Poetry - Day Three

Prompt: think of a powerful emotion. Think of a time when you experienced that emotion. Choose an object from that scene and put it in a box. Open the box and describe the contents - weight, colour, smell. Write a poem.

May 3rd, 1971

Historically, nothing momentous occurred.
The world kept turning.
We went to school
and, though it was Monday,
we had lamb, peas and new potatoes
cooked for us by Dad.
I suppose he didn't go to work that day,
seeing as how Mum had died.
So, there were just four places laid,
four plates with soft, pink, bleeding
slices of someone's child;
grey, leaden lumps of vegetable
matter, hard to swallow;
the artificial Spring green
of peas, trying for optimism.
The taint of normalcy
as we sat in the wrong places,
spread out to camouflage the gap,
and chewed on the cold, hard facts.

Poetry - Day Two

Prompt: randomly pick a concrete noun from the dictionary. Look at its various definitions, and the words before and after it. Use it to write a poem.

Words: Heteroclite (noun): deviating from common form or rules; abnormal; somebody or something abnormal or unusual; a word that is irregular in inflexion or declension.

Heterodyne (adj): combining two similar radio frequencies to produce a lower frequency or beat.

I'd Rather Be

Rather than an oddball, I think that I might
have preferred to be called a heteroclite.

Whereas heterosexual's the standardised form,
a heteroclite deviates from the norm.

It holds on to 'hetero', upholds the illusion
that hetero is normal and there's the confusion.

Abnormal, unusual, with irregular inflexion,
I'm proud of my heterochromatic reflection.

Heteroclitic is a new word of mine,
and is used for a beat that is heterodyne.

Poetry - Day One

We have now finished the Creative Writing module. As we are waiting for our results, we are trying to write a poem a day throughout June. The prompts we are using are from Mslexia. 

Prompt: Randomly pick five titles of poems; work from them towards your own poem.

Titles: Where We Belong; a Duet.
          Snake.
          It was the Rainbow gave thee Birth.
          In Willesdon Churchyard.
          And Yet the Books. 

Enjoy my poem, then go and look up the others.


Duet
Born wrapped in a rainbow,
you chose to see the rain cloud.
The duet we danced,
a parody of pleasure.
I lift my rose-coloured glass
and toast the sunset.
You drop your eyes and mourn
the coming of the dark.
Our last waltz together
will be in Willesdon churchyard.
Once you've embraced despair,
I'll leave you there 
and I'll dance on alone
amongst the stones.

Fire at Hanley Castle

This is my fourth assignment - life writing. The choice was biography, autobiography or life writing. I was going to write about the fire at Hanley Castle, which is mentioned in my Grandad, Longley Norman's memoirs, but found I was far more interested in the details of the family's day-to-day lives. I based this passage - and we were asked for a passage, not a complete piece - on the day the letter (which is fictional, as no-one can remember how they found out about the fire) came. I spent a happy couple of days interviewing my dad and my uncle Bill (who is now Uncle Walter - a story for another day) and sharing their memories. 

           

Arthur, Jimmy and Dennis scuffled along the backses[1], elbowing each other into the gutter which ran along the centre of the cobbles, tossing their caps between them. Both Easter and spring were late this year[2], but it was finally warm enough that the boys were not levered into their winter coats for the journeys to and from school. The three of them looked ready for Friday night bath-night, with their dirty knees showing between grey, woollen shorts and fallen-down socks. They paused at the corner to tug down their jumpers, carelessly tuck in the fronts of their shirts, and bang their caps against their legs to remove the worst of the muck.

            ‘See yer.’

            ‘See yer.’

Arthur turned into his house at the top of the street and the others continued on. The front door to number six was open as usual, but, as he opened the vestibule door, Arthur realised something was not right. Normally, at this time, the front room would be empty, the fire not lit until after tea, when his father went off down Werneth Club. Once the boys had gone to bed, his mother would sit there with Grandma and the Aunts, making a scuttle of coal last the evening. The stairs’ door would be left ajar to let the last of the kitchen warmth seep into the bedrooms – though it never seemed to get as far as the attic, where Arthur slept. Alan, the baby, still slept in with his mother and father, and Walter slept on a truckle bed, in the front room with Grandma, during the cold months. There were plenty of those in Oldham in the 1920s.

Walter was sort of the odd-one-out in growing up, in that he was always ‘sickly’, he was always ‘poorly’. He…had to be coddled a bit because he was different, you know. He had a bad heart. He had a leaky valve, so he had to be ‘looked after’…he went half days to school and this sort of thing [Alan Norman].

‘What’s up? Where’s Mum?’

Grandma looked up from her tatting[3] as he came in. Alan waved his chubby little fists in the air and kicked out his legs in excitement, nearly rolling backwards on the rag rug in front of the fire. It was only Walter, curled up behind him, playing with a toy car, that kept him sitting up.

 ‘She’s in t’ kitchen. She’s had a bit o’ bad news so I’ve brought t’ boys in here to give her five minutes. You can go in and help wi’ t’ tea if you like.’ Grandma leaned forward and moved the baby away from Walter, whose hair he was now pulling. 

            ‘Has t’ skiver pinched off [4] again today, then?’ Arthur indicated his middle brother with a flick of the head. Walter scowled at him and Grandma just looked at him, eyebrows raised. Arthur opened the kitchen door and the smirk was wiped off his face as he saw the letter propped against the clock on the mantelpiece.

There were certainly no telephones…[and] telegrams, you know, after the First World War they were…a telegram was something you got with trepidation…they’d probably have got a letter…

[Walter Norman].

           

His mother was laying the table for their tea. The little drop-leaf table would only seat four, so the boys and Grandma would eat before his father and the Aunts got home.

‘Wash your hands, Arthur.’ His mother looked as she always did, pinny over her weekday skirt and blouse. She would take it off once she’d tidied up after tea, fold it over the end of the fireguard and put on her cardigan, ready for the cooler climes of the front room.

‘Why is there a letter from Grandma Mellors on a Friday?’ Arthur crossed to the stone sink and rinsed his hands in the warm water in there. He rubbed them dry on the back of his shorts and moved back to study the spidery, black writing that he knew so well. ‘Is there summat up?’

Word from Hanley Castle, fire destroyed Home and All in it. Doris’s Mum and Dad lucky to get out OK, place gutted…at first, feared Old Lady must have roasted in the blaze, but the following morning she turned up…I still think this was Arson…[Longley Norman]. 

            ‘Never you mind. Call t’ others through and fetch t’ baby, would you? Tea’s ready.’        

It was the following morning before Arthur found out anything more. By the time his father and the Aunts had got home from work, he, Walter and the baby had been dunked in the tin bath in front of the fire and scrubbed until their skin tingled. Arthur was grateful that his ten years meant he got to bathe alone, even though it was after the younger two.

‘You create too much sediment,’ was his mother’s only comment when he proposed that, as the eldest, he should go first. Later, he’d listened to the murmur of the adult voices as he read his much-thumbed copy of Ripley’s Believe it or Not by the flickering candlelight in his attic bedroom. When the front door banging shut had announced the fact that his father had gone to the club as normal, Arthur had relaxed, knowing that, however bad it was, it hadn’t disrupted the scheduled, Friday-night card game.

The smell in the kitchen on a Saturday morning baking day was lovely, thanks to the dough that was rising in a big mixing bowl, covered with a damp tea-towel, on top of the fireside bread oven. His mother smelled the same way, warm, yeasty and comforting, when he hugged her. Once the breakfast table was cleared, she would knock back the dough and put it in the bread oven to cook in time for dinner - fresh, still-warm bread, melting, yellow butter, churned at the local dairy and home-made jam, thick with lumps of strawberry or gooseberry. Arthur bent over his porridge bowl and tried to ignore Walter, blethering on to Aunt Ciss about something. Ears flapping, he concentrated on the muted conversation that was taking place between his parents.

The Vicar…was awoken by the bells of the Fire Engine. It had to come all the way from Upton, so, as you can imagine, it was nearly All Over by the time it arrived. They had to cut through my lovely rose bushes to get to the well, as it was Far Too Dangerous to use the garden path. It all felt So Hopeless…We are now staying in The Old Rectory and they say there is No Hurry for us to move on…I hope you can come down, my dear. Your Mother needs you. Father says there is no insurance, so I don’t know what we’ll do, I’m sure. We must put our Trust in God. From Your Affectionate Mother.

(Letter from Eliza Mellors to Doris Norman)

‘Why would Father burn t’ place down if they weren’t insured, Longley? No.’ His mother looked down at the letter, which she’d just read again.  ‘No.’ More decisively this time. ‘I know he wanted th’ old lady out, but really…’ She slid the letter back into its envelope. ‘We need to go down.’

‘All in good time. You need to write and ask about accommodation. It’s all very well, but we’ll need some place to stay. We could get t’ train down on Thursday, and stay over Easter weekend. I’d need to be back Monday, but it might be that you can stop on a while.’

‘We’re going to Granddad’s!’ Arthur leaned across the table, interrupting Walter’s tale. ‘He might take us out looking for birds’ nests.’

‘Am I coming? Mum, Mum, am I coming?’

Arthur’s flapping hand and shushing noises came too late to quieten Walter and their father stood, hitching his trousers with their wide, leather belt.

            ‘You’ll wait till you’re asked, young Walter. And, as for you, Arthur, you’ve got jobs to do, if I’m not mistaken.’

He’d say ‘Let’s go out for a walk and look for birds’ nests…and we’d have to search…and you’d find this little nest with these little apparent eggs in it and they were sugared almonds [Walter Norman].

He’d a habit of saying…’Look at these flowers down here’ and he’d pull out some sugared almonds…He was always considered a bit stern, and a bit of a terror, you know. I don’t remember him in that way [Alan Norman].

            Saturday was for playing out once the jobs were done. Even Walter might be allowed to sit on the front step, well wrapped up, and watch the bigger boys. Arthur stacked the pots by the sink as his father tucked the paper under his arm and went off up the yard. As he whisked up the lather in the warm water, poured from the kettle that always simmered on the hob, Arthur heard the rat-a-tat of the door knocker and his Aunt Bea’s heavy tread as she went to answer.

            ‘Can your Arthur come out to play?’

Arthur smiled. He’d a proper story to tell yon lads once he’d done here.

---

[1] Oldham dialect word for back alleys. Backses are wider than ginnels.

[2] Easter Sunday 1930 was April 20^th.

[3] A form of lace work done with shuttles or needles. I still have pieces done by my Aunt Bea.

[4] Longley uses ‘pinched off’ for playing truant in his memoirs [Norman, 2009]. I have not been able to find this anywhere else.

Sonnet on Retirement

To David

I heard a whisper you were leaving us,

Well- not so much a whisper as a song

Of celebration, a feeling you’d been sprung

From the misery of toil. You didn’t give a cuss

That some of us would have to stay. The one

Good thing you’ll leave behind you when you go

Is the sense of pleasure that we’ll feel because we’ll know

That you’ll be out there on the golf course in the sun.

Your jolly, woolly jumpers will be just the thing

To wear with loud checked trousers and golf shoes.

You can spend hours working on your swing

Or at the 19^th hole, airing your views.

And we, poor souls, our countdowns not yet started
Can only sit here, working, broken-hearted.

View From My Window

This is one of the poems I submitted for the poetry assignment. I did okay! Very okay. I am a little breathless with relief. 

Winter’s Flagging

The pampas flags are at half mast, broken banners on the battlefield,     

the colour of bleached bone. Stripped clean by carrion winds.

The apple tree wraps its skeletal frame in streamers of ivy, dusty, dusky,

a faded camp-follower, sitting watch in her mouldering finery.

The lemon-acid winter sun, bright, etches umber, ecru, russet and moss green

on tree-trunks, terracotta warriors, camouflaged in the hedgerows.

The fragrant musk of mating fox hangs low to show that he can come and go at will. 
Screaming vixens ambush the dawn. Paprika tail flags up another conquest.

The robin’s gleaming breastplate far out-glows the understated English livery

of a finch in flight , and pigeons in pink waistcoats take the victors’ rights,

anticipating Spring.

A Sonnet - not quite Shakespeare yet.

I'm in that difficult space between submitting an assignment and getting the result. Slightly breathless with anxiety. I'm trying to move forward, as the next assignments come a bit thick and fast and there is a lot of work to do. We are now doing Life Writing. I thought I was finished with poetry but it seems not. This activity wanted you to look at an aspect of development of character. I tried a sonnet as I haven't had much success with them.

This lumpy girl with little piggy eyes
Cries as she walks and hopes someone will see
The sadness, written large upon her face,
And maybe take the time to stop and speak.

All muffled in her duffle coat and scarf,
She knows she's second best and, worse, perhaps
A sullen, sulky child, too hard to love,
She looks to strangers to fill in the gaps.

Today she finds she walks the streets with pride,
Takes pleasure in the challenge of each day.
She's learned at last to disregard the lies -
If your dog loves you, you must be okay.

She loves herself the way she is and knows
That confidence, if nurtured, will just grow.