. A few days later I was alterations, I return to the raw university lecture notes or even accepted on the course, and early version and make it the on a till receipt in very tiny because of it, I was able to earn a definitive one. For over a writing! Later, I would transfer decent living and swap my quarter of a century I have these drafts, sometimes with dingy room for a Paris flat with shared my poems with a couple modifications, into a succession my very own shower, toilet and of poetry writing groups, where of thick exercise books, hot water. fresh insight can be gained, unearthed from my usual criticism taken on board and new I worked for a dynamic company domestic clutter when I had a ideas exchanged. I store my spare moment. on the western edge of Paris, and it was here that I typed up my poetry in ‘year’ folders, so all the poems I have written in one I didn’t learn to type until I was poems for the first time. My particular year are in one place. 24. I had cycled from Ipswich to typing was entirely fuelled by But I must admit that I find it Southwest France the year before rage; I had a new colleague, very difficult to locate poems with a and was living in a gloomy attractive and smartly dressed, connecting theme. I would love upstairs room equipped with one but her lunch hours lasted all to hear any ideas on how other cold tap. The toilet was at the afternoon and the work that she poets store their work so that back of the yard and was shared was meant to be doing arrived retrieval is easy. with fifteen people. I was doing on my desk instead. I decided that when my extra work was temporary work as a cleaner I often wake in the night, and when I heard that I could apply done, I would type up my poems until she deigned to put in an sometimes a few lines of new to do a full-time bilingual appearance. I soon filled a poetry occur to me which I shape secretarial course at a college in whole folder with my early carefully in my head. But if, in the town and receive the works. my drowsy state, I make the minimum wage while I studied. 3 mistake of not writing down the were set to music by Colin of exploring the fusion of poetry fledgling poem on the nearest Whyles and, accompanied by with art and photography during piece of paper, in the morning I Colin, sung by Lynne Nesbit; the fascinating talk by the cannot for the life of me Virginie Roidiere’s harp music Suffolk poet Clare Best. remember the lines that had beautifully enhanced the poetry seemed so vivid and exciting. of the Rubáiyát and the a capella Poetry is not an island. Every group Triangle provided sort of artistic endeavour can This brings me to the exciting entertaining and lively songs for create associations in our minds year of shared poetry in Suffolk. the Members’ reading. I to inspire us. Whether your In May, we had another performed at the open mic at poetry is typed, memorised or successful Festival of Suffolk FolkEast for the first time, both scribbled on the back of an Poetry in Stowmarket, followed saying poems and singing a envelope, it is enriched by in June by the Rubáiyát event in ballad of mine, whose lyrics experiences, ideas and Ipswich and our annual were praised by one member of impressions which can help to Members’ reading in Walpole the audience afterwards! At the bring your words to their fullest Old Chapel. Each of these events SPS Members’ tea party on flowering. was enhanced by a musical September 8th, held at the Florence Cox element; at the Festival selected beautiful home of Victoria poems by James Knox Whittet Engleheart, we had the pleasure

NNotes from the Editor I hope this issue will provide 2. Book Reviews – it is very special readers with pleasure in poetry for Any existing member renewing for to receive books and pamphlets the winter months ahead and will 2020 before 31st December 2019 from SPS members for review in inspire contributions for the will get their membership at 2019 Twelve Rivers – please keep them forthcoming issues in the first year rates. coming. Where possible we will of the new decade. I find myself ensure that all books and Potential new members joining in wondering what this new decade pamphlets are reviewed but, if this November / December 2019 will will look like – will these Twenties is not possible, books and have free membership for ‘roar’ with new ‘isms’ like they pamphlets received but not November and December 2019 and did one hundred years ago? reviewed will be noted as per Vol. start the annual subscription at the 10 Iss. 1 p.27. Now to two important messages 2020 rates from January 2020. for existing and potential members: We aim to ensure that all reviews The 2019 Membership / Renewal can be seen to be independent, so Application Form can be used for 1. Membership – I have been asked please do not make 2020 membership and renewal to remind all members that their recommendations about a applications before 31st December annual membership fee is rising preferred reviewer when 2019. for the first time in five years. This submitting a book or pamphlet. increase was agreed at the AGM in The 2019 Membership / Renewal March 2019 and will ensure that All books or pamphlets to be Application Form is available on Suffolk Poetry Society (SPS) has the considered for review should be the website suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk – funds to continue to run its annual sent to the Editor – as per the this form will change to the events, cope with the rising cost of address on the Notice to updated 2020 forms and rates from postage and publish Twelve Rivers. Contributors on p.2. Each January 1st 2020. reviewer is sent the copy received The membership fee is due in The Privacy Form on the reverse of and asked to write a review of January of each year and in 2020 around 500 words by the agreed will be: the Membership / Renewal Application Form only has to be deadline for each issue. Each • Individual membership: £18.00 completed by new members – not reviewer may keep the copy of the by renewing members. book they’ve reviewed. If you are • Couple membership: £23.00 interested in becoming a reviewer • 18+ and in full-time education: please email the Editor at £5.00 [email protected] • Postal Portfolio Membership Fran Reader (optional extra)1: £20.00

1 Numbers of members of the Postal Portfolio are limited to keep it manageable. 4 onfessions of a Traitor:: about an eminent scientist who had unfamiliar while still being a writer C The Trials and Tribulations of declared, around the time that with something interesting to say to C Translating Poetry bicycles were invented, that cycling today’s reader. What I thought must be impossible: if you did not might particularly appeal was what I fall off one side, you were bound to saw as his psychological acuity in fall off the other. And yet cycling describing a relationship with a continues to happen. And so does woman he called Cynthia, whether verse translation. or not she really existed (the current academic orthodoxy is that she was a Why? Many poets through the ages literary invention). have doubtless simply felt inspired to render a poem they admired in As I began work, I didn’t have much another language into their own. going for me if my efforts were ever When, in the 1st century BC, Catullus to make their way beyond my translated into Latin a love poem computer hard-drive or, at best, composed by Sappho 500 years some kind of Internet self- previously, he was writing for an publication. I had made my entire audience who knew the original career in 24-hour journalism and was Greek as well as he did; he may have unknown in the world of letters. I wanted to flatter an erudite was not (and still am not) an original girlfriend he had already compared poet in English. But I had an early to the poet of Lesbos. But the main stroke of luck when the head of the justification for literary translation, Manchester-based poetry publishing including of poetry, has always been house Carcanet Press, Michael Patrick Worsnip to share important works with a Schmidt – someone I had known wider public, however imperfectly. slightly at university forty years Born in Gloucester, Patrick Worsnip Dorothy Sayers’ Penguin Classics earlier – agreed, without read Classics and Modern version of The Divine Comedy, commitment, at least to look at Languages at Merton College, published in the 1950s, may look whatever I could come up with. (It Oxford. He worked for more than dated and even odd nowadays. was to be five years before Carcanet forty years as a foreign Does it match the original Italian? eventually decided to publish the correspondent for Reuters, Of course not. But the fact is that, book as part of their new Classics reporting from over eighty thanks to her, thousands of English- series). And I was inspired by being countries and covering stories speaking people who would not able to translate many of the ranging from the collapse of the otherwise have done so got to read hundred or so extant poems while Soviet Union to the conflicts in the Dante’s masterpiece. spending my summers in a village in Gulf. the Italian region of Umbria just a Some such consideration was on my few miles from Assisi, where Since retiring in 2012 he has mind when, a few years ago, I Propertius was born more than a devoted himself to translation, retired from a four-decade career as millennium before St. Francis. mainly of poetry. His version of the a Reuters correspondent and Poems by Sextus Propertius was decided to try to finally realise a I was guided more by instinct than published by Carcanet Classics in youthful ambition to translate Latin anything else in choosing a style and 2018. He is currently working on poetry. But which author to pick? I form to adopt. For a long time, the the poetry of Umberto Saba and - settled on the love poet Propertius, curse of translation from the Classics for relaxation - Dante's Divine writing in the Augustan era roughly had been archaism. By a process of Comedy. He divides his time between 30 and 15 BC. I was still logic that eluded me, translators had between Cambridge and Umbria, enough of a newsman to judge that thought that, because the original Italy. Propertius was “news” in a way that works were written a long time ago, the heavily translated Catullus and the translations should be in the Most of the memorable things that Ovid, part of the same wave of English of a long time ago. But 17th have been said about translation, poetic talent at that time, were not. I century English is no more similar to especially of poetry, have stressed its knew that many readers of English Latin or ancient Greek than 21st impossibility. From the Italian poetry were vaguely aware that, century English is. Yet usages like proverb “traduttore/ about a century ago, Ezra Pound had “thou” and “thee” and “hasteneth” traditore” (translator/traitor) to published a poem called Homage to and “hearkenest” lingered on in Dante’s comment that “nothing Sextus Propertius – for the record, translation well after they had died harmonised according to the rules of something between a translation and out in original English poetry. Even poetry can be translated from its a loose adaptation of parts of some when they finally disappeared native tongue into another without of Propertius’ poems, jumbled around the mid-20th century, they destroying its original sweetness and together. But how many people had were replaced all too often by an harmony”, to Robert Frost’s actually read it? And of those, only a unexceptional English that was definition of poetry as “what gets fraction would have read the Latin timeless and, in my view, colourless. lost in translation”. I am reminded author either in the original or in a Pound aside, the translations of how, when I was a child, my father more conventional translation. From Propertius that I glanced at didn’t told me a probably apocryphal story my perspective, Propertius had the look like poems written by a real advantage of being relatively person. Somewhere in the back of 5 my head (and no amount of the “creative” translators, who are out of translation and into googling has enabled me to track essentially trying to write a new something else. down who said it) was the phrase work of their own. They could “alive and writing in English include Samuel Johnson with The The book was published in today”. That was the impression I Vanity of Human Wishes (based on September 2018 (https:// wanted Propertius to create. Juvenal) or Edward Fitzgerald with www.carcanet.co.uk/cgi-bin/indexer? Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyam. product=9781784106515) and was There was a further problem relating fortunate enough to get a to the poetic form to adopt. All of I didn’t adhere to either of these recommendation from the Poetry Propertius’ work is in an unrhymed schools. I didn’t want Propertius to Book Society. Publication is not the Latin metre known as the elegiac look like a museum piece. But end of the matter for the translator, couplet. I won’t go into detail here, neither did I think I could do better though – the most unexpected issues but suffice it to say that you can’t than him. I wanted to foster the can arise. I’d agonised for a long reproduce it in English. To reflect illusion (and I concede it’s an time over whether to translate the variety of the poems, I went illusion) in the reader that when “puella” – a word Propertius instead for a mix of English forms, reading my work, he or she was repeatedly uses for adult women – ranging from free verse to limited reading Propertius, not Patrick literally as “girl”, before eventually use of rhyme and half-rhyme and Worsnip. To try to write in the doing so on the grounds that it was various kinds of metre or rhythm. living language of the present day not my job to turn him into a (while avoiding ephemeral slang) modern “new man”. But, in its All translation is difficult. But if didn’t seem to me a particularly review, the London Review of Books your original author is new, and revolutionary idea. But reactions took me to task for playing down especially if the language is little from readers have suggested that sexual violence in a poem where known – Albanian or Icelandic, let’s maybe it was more revolutionary Propertius threatens to forcibly strip say – it is down to that author to than I thought. These have ranged Cynthia, bruising her arms in the impress the critics or not. The from “He seems very modern” (a process, if she does not voluntarily translator needs to do a decent job, welcome comment) to “Did undress before going to bed with no more. But taking on an Propertius really say that?” (less him. (In another poem, it is Cynthia established Classic, writing in one of welcome). Expressions I used such who beats up Propertius). the great world languages, is a as “put-down”, “flip-flops” (the different matter. The reputation of footwear) or “megacity” have raised Ah well. I’ll be more careful next Sophocles, or Petrarch, or Goethe is eyebrows but seem to me genuinely time. To translate a Classic is an beyond question. The onus is on the the most exact translations now object lesson in humility. The most translator to make the case for available of the Latin. And for those the translator can aspire to is to having had another shot when there who equate any Latin author with interest a new generation of readers are plenty of translations out there dusty schoolrooms from decades in an author, but you cannot hope to already. There’s no hiding place. ago, let’s remember that Propertius have produced the definitive version Then again, translators have tended seemed very modern to his for all time. Even monumental to fall broadly into one of two contemporaries. On the other hand, achievements like the King James camps. There are the literalists – I’ve eschewed glaring Bible were later considered outdated Vladimir Nabokov, for example, anachronisms. In one poem, and in need of replacement. Sooner with his version of Pushkin’s Propertius laments that he’s lost his or later, your effort is going to be Yevgeny Onegin, or the founders of writing tablet – a wax-covered consigned to history, and others will the magazine Modern Poetry in wooden board. If you update the take their turn to produce a Translation. They believe that tablet and have him losing his iPad, translation more appropriate to their fidelity to the original text is you immediately lose your reader, age. paramount, even if the result looks who knows very well the ancient awkward in English. Then there are Romans didn’t have iPads. You’re

Memory of George Rector. In the evening the whole * Kilvert's Diary, Volume 3 Crabbe party adjourned to the Rectory, Selections from the Diary of the AA where they found Crabbe playing Rev. Francis Kilvert 14 May 1974 - * From the Reverend Kilvert’s diary whist with three friends in a large 13 March 1879, Chosen, edited and drawing room. Crabbe’s son (who introduced by William Plomer Monday, 5 October, 1874 was acting as his father’s curate) (1960) pp, 91-92 This month there is in the Cornhill was present, a keen-looking (George Crabbe died 3 February Magazine an article on Crabbe’s laughable man…..He came 1832 aged 77. His body is buried in poetry. My Father says he forward to receive the visitors Trowbridge and his heart in remembers staying with the while Crabbe continued his game. Aldeburgh.) Longmires at Wingfield about the My father describes the poet as year 1830. They took him one day being a small plain insignificant- Frank Wood to a book sale at Trowbridge, of looking old man, bald and with a which parish the poet was then whitish yellow complexion.

6 '' he Strait-Jackets'' by breathing easily; nostrils, almost; surprisingly, For the first time since Pascale Petit:: don’t, know; how, hours; asleep, I've arrived / he's breathing easily, TT cheeks; catch, wrap, strait-jackets. had the father also been dreading a close reading this meeting, and confronted by The poem culminates with two Derek Adams past misdemeanours found some internal rhymes in the final line sort of relief? ‘deep’, ‘sleep’, and the W sound of ‘wake’ and ‘once’, which also echo At the end of the poem all the the word ‘work’ in the penultimate hummingbirds are retrieved and line. This relentless rhythm is once more returned to the strait- intensified by the block form of the jackets and, by inference, to the poem, as well as the enjambment case, so perhaps this hospital visit of many lines and the heavy use of has not been as cathartic as it first alliteration: lie, live; feed, from, seemed. While the father sleeps like flask; inserting, into; from, face; a baby, does the poet find herself hover, he, humming; audible, once more, like the hummingbirds, above, attached, almost; work, trapped by her own mental wake; deep, doesn’t. straight-jacket? In contrast to this tension, the poem is full of soft words: gently, cushioned, swaddled, flower, The Strait-Jackets feathers, eyelids and quietly. This by Pascale Petit gives the poem a feeling of tenderness on the part of the poet, she tells us the birds fly close to her In this issue we will take a close I lay the suitcase on Father's bed look at a poem from Pascale Petit’s father’s face as if he’s a flower… and unzip it slowly, gently. second collection The Zoo Father It comes as a bit of a surprise to published by Seren in 2001. ‘The find that this poem is from the first Inside, packed in cloth strait-jackets Strait-jackets’ is the first poem in section of the book that deals with lie forty live hummingbirds the book. In it the poet tells us she the poet’s reunion with a violent tied down in rows, each tiny head has smuggled forty live and abusive father, whom she had hummingbirds into her father’s not seen since childhood, while he cushioned on a swaddled body. hospital room and released them. was dying in hospital and she was I feed them from a flask of sugar water, I chose this poem as I feel it is an undertaking therapy to help her inserting every bill into the pipette, interesting example of Pascale’s come to terms with her past. then unwind their bindings However, this poem contains clues poetry and shows how she invites so Father can see their changing colours you to suspend your belief with her to the strained relationship of the as they dart around his room. surreal poetry. After the intriguing two characters, the hummingbirds title, she lulls you with a very are ‘tied down’, their bodies They hover inches from his face ‘swaddled’, which seem to echo the ordinary-sounding first two lines: I as if he's a flower, their humming way her father is held by the lay the suitcase on Father's bed / and just audible above the oxygen recycler. unzip it slowly, gently. hospital bed, tied down by the oxygen recycler and the cannula/ For the first time since I've arrived The next six lines introduce the attached to his nostrils. The strait- he's breathing easily, the cannula hummingbirds. Here Petit piles on jackets of the title not only hold the the detail of how they are secured hummingbirds down but are also attached to his nostrils almost slips out. in the case and how they are fed; the strait-jackets of family ties I don't know how long we sit there this wealth of intricate detail makes which bind father and daughter but when I next glance at his face everything sound plausible and together, despite years apart, and he's asleep, lights from their feathers this allows you to accept the the trauma suffered by the poet fantastical, or magical realist, that caused the separation. Of still playing on his eyelids and cheeks. elements of the poem. course, the most important thing in It takes me hours to catch them all the poem are the hummingbirds, and wrap them in their strait-jackets. There is a lot of tension built into these little metaphors of memory I work quietly, he's in such the sound of this poem by the use and feelings that the poet has of internal rhymes and echoes, carefully packed away in a suitcase a deep sleep he doesn't wake once. often in the same line, sometimes over the years, tied down so they in adjacent words: lay, suitcase; can’t escape. When she finally sees unzip, it; slowly, gently; packed, the father who abused and From The Zoo Father (Seren 2001) strait-jackets; Inside, lie, live, tied, abandoned her so many years ago, reproduced with kind permission tiny; down, rows, cushioned, on; helpless in his hospital bed, she can of Pascale Petit and Seren. sugar, water; unwind, bindings; at last release what had for so long Father, dart; hover, flower, recycler, been suppressed. Perhaps cannula; arrived, attached;

7 ound Poetry everything. In found poetry, the other poems or other textual poet is allowed to operate like the sources, as already mentioned FF proverbial magpie and ‘steal’ words, above. Nicola Warwick lines and phrases from other texts (not just other poems) to create The following example shows how something which is frequently it can be done, on a very basic level: referred to as collage. In fact, the Here’s a great way to keep the kids Found Poetry Review describes it as entertained. ‘the literary version of a collage’, using not just traditional sources The neighbourhood cats keep using such as books, magazines or newspapers, but also the less the flowerbed traditional, like packaging or junk around our house as a litter tray. mail. By joining extracts from the We regret we do not have facilities chosen sources, the poet creates for pets. something that is and is not part of the original text. As Annie Dillard I was upset to find the stones says ‘by entering a found text as a in one of my favourite brooches poem, the poem doubles its context. were loose. The original meaning remains intact In July, Roger Bloor was announced By removing the bottom of a plastic as the winner of the Poetry London but it now swings between two Clore Prize 2019, with his poem ‘The poles. The poet adds, or at any rate lemonade bottle Ghost of Molly Leigh Pleads, Yes increases, the element of delight!’2 you find useful compartments Cries for Exemplaire Justice Against Found poetry can also be used to to hold all your bits and bobs. The Arbitrarie, Un-exampled inspire poems if you don’t know We store deposits in a secure Injustice of Her Accuser’, described what to write or if your writing is account. by the judge, Sasha Dugdale as a inspired by a phrase or title of an poem of ‘mesmerising rhythm and already published poem and you Please note anyone who has not accumulative power’1. Leaving just want to free-write from disclosed aside its extremely long title, what whatever first seizes your attention. a health problem. I prefer to buy makes this poem remarkable is that A good example of this is Linda man-sized tissues. I punch holes it is an example of what is known as France’s 2010 collection You are Her, ‘found’ poetry. At the time of the title of which was discovered on in the front of the boxes, writing, the winning poem has yet an information board at Hadrian’s useful all year round as curtain to be published but is described as Wall, not far from the poet’s home. ties. using ‘found text and elements from The missing final ‘e’ from the sign, the legends that surround Molly’s originally ‘You are here’, enabling Groups of ten or more adults may life’, Molly Leigh being a 17th- the visitor to locate their position on qualify century woman who was accused of a map, set the poet off on a journey for a discount, using just a piece of witchcraft. of writing poems both of location slate, But what exactly is found poetry, and disorientation. The title poem of some pebbles, correction fluid and how can it generate such the collection ends ‘…. you are her, apparent intensity and power? Most and her, and her, always guessing/ and a marker pen. the missing letter, a perfect poets will experience what is The poem was created by combining mistake’3. Found poetry, then, can sometimes called ‘writer’s block’ at phrases taken from ‘brainwaves’ or have a disorientating effect on the some point in their career. The ‘your tips’ pages of two weekly reader (and the poet) in the way it reasons for this ‘block’ are various: women’s magazines and some lines encourages a thought process that is lack of confidence, demands and from the terms and conditions of both surprising and imaginative. stresses of life outside the poetry booking a place on a residential world or simply just not reading I first encountered found poetry on course with the Field Studies enough. I find the more poetry I an Open University course and Council. Some phrases seemed to read, the more I want to write; when what appealed to me primarily was knit together quite easily; others I’m not reading poetry, I’m less its experimental nature and the fact needed a little more persuasion. likely to write it. Taking all this into that I could legitimately have fun Nevertheless, the poem has some account, a good technique for when writing a poem. Peter Sansom, very unexpected and surreal lines, creating a poem, while waiting for in Writing Poems describes a found as well as some which are witty and the muse to strike (or if the muse is poem as ‘plagiarism as art’. It can playful. of the distinctly tardy kind) is to also, he says, be like ‘ “sampling” in Of course, there are more ‘creative’ have a go at found poetry. pop music; though it tends to reline prose as poetry (rather than methods of making a found poem. So, what is it? Arguably, all poetry The Found Poetry Review sets out is, to some extent, ‘found’: in the borrowing from other poems)’4. The idea of ‘borrowing’ is crucial here, four techniques for creating found mind of the poet, within the poetry2: experience which inspires the poem, although I would go further and the idea of ‘seeing’ poetry in describe it as recycling or even re- • Erasure - using an existing purposing material, either from 8 source of no more than a The resulting poem has a just to be touched and dirtied couple of pages, erasing the surprisingly logical narrative flow. by something. majority of the text and The final lines were not taken in the creating a poem from the order they appear in the book, The resulting poem retains some of remainder, read in order enabling them to be repurposed into the atmosphere of the original (the something which makes sense and title itself is taken from the first line • Free form excerpting and has a surreal quality to it. This of Vicki Feaver’s poem) yet moves remixing - taking words and method of writing, creating a text away from it by focusing on the phrases from the source text from other texts, is also known as speaker’s feelings of rejection, on the and rearranging them in any intertextuality, which describes how absence of her husband as he order a piece of writing relates to other concentrates on the harvest and texts, whether this is by allusion, ultimately providing for his family, • Cento - using lines from other adaptation, translation, parody, Although lacking the drama of writers’ texts into a new poem, pastiche, imitation or other ways of ‘Judith’, this poem retains a sense of keeping the original lines transformation6. Intertextuality is power and emotion, not lost by intact, but rearranging them also the name used to describe weaving fragments of the original into new lines. • Cut-up - physically cutting or found poetry made where the tearing up a text into words or original text is cut up and worked Using ‘found’ material, then, is a phrases from another writer’s into another. way of making poems which seem work and rearranging to form In the example below, the original random but highly focused. The a poem lines and phrases from Vicki collage style can generate raw and 7 exciting work and is an exercise in To avoid accusations of plagiarism, Feaver’s ‘Judith’ are shown in italics: shaping words and phrases into a when using words or phrases from poetic form, taking them away from another writer’s work, the poet A good woman the original context, yet keeping a should provide attribution, unless it foot in the source text. Above all is impractical or inappropriate to do there is risk involved, a sense of not so. Watching his sleeping, wine- flushed face knowing how successful the resulting work will be, as if some These four techniques can be more my body flooded by a rush of fluid, for example, the following kind of magic is in operation, as poem was created by taking the last tenderness, a longing poet Sean Kiely says, as part of the lines of some of the poems from to lie sheltered and safe in his Poetry Book Society’s #POETIPS, Vicki Feaver’s 1994 collection The arms, ‘It’s alchemy...... An attempt to turn 5 lead into gold’8. Handless Maiden , with only a small a vessel in safe harbour. amount of manipulation. First light, and he’s gone; lured After Vicki Feaver to the glare References and Further Reading The smell of arousal of the barley field; the dust and All poems quoted in full are the heat of harvest, writer’s own previously makes him wear slippers. unpublished work. It’s a butterfly to his bubbling the men breaking their backs to 1. Poetry London Clore Prize 2019 - chest, gather it all in judges report see: https:// like boiling mare’s milk before a break in the weather. poetrylondon.co.uk/competition/ with two fried eggs. And the heat – the merciless 2. For more on this, see: http:// www.foundpoetryreview.com/about-found- Blind drunk from politeness, heat poetry/ slipping from warm to balmy he unzipped his furry pelt. 3. Linda France - ‘You are her’ in You are It was like the hiss of a tide to unbearable before water Her (Arc Publications, 2010) withdrawing, could be 4. Peter Sansom - Writing Poems - pressed to his lips. Bloodaxe Poetry Handbooks: 2 dancing out on the edge (Bloodaxe Books, 1994) of another century. My husband pushing away the 5. Vicki Feaver - The Handless Maiden sponge (Cape Poetry, 1994) His wife gave birth I pressed to his burning head, 6. Chris Baldick - The Oxford Dictionary to their only child, batting away the balm I held of Literary Terms 4th edition (Oxford University Press, 2015) her curled fists to his blistered skin. swirling past an orange moon 7. Vicki Feaver - ‘Judith’ from The The harvest becoming his new Handless Maiden (Cape Poetry, 1994 like souls in limbo. wife, 8. Poetry Book Society - Sean Kiely’s He wanted to fit her into the sky the farm a family he must #POETIPS: https://www.poetrybooks.co.uk/ blogs/news/poetips-2019-sean-kiely of untouched clouds provide for - to prove that space exists, the mornings when I rolled in the to see if she’d sink or swim. ash of the fire 9 urning Japanese 4: those killed without ceremony we gather There are deviations from the classic Tanka without ceremony and place in the structure above, but it’s useful to TT bonfire write proficiently in this style before Dr Tim Gardiner Equally moving is Masuda Misako’s experimenting. Many poets who tanka: struggle with the sparseness and brevity of haiku find that the extra each time I see a boy’s body I bring my two lines and greater scope for face close to see if he’s my boy as I travel emotional reflection are more suited in search to their style. A number of The atomic bomb literature includes publications accept tanka, including many more examples of tanka, the British Haiku Society’s Blithe which I have displayed in one line Spirit magazine and the Tanka due to the absence of obvious line Society of America’s flagship, breaks in the source poem. Many Ribbons. tanka were also written about Nagasaki, further underlining the Tanka can be combined with prose sparse form’s value for emotional to form tanka prose, a newly- poetry. emerging form which is similar to Tanka is a classical form of Japanese haibun. More on this in a future poetry which has existed for around Tanka traditionally consist of five article. I’ll leave you with a few 1400 years and came to be known as units (often treated as separate lines) hints to remember when writing waka for many centuries. In ancient usually with the following pattern times, it was a custom between two of on (often treated as the number of tanka. writers to exchange waka instead of syllables per line): Tim’s tanka tips: letters in prose, and the form became part of aristocratic culture. 5-7-5-7-7 1. No rhyme, although it can be used subtly Tanka were also commonly The 5-7-5 is called the kami-no- exchanged between lovers. The ku (upper phrase), and the 7-7 is 2. No title writing of poetry was a desired called the shimo-no-ku (lower pursuit of emperors, to display their phrase). 3. Mostly reflective, but can be learned nature. about any subject Tanka can be broken down into an Emperor Meiji (reigned 1868-1912) image/experience in lines one and 4. Humour must be light-touch was a noted writer of tanka two, followed by a pivot line for the 5. Usually written from first person (allegedly, he wrote 100,000 poems third which changes the tone. The perspective in his lifetime, roughly 4-5 a day), fourth and fifth lines provide the some of extremely high quality, such emotional, reflective response to the 6. Syllables are less important than as this famous one about clocks: upper phrase (lines 1-3). content and feeling in endless numbers pale blue confetti experience/image all our clocks have been wound up ur Web Presence and then together smothering yellow experience/image they tick in perfect order primroses OO and this brings us much pleasure swept away by the pivot line Our website: wind He was renowned for his wide suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk the joy of a spring reflective response breadth of subject matter, even wedding Our shop: writing about the process of writing shop.suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk in this classic tanka: so quickly forgotten reflective response Facebook: being all alone facebook.com/SuffolkPoetrySociety and consoling our own heart From Tanka Journal Issue 1. Instagram: for this one day Emperor Hirohito, towards the end the time was spent quietly @suffolkpoetrysociety of his reign, speculated with some in the writing of poems melancholy about World War II: Twitter: Emperor Meiji’s tanka are significant @SuffolkPoetrySo in the history of the form because receiving celebration experience/image twitter.com/SuffolkPoetrySo they were written at a time when Japan was opening up to the world. from the people experience/image YouTube: Even more effective are tanka I’m happy but pivot line youtube.com/c/SuffolkpoetrysocietyOr- written from the survivors of the looking back reflective response gUk2015 Hiroshima atomic bombing in 1945. I’m ashamed reflective response Donations: Here is an extremely sparse, yet totalgiving.co.uk/donate/ powerful, poem from Sasaki Suffolk-Poetry-Society Yutaka:

10 etter to the Editor I have had over 1,200 traditional Charmion Watson on the inside back form haiku published in a wide cover of the Spring / Summer 2019 LL variety of publications, some Twelve Rivers which contained both Can I respond to comments about definitely in the 'top' layer. I have humour and an unexpected final haiku expressed in all three of the won national haiku prizes and my line? Another haiku writer whose 'Turning Japanese’ articles? The illustrated seasonal series of 112 work I admire, Denise Margaret author states that 'these free-verse haiku - known as haikai - sold out Hargrave, has also experimented haiku allow a certain amount of and had excellent reviews in several with enjambment in her haikai freedom for the writer' which national poetry magazines. In series. suggests to me that traditional 'five- writing these haiku I have used seven-five syllables, three lines and a extended metaphor, assonance, None of the above possibilities seasonal word' haiku suffer from alliteration, personification, asked compromises the traditional haiku that lack of freedom. He also adds questions, deliberately repeated the form and all are published that it can be difficult to get such same words and incorporated examples. How, then, can this long- haiku 'published in many of the top references to art, music, other poets established haiku form deny the journals and magazines'. and religion. If this is starting to poet 'a certain amount of freedom'? read like an ego-trip CV then can I Richard Stewart That has not been my experience. add the traditional form haiku from

esponse to Letter suggests that there is an openness of writer should concentrate on the structure in the country of origin. contrast in imagery and intended RR One US publication (Haiku Journal) meaning. Without hinting at subtle I note that Richard Stewart asserts will only accept 5-7-5 poems. I think emotions haiku are no more than a that ‘traditional’ haiku written in 5- there is room for both approaches picture of nature. Richard Stewart 7-5 syllable format offer the writer and I have written many traditional writes excellent haiku with layers of plenty of freedom for expression. In haiku, too, one of which was meaning. One of my favourites of my workshops, I pose the question published in the East Anglian Daily his that has been widely published of haiku structure in a discussion Times in 2017: is: and encourage participants to choose their preferred form, either a day’s last sunlight Two peacocks fly up free-verse or 5-7-5. Given that many falls on Iken church tower – Spiralling in a bright sky Japanese publications accept haiku lone seawall shadow Covered by larksong. in free-verse or traditional form Whichever form is chosen, the Tim Gardiner

n Conversation with ‘The Ballad of Dan McGrew’, and he a workshop, the research notes are Beth Soule later introduced me to ‘The kept too. I have always kept diaries II Rubáiyát’. At elocution lessons I varying from detailed accounts and had to learn poems by heart and, in reflections to a bare record of order to recite them meaningfully, appointments and events with my teacher emphasised that we had related ephemera stuck in, too – to understand them, and this was a tickets, flyers, grandchildrens’ wonderful training for my own later drawings. I have boxes full and I go writing. My suffragette back through these every now and grandmother encouraged us to then for ideas, or memory jogging. I think we could do anything but that did have a go at script-writing once we should always aim to support but the results were dismal! ourselves. So being practical, rather PJ Which poets have been than follow a dream to act and to Pam Job interviews Beth Soule as particularly important to you, Beth, write, I taught English and Drama, both as a reader and a writer, and she retires from being Secretary to the next best thing. the Crabbe Competition. could you say why they appeal? PJ I know how all-consuming BS From my teens I loved Philip PJ I’m interested in your early teaching can be so I wonder if you Larkin’s and Thomas Hardy’s poetry experiences, Beth. Where did did manage to keep writing while poetry. I liked that both manage a all this start for you? you were working? really tight control of rhyme and BS My mother claimed my first BS Poetry pushes itself through form while achieving an almost poem was ‘written’ when I was when events or situations prompt it, conversational tone. Ted Hughes about three – I scrawled on a surface so I always had, and have, a was (is) another favourite along newly painted by my father. When notebook on the go for poems, parts with Seamus Heaney but my earliest she remonstrated with me, I said of poems, ideas, and the occasional loves were probably Gerard Manley ‘You say nuffink/ an’ I say nuffink/ reflection or even a short story now Hopkins, Wilfred Owen, Dylan an’ he won’t know nuffink about it’, and then. Interesting facts, Thomas and T.S. Eliot. My parents but it was my father who recited information, anecdotes get recorded bought me an LP recording of Under poems to me at bedtime. for later, and now, when I get Milk Wood, and that would certainly I remember ‘The Highwayman’, started on a theme or I’m preparing accompany me to a desert island!

11 I used to sit in my bedroom under BS I love what the Society does and the eaves and listen to that amazing it felt right to help with the voice on my little Dansette record organisation of events – our player when I was supposed to be contributions to Poetry in writing essays on Goethe or Keats. I Aldeburgh and National Poetry Day think because of my Speech and for instance. I enjoy running Drama training, poems that perform workshops and have done so for well really attract me. Now the Waveney and Blyth Arts and for the poets who stir me are people like Suffolk Walking Festival. I was Alice Oswald, Emily Dickinson invited to read at Sudbury Poetry (why was she never on the school Café and Poetry Aloud this year, syllabus!), Mimi Khalvati, Finuala which I found exhilarating. Dowling, Sharon Olds, Blake PJ What about publication? Morrison, Liz Berry. My recent discoveries include Mary McCrae, BS I have had poems published Camille Ralph (an Emma Press under the name Elizabeth Soule in poet), and Yvonne Reddick. Twelve Rivers, in Write to be Counted (an anthology in support of PEN) PJ Well, that’s quite a gallop and I have a couple of poems through the poetry canon, and it’s scheduled for publication in The certainly a very recognisable path Dawntreader. I’ve also had work PJ You really seem to have grasped through the forest. I shall check out published online by Second Light, how technology can be harnessed to the last three poets you mention, Virtual Verse, Poetry24 and Norwich poetry in imaginative new ways. new to me. Interesting that the later Café Poets. Good luck with that, Beth, you’ve poets are mostly women, and you left me breathless by the scope of are right – where were they in our PJ What’s the next step, Beth, now your ambitions now you have the school reading – not even Christina you have stepped down from time, hopefully, to really let rip! Rosetti or Elizabeth Barrett administering the Crabbe Good luck in all your ventures! Browning to give us the idea that Competition, which I imagine has women wrote poetry too. I’m sure entailed an enormous amount of Dickinson is a fixture now, unseen work! thankfully. BS I have been trying to get a You have returned to your early pamphlet published for the last passion for poetry in retirement. couple of years but I’m not Textile Terrorists How did that come about? consistent enough in submitting to periodicals to get my name Overnight BS I joined Suffolk Poetry Society recognised. I’ll probably self- the High Street has become and was fortunate to have two publish next year if my current poems published in the Norwich efforts don’t bear fruit. I have a a shrine to grannies. Writers’ Circle 40th Anniversary sequence of poems about Boudicca Street furniture carefully Anthology. I then had the that has been performed twice, as lovingly confidence to join Bungay Poetry has ‘Wicked Women’, and both are swaddled Circle, a wonderfully encouraging about pamphlet length. In all in lurid squares of double knit. group. honesty, I like reading/performing Lamp-posts and bollards, more than the hassle of trying to get PJ Do you belong to any poetry telegraph poles and post boxes groups at the moment? published, and I like the process of researching and writing better still. purled and plain-ed, BS Yes, I belong to four poetry Because I have been running poetry cabled and fair-isled groups – Bungay Library Poets; workshops, a lot of my creative love-bombed what used to be the Bungay Poetry energy has gone in that direction, into a snugly smothering gesture Circle and is now Ivy Poets, another something to cut back on if I am of elderly defiance. small group that meets fortnightly, serious about submissions. I am We are not grey. and a group that grew out of courses working on my own website – my run by Helen Ivory in Norfolk. I husband is good at producing short We are not even silver. didn’t attend those courses myself videos so it may include a couple of We are a Joseph’s Dreamcoat but was invited to join the group ‘performances’. I do love that the of crimson and gentian, later. Over recent months I have internet is democratising poetry and jade, turquoise, cerise and olive, been so busy I’m not sure I would music; I’d like to have a go at cerulean blue have written very consistently if I Instagram. I’m fascinated by the and vivid, vivid hadn’t had these groups to spur me literal translation of ‘a poem’ as ’a on. thing made’. I love to make poetry flame. PJ You are now on the SPS artefacts and photograph them. Beth Soule committee so you are really delivering on your commitment to poetry in a very practical way, too.

12 SSelected Poems The Editor thanks Antony Johae and James Knox Whittet for acting as referees for the selected poems. Note: All poems are submitted to the referees anonymously.

Melting Snow Jackdaw

Over time One morning in the station car-park you grow a narrative, She was approached by a jackdaw which irrigate and hoe Folding its granite wings a kind of order from the chaos, Spoke to her in the voice of an old man yielding harvests of familiar sentences, Calling her by name. weaving a screen round the wasteland, After that no one could ever word-wall against the wilderness. Persuade her she was mistaken. One day in early Spring I glimpse That things of this sort do not happen. a small bird foraging Now each day, when the cranked-up sun beneath the hedge, green shoots Tips sliding photons on the rooftops, revealed by melting snow, She is there at the casement window, properly dressed, and suddenly recall Asking the city, hunting clues. the awful day we cleared his flat, So far we know: the poem neatly copied out (I have it still) It was intended as a message: about the thing with feathers Something declarative at last. that perches in the soul The bright eye and the alien beak, - though not in his, The head racked left and stumbling, I reach out for the wall, Like with a wiring fault of some kind. clutch at sentences to break my fall. Jackdaws are of course well known Sheila Lockhart To imitate human speech. Alternatively: there was a message But it was not delivered. Only her name Before something took fright, A squabble of wings, and he was gone up. Urban Fox If only the clouds had not parted thus And swallowed him. Is a Quaker among us Lately, without meaning to, without intent, Passing soft-footed through our absences She has been scribbling over parts of the map, Testing the crumbling green corridors Deleting junctions and sidings Only betrayed by sudden snow. Smoothing the ambiguity of points and crossings. Richard Stewart She sheds her past like beech leaves And becomes A winter tree, comfortable by moonlight. It is autumn after all that really hurts. Neil Fleming

13 Under the Ancient Mulberry at Gainsborough’s House A Broader View of Shelling Beans What greetings to offer? I am a trespasser. Shelling broad beans is tedious Wait till I am spoken to. previous experience informs me. Time is set aside to bide in the unzipping – She has claimed the space, reached that gripping moment of discovery. an understanding with the house. How many in the pod? She is accommodated The odds are on four. and has pride of place. It’s rarely more if they’re fat. She leans on old elbows. Her branches But then the shock finger purple silences. to see the inner shell. A stately dowager of ancient lineage You couldn’t tell before you thought whose silk is privilege. you’d unzipped the lot. Her thistles set their bayonets, her nettle guards And what have you got? say keep out. Woodlice The inner layer. in hard hats Tricked by something trickier. clean out her spongy crevices. Pick it off with care She lets in the windrock since the innermost fruit is there in whorls and whispers. Her dark-staining fruits are soft, beautiful, vulnerable. an acquired taste. I’ve learned a great deal in the peeling. She is not interested in pleasing me. Been to the heart of things. Broadened my own understanding After all, she can remember that while shelling. Shakespeare Maybe got closer to God with each pod. planted her sister. Her roots weave through history. Lynne Nesbit I bow down before her to touch her split limbs, kiss her ring of carbuncles. By the River Alde Christina Buckton The sails of a distant wherry Butterfly Lodge swim through the reeds in which you walk That's my name for it. The sign says You are the foreground The Tavern House though it closed to drinkers in an autumn painting: long before the insects died. Only once a dark shadow approaches have I seen the door open: peeled paper, drag marks in the dust, a bumping sound The river is calm, uncaring that stopped as I reached the step. but persistent, nibbling at the path downtide to Iken No-one came, no-one comes. The dried corpses dangle on the nets, their colours evaporated A boardwalk bridges the marsh: over long summers. Yet the wing patterns skeleton trees are still perfect in black and white black against the sun as though drawn carefully in ink, the butterflies In the distance an island church in different attitudes as though pinned. tempts us to risk the water: On the day the door was open, an admiral offers us baptism almost stirred. Did it stretch a wing, or isolation: flutter an antenna? I tapped a key on the pane, behind us maltings rear up, like chinking glasses, rapped with a knuckle hide the mooring places. to evoke the drayman's horse, unable to conjure a butterfly sound. Tim Lenton Clive Eastwood

14 “Because No Man Has Hired Us” St John’s Cathedral, Valletta in front of Caravaggio’s ‘Beheading of John the Baptist’ I came here early, before any shopdoor opened, trailing sleep-images in my pockets. Round the gallery on autoguided autopilot, Loitering, too shy to meet glances. her device cradled between three fingers and thumb, Not pushy enough. Hesitant, too polite, index finger tapping the fulcrum, reeking of rejection. its heft and balance in her palm The other men roll cigarettes, the women preen. more comforting somehow than its reassuring words. The sun has shone down on the lunchtime workers, She directs her gaze to where it’s told to go - parading in their suits, their pristine blacks. to Caravaggio. Worst of all is that two o’clock silence after they scuttle back to counters and desks, But when the guide tries to move her on and away, pavements left for shoppers to saunter by. she lingers, drawn to that watching woman I used to have a watch; but now I know whose horrified fingers splatter the side of her face all times by feel. It’s getting late. in that strangely familiar pose. When he turns up, that Jesus guy will get us jobs, And so they stand these two watchers he makes more fuss than we would ever dare, hands to their ears he faces out the boss, he eyes the foreman’s stare. as if communicating across the centuries. Pat Jourdan Oh my God is he, like, dead. Looks like it - there’s lots of blood. Roger West

Petrichor

An overbearing sun burns into us days, weeks, months it sears crops and blights our haggard trees until a school of nimbus-bellied cloud floats in, conferring shade, weeping slow tears on dusty window glass. Softly at first, each warm wet globe flattens itself, meanders down; repeats, acquires the urgency of downpour, distilling from damp earth a sweet fragrance, ethereal mysterious, innominate til now... Time was, Poets alone were known for naming things; lately in Canberra two questing bio-boffins* isolate the micro-bug whose exhalations form the very scent of wetted soil and harking back, as only Virgil might, they meld stone Petra, with Ichor life-juice of the gods, to light a new lamp in the school of eloquence. Mike Bannister

*Isobel Joy Bear & Richard G. Thomas Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisation. Canberra. 15 66th Festival of Suffolk Poetry Review May 11th 2019 brought poets and poetry lovers together for another creative and successful Festival of Suffolk Poetry at the John Peel Centre in Stowmarket.

he Morning Session Once the bustle of activity to were prevented from staying long, prepare the John Peel Centre and saw something beautiful, took a TT hall had blended into the arrival of risk, fell in love, told a lie, heard – featured two workshops, each poets for workshops, all became good news, were happy - so many lasting two and a half hours. library quiet. Twelve of us sat options. round a long table in the main hall To our amazement, we had an riting the Music of to listen to Grevel and share ideas extended time for writing, while Place about ‘Place’. WW Grevel came to us one by one to with Grevel Lindop We introduced ourselves and help with problems we might Grevel invited us to warm up by have. We reassembled to hear writing about our journey today, what had been written. There was how we got here. It’s amazing the a great variety, from the grim and things you notice and the things frightening to an amazing flight of you ignore along the way. Would imagination. The only snag was that become a poem? that there was not enough time at the end for all of us to read: two We then had a minute of people were disappointed and we mindfulness, something people were disappointed not to hear don’t often enjoy together. them. And there wasn’t time to Grevel shared some poems he had share the discovery of how the selected about place: place real, in shape and sounds of the poem can the memory or in the imagination. form a ‘music to invite the reader He suggested topics for writing into our places’ as publicised in the about place: where you live now; promotion for the workshop where you used to live; where you (Twelve Rivers Vol.10. Iss.1 p.3). experienced a surprise; where you But we are all poets and our work did something you shouldn’t have is ongoing; the workshop was done; somewhere frightening; interesting and stimulating. I, for where you had an amazing dream; one, have several ideas to develop. somewhere you loved; where you Rosemary Jones

mall Parcels the second. They rhyme and cover Finally, Kate asked us to pick a title one of five subjects: love, war, either from our own list or from SS homeland, separation and, finally, those we had written down and with Kate Foley grief. We all had a go at writing a use it to inspire a poem of our few. Then, as we all tapped out a own. Half an hour later, some beat in the traditional style, we excellent poems had been read them out to the group, produced and we read them back listening to one and following on if to Kate for comment from her and we thought we had one that would the group. go well with the one before. Derek Adams Next, we discussed the purpose of titles and how we used them, and were shown some highly original titles used by Wallace Stevens, such After a brief discussion of why we as: ‘The Paltry Nude Starts on a write poetry, Kate Foley introduced Spring Voyage’. Kate asked us to us to examples of the Landay, a come up with a list of ideas for poetry form from Afghanistan. A titles that we thought would be landay is a two-line poem passed good for poems. We all read out mouth-to-mouth, ear-to-ear, among our lists and Kate told us to jot Afghan women for at least 1,000 down any we liked the sound of. It years. A landay has very few was interesting that some titles rules. It should have 22 syllables, were like small poems in their own with nine in the first line and 13 in right.

16 he Afternoon Session • Sudbury’s theme was based on • Finally, New Words: Fresh Faces their love for Sudbury Common from Lowestoft closed the TT Lands. Particularly memorable session with poems such as Sue Poetry Cafés were Tessa West’s image of a Benbow’s love for her family dead tree like the smooth bone of a nursing chair that had supported Readings: fallen monster and Andrew all the mothers that had gone before It is impossible to mention Phillip’s reminder that we me and Ian Fosten’s poem to his everyone but the following gives a should guard our inheritance as if youngest son for his 11th glimpse of Suffolk talent: it were gold. birthday ‘Samuel on the Threshold’. • Bungay Café poets opened the afternoon and Elizabeth • Felixstowe’s theme was ‘Out of Bracken’s poem about a fund- Space’. Florence Cox reminded raising stall taught us the us that the East Coast is a space meaning of tranklements only lent to us like a friend’s (trinkets) while Caroline Way coat and Alfie Davis quashed entertained us with her take on any conspiracy theories about Betjeman’s ‘A Subaltern’s Love the Moon Landing in his poem Song’. ‘And We Did Go to the Moon.’ Ian Fosten

ichael Laskey MMClose Readings: Michael Laskey’s close readings of the two poems: ‘Aisle of Dogs’ by Chase Twichell from Ghost of Eden Alfie Davis (1995) and ‘The Star Market’ by Elizabeth Bracken Marie Howe from The Kingdom of the Ordinary (2008) were • The Swan Poets from • Ian Hartley from Arlington’s interspersed between Café Halesworth took the theme of gave us a poignant evocation of presentations. These poems were ‘The Ages of Man’ with poems the life of white tulips once they new to many of us and Michael ranging from Michael Stagg’s are picked and Nicola Warwick stimulated us to think about the memory of D-Day through the got us thinking about the wife craft that goes into making a eyes of a child, to Lynne Nesbit’s Willy Lot (from Constable’s successful poem. realisation with ageing that I’ve ‘Willy Lot’s Cottage’) never had. grown with my face. • Poetry Aloud took the first line of published poems and made the rest their own such as Richard Whiting using Matthew Sweeney’s ‘The Snowy Owl’ – Over the heads of the firing squad flew the snowy owl, and Jen Michael Laskey Overett who used e e cummings’ 'if there are any heavens'. The variety this new format Michael Stagg injected into the afternoon is worthy of repetition. Fran Reader pen Mic: internet trip around the world mower; Lizzie Thistlethwaite’s even trying to source a part for his lawn though I walk through the valley of OO sensible shoes; Sally Gardner’s Open Mic took us through most poignant narrative about saving human emotions with the diversity the life of a dehydrated black baby of poems presented; here is a hint while living in a gated white of what was on offer: John community in South Africa; Nicola Vaughan’s concept of the unfair Warwick’s ‘North Sea Therapy’ odds playing water polo against a that told us – this is all you need, now team of mermaids; Ian Speed’s breathe. We breathed. half-bombed house in Grozny; Peter Sandberg’s humorous Sally Gardner Fran Reader

17 he Evening Session sepia snap of him as a WWI soldier who never spoke of the war – I have TT searched for you, now I wear your ring. Poets from Suffolk Poetry Society I remember your hand in mine. Pam took us through various loves such Pam Job and Rob Lock as the Norwegian artist Nikolai Astrup and Benjamin Britten’s music. I particularly enjoyed the chiffchaff’s promise and hammer out the heart of spring; sounds in nature which probably inspired Britten would find it. The poem jolted us himself. Pam’s poem ‘The with humour when his mother finds Topography of Memory’ she is with child (Rob himself) and demonstrated the idea of time in takes an overdose of purgative layers. The ghosts of place stalking especially beneficial for expectant her are vivid. Her last poem mothers. Another poem, ‘Hens in epitomised the beautiful struggle we Borough Market’, provided a all have with words: consolation…like powerful insight into the terrorist Hermes…alights on my page. attack of June 2017 where Lizzie Rob’s work has been described as forces her way into danger, to help and alive with love and the ordinary. His then goes back to a still and ravaged set of poems was an inspiring and bride. His final poem ‘When I’m entertaining glimpse into the poet – Gone’ was a list for what not to do his life, his story and his thinking. at his funeral – we slip so softly into He began his readings with ‘The the unknown. Pam’s opener, ‘An Eagle Friday’, One She Should Have Married’. It What an auditory feast of images, illustrated memories of school life in spoke of a black-edged telegram that the 1950s. She followed with a would find its way onto a shoebox sounds, questions and insights Pam poignant and affectionate poem where the writer, Louie's grandson, and Rob gave us. remembering her father from the Sue Foster

ntony Johae In his evening talk, which was agriculture and food supply had something of an eye-opener, sustained a culture of healthy AA Antony moved away from the Civil eating in a friendly and extrovert Lebanon: Poetry and Place War that had been Lebanon’s people. There was an exceptional recent past. He had taught in level of creativity in the arts. Lebanon for 30 years and told us Admittedly, the Civil War had seen about the country he loved, its the ‘export’ of some poets, singers mountains (so unusual for the and writers. Unsurprisingly, the Middle East) and the rich mix of environment had suffered but the sun and rain that brought fertile friendliness of its people remained. valleys. There was an abundance Little wonder, therefore, a sign at of fruit: bananas grown at sea level; Beirut Airport said ‘We are pleased apple and cherry orchards higher you are here. We welcome you to up the valley sides. The our country.’ togetherness of landscape, John Vaughan slands of Love Whittet’s Islands of Love had been voice and music was heady stuff. set to music by Colin Whyles to ‘Islands of Love’ produced a II form a song cycle. We heard six of haunting melody where James’s (Performed by Colin Whyles and them. As ‘old stagers’ neither journey was seen as moving across Lynne Nesbit) James nor Colin needed an the islands like stepping stones that introduction to the audience but reach into the sea. Lynne did. As a newcomer to Suffolk, she is finding greater I found the chorus of ‘Home’ opportunities to explore her love of particularly poignant: singing and poetry. As yellow leaves somersault as they fall, James was born on Islay and the I hear lost voices of home call and call. poems ‘Home’, ‘Suspended’, The audience would have liked ‘Evasions’, ‘Lost Voices’, ‘Falling’ more. Could there be a chance to and ‘Islands of Love’ evoked hear the other six songs in the memories and imprints of cycle? Twelve poems from James Knox childhood. The interplay of words, John Vaughan 18 nvited Readers tumbling before our eyes. We’re Grevel, who is not solid but not ready to be motherless. In light-footed, seems to dance like II truth, Kate is a sort of mother a bird as he performs his poems, Kate Foley and Grevel Lindop figure - solid, dependable, but doing little bounces where he We were nearing the end of a also keenly critical and exacting. stands; he gestures with his right long, rich day of poetry but, even She takes us back to being a hand while holding the book in so, Kate Foley and Grevel small child in the war, the racial his left, and takes us with him to Lindop held the audience in pin- prejudices of the 1950s, and to Zokolo Square in Mexico City at drop silence to hear their Amsterdam with the tranquillity dawn. In ‘Maldon Hawk’ he contrasting, but complementary of Rembrandt’s ‘Old Woman becomes that bird, released by performances. Reading’. Finally, in ‘Swipe Left’ his owner at the outset of the we meet a child who arrives at Battle of Maldon. And then reception class having never held suddenly we’re in ancient Egypt, a book in his hands. How do I where a poem about ‘Stones’ was plug it in, Miss? preserved on papyrus used to wrap a mummy. We are reminded why we love poetry and why it is important. To watch, warn, enquire, celebrate. Carbon free, we were transported to far-flung times and places: The War, the Windrush generation, Amsterdam; ancient Egypt; 10th century Maldon; modern Mexico. Thank you, Kate and Grevel. And thank you to the organizers for planning such a lively and fitting finale to the 6th Festival of Suffolk Poetry at Stowmarket. After thanking the Society for appointing her as President, Kate Anne Boileau shocked us with the recent image of the tower of Notre Dame

Erratum: The Editor wishes to apologise for printing Jane Henderson’s poem ‘Keys’ incorrectly in Vol:10 Iss 1. p. 17. In order to correct this the poem is printed here in the correct form.

Keys

This old typewriter was in a room I slept in at Barnhill, Jura – doubtless not the one used by Orwell to write Nineteen Eighty-Four. Note the moss growing inside the window: a veritable garden. I tried the typewriter, and the only key that printed was ‘h’. I have that ‘h’ in a soiled exercise book I took from the room. The book was empty, save for page one where there’s a child’s attempted letters ‘L’ and ‘T’ in green felt, and the final page (upside down) where an adult’s written: wind changes, Ships Masters, diseases and Edgar Allan Poe on Corryvreckan. Jane Henderson

19 Clutch of Larks The Editor thanks James Knox Whittet, Antony Johae and Kate Foley for acting as AA referees for the Lark poems. Note: All poems are submitted to referees anonymously. The PC Poem The Poet in the Orchards

The workshop said to use plain English words, One quince is normal, sifting them carefully so they would rise two is a quincidence. in the warmth of a poetry reading. To compare pears This left me with safe stolid stanzas, you need at least so I plumped for self-raising words instead, a pair. but found form constricting my literary components. One peach I was forced into the allergy arena. to each My poem took a hairline test, revealing wheat branch to be the weakness. So the words had to be gluten free. one fig Can you imagine how hard it is to write a rye poem? per twig. Then all caution to the wind, I entered He rescues a damson in distress. a competition and scooped first prize. He opens a gate, observing its poor hinge The adjudicator said it was a vegetarian poem, and contemplates the unrhymable orange. on the verge of being vegan, with anti-discriminatory ideas He plucks a Cox’s Pippin running right through it. he throws it high in honour of his French comrade Afterwards I felt almost cheated when M Apollinaire the judge asked me what it really meant. I told her one can’t be truly organic, He walks back through the orchards so I’d had to discriminate against meaning. noting the names of all the trees I felt she wished she hadn’t asked, but as for me mirabelle medlar mulberry morello the £75 will rise nicely in my bank account. pomegranate persimmon pecan and plum. I’m working on a poem with disabilities now. Sloe progress until there’s just the cherry orchard to Chekov. Kay Hathway Roger West Phone Down the Loo

I started to bend and then heard a ‘plop’ There’s no sound like it to make you stop Microwave Oven I turned in horror, stared into the bowl at a small metal object containing my soul We moved to the new house in May A letter arrived that same day Reached down and grabbed it, thought try and stay calm I said “This is fun Surely some water can’t do that much harm? How exciting, I’ve won. No one and nobody knew what to do It’s a microwave oven, they say.” So we quickly googled ‘phone down the loo’ Now microwave cooking was new Felt my whole life in the throw of the dice And neither of us had a clue as we turned on the oven and searched for some rice The manual was Greek Where are my contacts, my music, my notes, Which we didn’t speak my photos, my passwords and favourite quotes? So, we tried to work out what to do. Two to three hours on gas mark 4 I decided to cook him a bun Middle shelf only and don’t shut the door It took ages but didn’t look done Life without WhatsApp just doesn’t feel right “It doesn’t look brown” Now it’s buried in uncooked rice for the night He said with a frown No email, no calendar or location on Maps “Hope it’s nice, did you make only one?” No flashlight, no Trainline, lost all banking Apps And then with a note of dissension Life before mobiles – what on earth did we do? He said “Darling, I think I should mention Well it’s time to find out when your phone’s down the loo It’s hard as a brick I try not to panic, try not to cry So, make some more quick Just got to sleep now and hope it will dry! We can use them to build the extension!” Maxine Kelly Carol Ferguson 20 I'm Sorry, I’m Not In Service If Today

I’m sorry, I’m not in service. If you can shave I’m sorry to leave you back there. Beneath your arms I’m sorry – I know that you don’t deserve this And do your legs Failure in customer care. And other charms I’m sorry for this inconvenience Can wear your heels and Stranding you in this dreary suburb. Stand the pain with pride I’m just following orders – it’s not disobedience And balance eighteen stone That’s left you alone at the kerb. And six foot four Without a grimace or I’m sorry I’m no longer able A wobble as you stride To take you to your destination. It’s roadworks or the introduction of winter Can wear your piercings timetables Lashes and extensions too Or some other arbitrary explanation. And smell of number five Chanel’s most famous brew I’m sorry, I’m bound straight for the depot. And can salute with But before you hurl forth your invective. Swan-like elegance You could be in Basra or Eastern Aleppo. And ease and cool So let’s just keep things in perspective. That will belie pretence I’m sorry for this curt announcement If you can wear a That’s left you confused and perplexed. Fascinator to one side But there’s a limit in characters for each And with a smile pronouncement. Whilst others in the closet hide It’s worse than a tweet or a text. If you can do all that I’m sorry if you need to chastise me and more beside For addressing you in this jaunty way. Then you’re a girl my son. If you anthropomorphise me you won’t despise me. Well, that’s what the focus groups say. Gordon Hoyle Roger West

Cartoon by Jock Davies 21 The Perfect Smoothie According to the Five Elements of Chinese Medicine

First curly kale to cleanse the angry liver, calm brittle rage, stalks ripped from involuted green; next engage some ripe banana, yellow, thick and sweet to soothe the churning stomach, bilious spleen; some milky almonds ripened in warm sun and sparkling air to lighten grief-filled lungs, a few fat bouncing blueberries full of purple juice, to cheer up dismal kidneys clammed with fear, top with strawberries red and lush, the lover’s fruit, to purify your dark duplicitous heart. Whizz up this brown primordial sludge and swallow every drop until your organs sing once more in perfect harmony, then you shall judge it worth the drudge of such eccentric breakfasting. Sheila Lockhart SSPS Events order Crossing crossing borders. It was rather the and kicked off by our very own freedom for poetic, like-minded Elizabeth Soule. A total of 23 poets BB people to meet in friendship sharing entertained a good-sized and May 23rd 2019 a wide variety of styles and subject appreciative audience, without any matters, ranging from new slackers, on a stage lit by fairy lights nationalism to Dachau (a word that that complemented the genie at the wells up instant nausea in me – even door (or was it Jeannie?). I have without a tattoo). There was talk of been to a few ‘professional gigs’ and sweaty handrails, city nomads, it was heartening to see how good sailing into silence, close calls, and near to the high set bar were pandas, lions, New Year, palimpsest this evening’s performances. The and innocents. There were titles evening was bookended by Florence ranging from ‘Cages’, ‘Freston Cox who also thanked the Essex Tower’ and ‘Landguard Point’ to poets for their warm welcome. ‘Butchers’ Wives’ and ‘The Lost Wives’. We were merry and sad. Steve Glason from Suffolk Poetry Jacky and Ann ate oats in a lily Society was remembered with a Nancy Hughes reading pond. We crossed the bandstand in tribute from Phil Baker. Wonderland. We met the enemy. It Definitely a date to pencil in for next A very pleasant evening in the made for an evening of interesting year: intimate, cosy and brimming charming setting of Wivenhoe stimulation and inspiration. with atmosphere. A happy meeting harbour brought together members of two poetic families. Thanks go to of Suffolk Poetry Society and The evening was introduced by Sue Wallace-Shaddad and Peter poetrywivenhoe. Peter Kennedy, followed by alternating blocks of readings Kennedy for their organisation. In a play of words, nobody was between Suffolk and Essex poets Jacques Groen

ridges and Crossings And we too assembled, the at the lectern punctuated by Triangle’s programme working perfectly voices, a finely tuned equilateral of BB unrehearsed, 25 or more SPS members harmonies. Walpole Old Chapel And, in that space, where were our Sunday 30th June 2019 bridges and what our crossings? This is how it started and how it Note: The poem (see next page) in this would end; Walpole Old Chapel, report is based on snippets, noted waiting quietly, empty of people but down as they were read, of a word or filled with expectation; all wood- two or a line or two of the poems and framing and boards, assembled and songs, adapted and rendered in order of aged to play-out songs and poems on their reading. May the poets be this sunny afternoon. forgiving.

22 Bridges and Crossings How they sang about the bones of the earth becoming the sea Walpole Old Chapel, Sunday 30th June 2019 and a young man named Johnny; oh Johnny, my Johnny First at London Bridge, a meeting of sea and river and also, and a daily tide of people too, embracing their destiny … after the break with juice and cake, And weaving their dreams on the warp and weft about of the flow of time, though with a cow’s pace, Lowlands, my Lowlands away! under red-clothed sails and the salt sea Not to brag … blowing on the face But sacrament now was found in all for all who landing in … would hear it: Calais (ah oui!) - hands made sticky – the sighing sound of the emptying of a bath tub, or, no by confiture and croissants taken with tea less, at Camping Municipale. Paradis! Mais, à quel prix? – a half-smoked fag, They’ve fenced-off, yes closed the road from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Closed you see, to name but two, you see. by shadowy echoes and that moist darkness, the bleak And, would you guess … yards In the blank stones, the faces on Notre Dame, and narrow geography or in the dark caves between leaves, between fear and hope, the sun’s harvest in a basket – such as … a simple basket of silence? The pawning of her wedding ring, Maybe too in the places from which immigrants flee, no less, for the sake of a Norfolk Line sailing and we not treat them with craven civility on the River Waveney. She’s not trapped lest we bear the heft of the harboured grudge … by childhood’s lost innocence and lessons we’d not repeat – Amen to that, and, oh, forfend the howling she-dog, but we’d keep the map, asleep under the bridge, wouldn’t we? Yes indeed … The jacket too, that howling-she who guards … though it’s your second best, you know, A path we all have to take, unaided or not, and vacate our it’s Harris Tweed - replete with you - chair the pockets packed with remnants of your tinkering. leaving behind our tabby hair. There, on an empty bar We’d toast you too stool with a glass of wine to blunt the splintering letting the best ones go to where … as memory takes flight from mother earth towards Leaning back, they pick the lily of the valley on oblivion. our side of the fence! Call that fair? “Mother” you say … You nod. As only you can nod, still in the game, pinned Do you mean that Danish matriarch whose magpie to the sacred air … cancelled his welcome? No way! Where hope is gone, they say, and unrelieved, or so it seems to judge by But hey … the surprising thump of water, When a butterfly flaps its wings in Chile, the shocking weight of human grief. though you’ll need to wait a while, no more, just wait, progress will be, as chaos theory states, A weight sufficient for a pack horse, I believe, willy-nilly. it’s what we need to go down that old port road. That now and final road … No boundaries there then, silly! No door, no gate just sign-up here because With a heart left imprudently on a sleeve it’s what it means to be a citizen of the world! Hurray! and find ourselves a bridge to cross. And ask … They say … Should you look or turn away You cannot be an island with a bridge, indeed, and will the unwilling you cannot be a bridge without a crossing. to pass-on the passion for gnarled green chutney? It’s ***** made at home from greens. (Not hard to grasp.) Then Triangle sang us across the bridge of the year, returning the chapel to its field; empty again except for that expectancy No! Just grab the hanks and give-up thanks for … and the house martins, ready to fledge in the eves. Paul McLintic

23 nspired By The Rubáiyát Through an earlier introduction by ephemeral, and beautifully Sue Foster, a wonderful harpist, elaborated a sublime, feather light II Virginie Roidiere, was introduced moment. Elizabeth told us of June 13th with Ipswich Arts into the programme. This was an visiting Fitzgerald’s grave at Association inspired addition: the three musical Boulge in Suffolk with her mother, interludes added to the readings by and seeing a Persian Rose grown Beth of stanzas from Omar from a seed from near Khayyam’s Khayyam’s Rubáiyát, and poems grave, only years later realising the written and read by the other SPS significance of that visit. Pam took poets, which had been inspired by All this was the harvest that I reaped, imagery in Khayyam’s poem. and linked it to a distant idyllic day and a blue handful of glass beads. Flo Charles Mugleston revealed his evoked Khayyam’s enticement to theatrical skills by reading extracts romance, but in the world of from letters by Edward Fitzgerald random, perhaps illicit visits, as we and others. The Rubáiyát readings won’t lie together when we are dust. were from Suffolk born Fitzgerald’s 1869 translation of Khayyam’s The event closed with Virginie Suffolk Poetry Society was poem, still considered the playing a traditional Persian piece delighted to be invited by Ipswich definitive English version. La fille de Bouyerahmad, followed by Arts Association to give a concert most enthusiastic acclaim for the for them on June 13th entitled Ivor took us to Khayyam’s grave in whole concert by an audience of ‘Inspired By The Rubáiyát’, which Naishapur on a day in 1967, then over 60 people. With no rehearsal was organised for SPS by Beth shared the subsequent experience we still finished on time – to the Soule. Six SPS poets took part; to the point where There was a Veil minute! This must have been a first Beth Soule, Flo Cox, Pam Job, past which I could not see. Sue for an SPS event? Elizabeth Bracken, Sue Wallace- picked her reference point as Shaddad and Ivor Murrell. ‘Roses’, that metaphor for the Ivor Murrell

ea at The Priory sought collaboration as much as Clare emphasised the importance possible – to great effect, as her of getting to know the other artist TT books demonstrate. well, which happens as Sunday 8th September collaborative projects can take a As a child, Clare enjoyed standing year or more; being tolerant; and on her head. It gave her a different being able to trust each other. view of the world. The unknown became known. The alternative There can be downsides in the angle produced a sense of process, chiefly competition edginess. Standing on her feet between artists and self-doubt. again meant the normal view Hence the need for trust. seemed fresh. This inspiring talk produced many When you collaborate, you take the questions from the listeners, before …once again brought an exciting other artist’s view, and then come we were invited into the drawing and fascinating poet to speak to back. Working in company rather room for a delicious tea. members of Suffolk Poetry Society. than isolation, ideas are shared. There is a creative tension in The Society is grateful to Mrs. Clare Best talked about pulling against other people’s Victoria Engleheart and her family collaboration, which has been the ideas. A space is formed in which for making us so welcome and mainspring of much of her poetry. something surprising can emerge. continuing the tradition started by Her publishing background had The convergence and divergence of her husband’s parents 55 years ago. involved working with writers, collaboration is powerful in Diane Jackman illustrators, bookbinders. Since enabling and making creative becoming a full-time poet she has work.

ational Poetry Day own poetry we read poems by poets Thursday October 3rd 2019 from Ocean View and Salinas in the NN USA which were recorded and sent Thank you to Ian Griffiths and Carol for them to enjoy as the earth rolled Lawrence for organising another round October 3rd from east to successful poetry reading event at west. As ever we attracted the the South Lookout Aldeburgh for attention of passers by – both two National Poetry Day. The theme for and four legged. 2019 was Truth and after reading our Fran Reader

24 rabbe Poetry CCCompetition Prize Reading and Awards Event 5th October 2019 The Crabbe Competition Reading always provides a varied programme, and this year the work ranged from memoir to humour to feminism, from nature to family to a wonderful examination of grief; and from a magical blend of ekphrasia and brought the poetry to a fitting psychology to the surreal vision of winners and Tiffany herself. climax. all our past archbishops swimming The current format places the in the Jesus Green Lido. Object After the success of last year’s poetry, rather than the food, at poems, event poems, explorations Awards Event, we repeated the centre stage where it belongs and of form – there were so many rich format this year at the Eye Bowls we have worked hard to find veins mined. If you were not able Club. We had a good turnout venues that are accessible in terms to make it to the event, I would again, which provided an of public transport, cost and urge you to buy a copy of the appreciative audience for the disability access. All those present anthology to be able to enjoy such amazing poetry on offer. Everyone were enthusiastic about the wide-ranging poetry. Our enjoyed tucking into afternoon tea afternoon and we hope to see even Adjudicator Tiffany Atkinson’s after the readings and this gave us more people next year. reading of her own work was a chance to circulate and talk to the exciting and challenging and Beth Soule Crabbe Poetry Competition 2019 First Prize Winning Poem The Archbishops at the Lido

Along croziers of sunlight, the archbishops swim lengths of Jesus Green Lido. Behind the trees, along the Cam, the river’s mirror is a font, brimming with sky: a hundred yards of holy water. By butterfly, Robert Runcie has reached the peppermint stripes of the basket room. Just ahead, Thomas Cranmer executes a front crawl, as languid as a sinner to confession. Boniface of Savoy is spotted in Speedos. This is still early, when the only sounds are muttered matins, tumble turns and the flight of a single bird from a branch. Through the mist, Charles Longley floats on his back, writing his sermon on a cloud. George Carey has knotted his cassock and is slowly inflating it as a life saving device. He wears a tattoo of the double helix on one shoulder and an ichthys on the other. Selling tickets, Thomas Becket sits at the turnstile. He sips tea and re-reads the short stories of John Cheever. He has the patience of a saint. He counts in the early sixteenth century bishops who wear nose pegs and synchronise in a flamingo continuous spin. Meanwhile in Latin, Rowan Williams gently scolds a pair of pigeons sipping at the shallows. Justin Welby patrols the water’s edge in black shorts and plimsolls. A lifebelt in hand, he leaves footprints in sunlight, and counts the hours until it is his turn to swim. Christopher James

25 OOther Events CCollaborative Projects with Waveney and Blythe Arts Bugs and Blossoms Workshop We were soon down to work. The Love Slugs and our need to morning was devoted to Blossoms. appreciate earthworms, spiders, stag Staithe Centre, Bungay, 13th August 2019 Initial discussion was wide-ranging beetles, etcetera. On a personal note as we talked about gardens, this was taking me into new recreational spaces, herbs, medicine territory; me and slugs have never and Capability Brown. But this was been on first-name terms. Suffice to merely a warm-up for a poem about say the other eight members of the our own gardens or a hymn to group did sterling work. As a finale weeds. And if we thought this was we then wrote a couple of Haiku or challenging our next task was more short pieces to tag on a Poetree on so – to select a flower/plant cliché Outney Meadow by the River reference and work it into a poem. Waveney. A read-round of our drafts soon All in all it was a lovely day, time revealed how differently we had all out with companionable writers, responded to the two ‘exercises’. By On 13th August seven ‘old stagers’ who were there to not only to ‘work’ this time lunch was much but enjoy the fun of words that and two newcomers met at the appreciated. Staithe Centre in Bungay for the poetry can offer. Once again a big poetry workshop. As usual Beth So to Bugs in the afternoon, kick- Thank You to Beth Soule for a very provided a pad of notes for the day, started by Edwin Morgan’s poem inspirational day. not to mention poems, biscuits and ‘Midge’ and enlivened by John Vaughan tea/coffee. information about Why We Should

They Toil Not Workshop explore and be inspired by the have been such fundamental ancient crafts of spinning and occupations in society that its The Bank Eye, 20th August 2019 weaving. This has always been associated terminology is still in women’s work. We were drawn, as common parlance today, e.g. poets are, into the deeper hanging by a thread, the social significance of things. We talked of fabric, interwoven, spinning a yarn, myth and legend, of magical fairy a web of lies. stories and the place in society of Different textiles also denoted social spinning and spinsters. status. Linen appears to be one of Beth had skilfully prepared a wealth the most important, with evidence of information. Did you know that of the use of wild flax dating from a spider will spin different types of around 36,000 BC. We were given a silk according to their function? template on which to weave and Sticky webs, wrapping prey, decorate our own poems. cocoons for eggs and dispersal. The variety of approaches to all the Spider silk is one of the strongest exercises and information offered by fibres in the world. Spiders are Beth was astounding. This was not somewhat older than humans - by only a fascinating exploration of an around 300-400 million years. area of life which still occupies a Beautiful poems were inspired not core place in today’s personal and only by spiders but also by the industrial spheres, but also a spinning and weaving activities of wonderful demonstration of the humans over millennia, and the infinite diversity of minds round the growing knowledge of the crones table. Thank you, Beth! round the table reflected this Lynne Nesbit Six poets were gathered together to poetically. Spinning and weaving

he Pop-Up Poets of ...were in action in Brandon Country festival-goers with a poem or song. Park on Saturday 21st September at Brandon Library...... In the restored Engine House, TT Tales and Trails, a festival of creativity Brandon Library Poets had which encompassed everything from collaborated with Brandon Art Group, kaleidoscopic sculpture to Morris Brandon Photographic Society and Dancing, and SPS member Tim Brandon Creative Writers in New Gardiner reading from The Perspectives, an exhibition of words Flintknapper’s Ghost outside the and pictures featuring the trees and mausoleum. The Brandon poets took buildings of Brandon Park. Francis Hall reading part in the Myth and Memory trails, outside the Walled Garden popping up at other times to harass Diane Jackman

26 BBook Reviews ine Days The form allows a magical kind of and unique. ‘Idyll’ transports us to two-way poetic osmosis to take the languorous heat and calm of a NN place: the haiku provides a cryptic, summer’s afternoon where a by Mike Bannister intense summation of what lies at young child, forgotten by the (Orphean Press, 2019, £2.75 from the core of the prose story without grown-ups at their delicious lunch, local bookshops or £3 from the being repetitive. The prose story is wanders off… The haiku should author: Linthorpe House, 23 Station grounded in the physicality of act as summation but don’t always Rd, Halesworth, IP19 8BZ) everyday life which is lacking in fulfil their purpose nor exhibit the the haiku. Thus, each becomes traditional haiku reliance on the imbued with the essence of the cutting words (kireji) and other. seasonality (kigo): In my view, the sub-title of the How we are wakened pamphlet, A prose poem in the Time we are given to dream manner of Matsuo Basho, is a Schools before schooling misnomer because these are haibun rather than prose poems. This is But when the haiku works it lifts important because the reader is the body of the prose piece to a likely to enter the writing whole new level: ‘Conscript,’ a expecting to find some of the careful, evocative description of an qualities of the contemporary prose assistant gunner trapped in his poem, as practised by George bleak professional journey through Szirtes, Ian Seed, Lucy Hamilton, life, concludes with a moving Linda Black, to name but a few. insight into the nature of his Their prose poems are predicament: characterised by extreme Permitting others conciseness, great intensity, a To direct which road we take cadence that arises from skilful use of the sentence, since the structure Denies our compass. of the line has been discarded, a These haibun sit in a booklet of hint only of narrative thread, and a delectable paper printed and deliberate lack of a defined bound with the care so The pamphlet is a series of extracts, beginning, middle and end. characteristic of the Orphean Press real or imagined, from travel However, once this hurdle has run by Peter Newble. Beginning journals set in various parts of with an intriguing cover England. Each prose piece is been cleared, there is much to enjoy here. The author’s attention to illustration by Amber H. Pletts, the followed by three haiku. This is reader’s journey, though rocky at the form of the Japanese haibun detail is his great strength. The narratives that engage the reader times, is interesting and often described in Dr Tim Gardiner’s uplifting. third essay in Twelve Rivers, v. 10, are those which conjure up a issue 1 p.10. specific time and place that is real Jill Eulalie Dawson

xposure: in ‘Sabattier Effect’. EE The book’s title, Exposure, works as Snapshots from the Life of Lee Miller both technical photographic term and as the theme of this series of by Derek Adams poems examining the life of Lee (Dempsey and Windle Publishing, Miller, photographer, war 2019, £8) correspondent, film actress, artist’s muse and much more besides, Ekphrasis, the use of a work of art to working both behind and in front of inspire a poem, is familiar to us. the camera. In telling her story, However poems inspired by Derek Adams traces the trajectory of photographs are not common. Yet a woman who embraced both what parallels there are between the traditional female roles as muse, two art forms – I have found the ideal lover and wife with, long before her tool/ to frame and order my world… time, that of a war correspondent trap the pure moment writes Derek and photographer whose work took Adams in the voice of Lee Miller in her through the very gates of his poem ‘Rolleiflex’. Again he Dachau and Buchenwald. Derek’s describes that illuminating moment,/ two-page introduction is a sufficient like a flashbulb popping starting point for those of us who

27 may have been only vaguely aware vivid background of a number of a tough subject sideways on. This of her name. It is an encouragement the poems: women abandon clothes, he shares with Miller, as he imagines to the reader to learn more. The wine flows,(‘Picnic’), although by her in the poem ‘Angora’, a war dates and locations beneath the titles then beyond the distant trees,/uniform correspondent writing of the of each poem are also valuable grey shadows gather. And there is Lee, liberation of Dachau and trying to signposts. picking up her Rolleiflex and find/words, to fill this/ blank sheet of The poems are often brief, always …click- click- click documenting her paper. Inevitably these experiences intense and closely packed with times. bring a legacy. This woman naked in meaning. Miller’s personal life is a further Hitler’s bathtub (‘Lee at War’) suffers from alcoholism and PTSD in the To begin with a familiar landscape thread running through the poems, as she is both exploited by and post-war years. This is perhaps in (London, 1940), ‘Grim Glory’ is a danger of becoming our closing measure of Derek’s skill in seeing seems to exploit the men in her life. However, Derek Adams allows a impression. We need to return to the world through the eyes of his Derek’s opening poem ‘Farley Farm subject. Freed from their prison,/ touch of humour to shine through in ‘Coup de Foudre’, describing her (Sussex 1977)’ where, after her bohemian mannequins/stand naked and death, her 60,000 photographic proud/on the pavement,/around their future husband falling in love with her. negatives were brought into the feet/glass sparkling/ like diamonds. light, each a/ window to/another time,/ The hectic cultural life of Paris in the The poet is often a master of another world,/another life. understatement, skilled in coming at 1920s and 30s is captured in the Elizabeth Bracken

fter-Images:: and cut etc to evoke the Poems of the East was published in atmosphere of industrial France: 2015. His experience abroad and AA Slow pan by pylons . . . Focus on an his PhD on a comparative study of Homage to Eric Rohmer old man throwing seed on the soil/his Dostoevsky and Kafka have by Antony Johae back to a fuming furnace, coughing . . . widened his modernist sensitivity (Poetry Salzburg, 2019, £10.50) cut to a foundry . . . and this is apparent in his poems. In the prose poem ‘Modern His cinematic portrayal of Pastoral’, there’s a beautiful background is an integral part of rendering of life according to the the art of each of his poems and seasons, a matter-of-fact revealing avoids the heavy scene-setting and of loneliness and the repetitive over-elaboration of much of tasks a farmer’s wife has to endure: today’s poetry. We see this Our farm is isolated; my company are immediately in the first poem the cows I feed and milk, the chickens ‘Prelude’: I saw her swimming in whose eggs I collect for market, and the apple water/Walking the olive bank of farm dogs that follow me from chore to the Oise/Gazing at the hazy city . . . chore. The book’s introduction is a very In 'Gaspard’s Song', in the poem helpful poem-by-poem explanation ‘Islands’, the hardship of Breton by the author. He tells us that fishermen contrasts strongly with almost all these poems are based the modern leisurely lifestyles of on recollections of Eric Rohmer’s young people on holiday. His free films, hence the title After-Images. verse descriptions of men setting Many are narratives of love and off in flat-bottom dories from their longing set by the Brittany, mother ships to fish for cod on the Eric Rohmer once wrote that in the Normandy and Mediterranean Newfoundland Banks is a fine age of cultural self-consciousness, coasts or in Paris. They are poems example of dramatic narrative. It film is ‘the last refuge of poetry’ about young men and women holds our attention as much by the and the only contemporary art enjoying hedonistic adventures at precise detail as it does by the form from which metaphor could the beach, cafes and night clubs or sympathy it makes us feel towards still spring naturally and leading more moral lives while still those Breton fishermen. Hazards spontaneously. being subject to holiday are plenty, including getting lost: temptations. Innocence meets Fog arose over the banks,/Cut off the Whatever we think of this sexual duplicity in the poem, dory’s men from the waiting mother sweeping statement, Antony ‘Pauline’s Complaint’: she prefers to ship. The roots of poetry lie as Johae’s poems in After-Images are strike out against a rolling wave /to much in story-telling as they do in wonderful examples of how film the deep where no one is, yet we learn song, and Antony Johae doesn’t let can be a fertile ground for poetry. she aches for her cousin. us down. From the poem ‘Industrial Antony Johae has taught in Africa David Healey Filmscape’ for instance, he uses the and the Middle East for 30 years. cinematic techniques of pan, shot

28 Her observations are twinned with How many lives did I dispatch? absolutely diamond-cut words, Ten thousand in one week? names and descriptions. All nature It was my job. is here. It is an indoor nature walk. Echo of the Nuremberg trials here. But that is not all, it isn’t all Anne Boileau is good at dropping sweetness and light; she has some these ‘big quotes’ into the mix. It’s trenchant observations of society not all flowers and trees. Always too. We have the girl told to take the gracious, always keeping a lid on slain hare to the van: emotions, where these views swirl out, the poems do take flight, with The kicking stopped… added strength. She also In Durer’s painting of a hare, experiments with form, the intricacy she sits within her time and frame, of a ghazal, for instance, in ‘The as tranquil as a pair of praying hands. Memory of Bronze’. The Carthorses are seen, in their translations slip easily into the core obedient service to their masters, to work, especially those of Hans be locked in a Stockholm Syndrome Magnus Enzenberger, but Anne with the carters. Anne encapsulates Boileau’s own poems are as strong the fate of Isaak Walton’s caught when she lets rip about cruelty and fishes, at dusk he’ll take his net, his unfairness. This tension is how the book succeeds; we are roped in, not reams creel, walk back to his rooms to write it reams down. knowing what to expect. of Flight DD Scotland – specifically Iona – gives Because of the above, the collection by Anne Boileau material for several poems. Often deserves something stronger (more stringent?) than Dreams of Flight as (Orphean Press, 2019, £10 (+ £2 for writers repeat a word: speedwell is its title, which is a deceptively postage and packing) from the mentioned twice and ’Blue on Blue’ smooth, unfocused term for such a author: Wefan House, 39 West celebrates that colour further, To worthwhile and sometimes startling Street, Coggeshall, Colchester CO6 stand at dusk/ in Chalkney Wood/ on collection. 1NS) the fourth of May/ breathing blue on blue. It is the first time I have ever seen Do you remember the fuss in 2018 illustrations that are so distinctive about the Oxford Junior Dictionary Stringent comments gather pace in no longer having entries for her translation of Hans Magnus and worthwhile in their own right bluebells, catkin, pasture and so on? Enzenberger’s ‘Declaration of War’ and are not merely decoration. Don’t worry – they are all here, – with every possible reason or Belinda King’s prints weave in and crammed into Anne Boileau’s new excuse even though nobody wanted it; out of the pages, enhancing the collection, ahah; … and because we just couldn’t mood, giving an added dimension think of anything better to do. This is to the poems and more to enjoy past gnarled oaks in full foliage. mirrored by ‘Snuffed Candles’ and think about, an extra eye. Flax and harebells mirror the sky, where the farmworker is killing Writing and images play across to surplus male chicks: (‘A Circle of Remembering’) each other magnificently, enriching each other. Pat Jourdan

emembering Stephen slowly winding through cuttings to read there as a tribute to Mary Glason and countryside, on time and in no Wilson, who had been one of RR rush to reach its destination. Betjeman’s close friends. Stephen’s 1st January 1952 – 17th May 2019 Unlike many of his contemporaries, poems often contained slightly Stephen liked end-of-line rhymes, tongue in cheek observations on Quiet, mild-mannered, reflective – and he had an understated way of social customs and behaviour, but these are some of the words that reading which made you settle into always playful, never mean. His come immediately to mind when I the ambling rhythm so that the brother Patrick says ‘if you ever think of Stephen. He was a regular rhymes never sounded forced. asked Stephen for his advice, it was at Arlington’s Poetry Café in Stephen shared a feel for the always delivered in a calm, Ipswich, where he would read an – resonance of place and station considered and thoughtful manner, invariably hand-written – poem or names with John Betjeman, his often with a twinkle in his eye.’ He two in his gentle, unassuming way favourite poet. He was proud to be will be much missed. that endeared him to all of us. His published in the centenary edition poems often reflected his life-long of the Betjeman magazine and, love of trains – indeed Anglian appropriately, the order of service railways posted some of his poems booklet at his funeral included a on station platforms – and the photo of Stephen standing by regular eight-beat lines with the Betjeman’s statue in Paddington 2,4,6,8 accents had the feel of a train Station. Stephen had been invited Phil Baker

29 afé Poets'' Corner is no ending, so the ending might active writer. He was a part of a Sudbury Café Poets actually throw you back to the journal founded by John Silkin CC beginning again because it leaves called Stand Magazine, which still you with questions, but it is elusive exists. in some way. We’ve had Pauline Stainer, and that CW: So what was the original was wonderful because she is in a impetus for the Sudbury Poetry class absolutely of her own and was Café? also President of the Society. We’ve been very lucky in finding these JED: Well, it was Gill Phillips who people. started it, really. Because I was a friend of Gill’s and had, with a CW: What other poets do you friend in Montreal, run a café for remember particularly? about four years, I knew it was very JED: Well, I do remember Mike difficult to do that just on your own. Bannister. He is a very good reader. He read with just the right amount At the beginning I think most of the of feeling, and his voice boomed out other cafés did open readings, and through the room. people found it very strange that we wanted to have a set programme [We had] Oliver Bernard. He was in [with invited readers] as well. That his mid-80’s and he was part of the way you draw in different kinds of British poetic scene around the time people. of Auden and Spender and CW: I think it is interesting and a MacNeice. He was almost 90 and Colin Whyles met Jill Eulalie gave an amazing reading. He had a Dawson over lunch on September bonus that all of the cafés are different in some way. Was anyone presence, and he had a very loud, 16th for a long chat about her work wonderful voice. in poetry and the Sudbury Poetry else involved? Café. These are the highlights. JED: More recently, Derek, Gill’s CW: You’ve now mentioned three husband, has been very helpful with male poets and one female poet. CW: I know that you are currently the flyer that we have with our There must be other female poets writing in prose poetry. Before that publicity and sometimes chairing you remember. I believe you only wrote free verse. the café. For perhaps two years or Did you ever write in form? JED: Pam Job – wonderful. Her so, Anne Boileau was very helpful in poetry has really changed and JED: I have written a few poems in suggesting people to us as readers, become so much better and better Shakespearean sonnet form. I found and she often put up several of them and better. Her poems are it difficult. Some people find it in her lovely house in Coggeshall. wonderful, they are written with a liberating. I found it constricting. I great deal of craftswomanship, We have an email network that knew what I wanted to say but wonderful sounds and she is a very Derek sends out notices to every couldn’t say it in that form. good reader. month, and he prints out a little CW: From what you have said you flyer every month. Anne Boileau came once with Judy were writing free verse before you Gahagan, and they were reading CW: You have been in attempted form. How long have you parts of a very long poem by Judy Gainsborough’s House, but I know been writing? Gahagan, partly to do with you are going to have to move soon. JED: I started writing poetry which I Germany. That sticks in my mind as was, I think, just free verse, when I JED: Well, sadly, Gainsborough’s well. It was on a very academic and was an undergraduate at university. House is going to close down for detailed subject but, because they Poetry has always been a big thing about two years. From November were such good readers and the two in my life. we will be in the Quaker Meeting voices were very different, it made House, which is 22 Friars Street. the poem very interesting. CW: So if you were always interested in poetry, is that because When we started, Gill and I said to CW: It is good that it has gone on of its relatively short form? Did you each other, “Well, we will do it for this long and people still come. ever write anything big, or prose? every month, then after a bit no-one Even if they are not writers, people still come to listen. JED: I used to write short stories, in will come and so we won’t do it any Canada. But you see, a short story, more”, and we are still here 11 years JED: People still come. There was a in a way, sits between a novel and a afterwards. time a time when the number of poem, because it is a much more CW: So, 11 years, every month, you people who came dropped down constricted form and it has to have a have had an awful lot of poets and I wondered whether we could clear structure behind it. through, 130 or so. continue or not, but now it seems to me that it is just a good number, CW: But that is an interesting thing JED: I hadn’t thought of that. We about 16 or so, not too many and not because it relates to the prose don’t very often invite someone poetry, doesn’t it? back a second time, but there have too few. been particular people, such as JED: Yes, it does, because the ending Rodney Pybus, who is still a very in a prose poem has an ending that 30 FFuture Events – 2020 Wednesday 26th February ‘Characters’ workshop with Heidi Williamson: 10am - 1pm, Palgrave Community Centre, Upper Rose Lane, Diss, IP22 1AP

Sunday 15th March Suffolk Poetry Society AGM: 2 - 5pm, St Mary’s Church Hall, 11 Market Hill, Woodbridge, IP12 4LP. After the meeting members are invited to read their poems on the theme of ‘Vision’

Saturday 9th May 7th Festival of Suffolk Poetry 10am-9:30pm, John Peel Centre, Stowmarket, IP14 1ET Headline poets: George Szirtes, André Mangeot, Mike Bartholomew-Biggs, Barbara Strangward, Nicola Warwick Poetry Cafés, Poetry Doctors, Open Mic, on-site food/drink

Thursday 11th June 10:30 Lavenham Press workshop and tour. See back cover.

Sunday 14th June Annual Suffolk Poetry Society Members’ Reading at Walpole Old Chapel: 3pm, Walpole Old Chapel, 2 Halesworth Road, Walpole, IP19 9AZ The theme will be COLOURS, freely interpreted.

Monday 15th June Crabbe Poetry Competition 2020 deadline for entries. Entry details and form: suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk/index.php/crabbe

As the programme develops, more events and more detail will be available. E-mail webmaster@suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk to be added to our e-newsletters. Alternatively visit our website: suffolkpoetrysociety.org.uk

JOIN SUFFOLK POETRY SOCIETY TO RECEIVE EMAIL NEWSLETTERS AND SOCIAL MEDIA UPDATES ON ALL THE SOCIETY’S ACTIVITIES, ACTIVITIES IN ASSOCIATION WITH OTHER ORGANISATIONS AND REMINDERS ABOUT POETRY COMPETITIONS FROM AROUND THE UK.

avenham Press They kindly opened their doors to meet requirements from the hand- workshops members of SPS for two workshops made production of a single book to LL led by Bill Byford, Sales Director for print runs of thousands for well- 18th June and 26th September 2019 Lavenham Press. I attended the one known magazines, journals, in June and, although I enjoyed the brochures, manuals, etc. The presentation and question / answer options available on paper quality, session, the icing on the cake for me binding, sorting, packaging and was the tour of the building where dispatch were amazing and it was we could follow through from encouraging to learn that Lavenham imagination to reality. There is Press is committed to the nothing like being able to see, hear – environment and sources its paper and smell – print production to from renewable, responsible sources support understanding. with Forestry Stewardship Council Computer to plate technology (CPT) (FSC) accreditation. takes PDF files such as ours to the I personally felt reassured that our Lavenham Press is a family-owned printing stage using the latest Society’s printing needs are in good and managed company established Heidelberg presses, which, for hands and that all customers, from for over 65 years. They have magazines such as Twelve Rivers, individuals through small societies recently taken on the print enables 16 pages of A4 to be printed like ours, to big organisations, production requirements for Suffolk on one sheet. At the same time, we would be treated respectfully and Poetry Society (SPS) such as Twelve could see the range of digital and professionally. traditional printing methods Rivers and the Crabbe Anthology. Fran Reader available – each one tailor-made to 31