A few days ago I learned that Stuart Quine died in hospital of Covid-19. His haiku were featured on my blog in September last year, under the heading A glint of wolf. You can read them here
Stuart himself provided the biographical notes and he made the selection of one-line haiku.
Here in the caravan in the Netherlands I found a copy of Presence from July 2019 with the one-line haiku below. I am grateful to have known him.
after midnight firelight playing the accordion keys
Photo credit: Digwen on Pixabay
These are my neighbours. Yes, camping Duinhorst backs onto a racecourse. Duindigt opened in 1906. Most of the races held are trotting races, with the jockeys sitting on a sulky as in the picture. Some days I can hear the faint sounds of commentary, or a national anthem at the end of a race. And, very often when I’m out and about I come across horses being exercised. That is where the writing started. It is the second poem in my second collection Nothing serious, nothing dangerous.
I was going to fly to Holland on 5 April, but things are serious and dangerous. I managed to get a flight out on Wednesday 18 March from Manchester to Schiphol in the Netherlands, and went straight to my caravan. You know from following my blog that I am a Dutch national, long-term resident in the UK. Faced with “social distancing” and a possible four-month’ quarantine, I felt it would be easier in the caravan. It has a small garden and I can go for a bike ride, or a short walk in the nearby dunes – as long as I keep my distance.
Here I am walking …
Here I am walking with a small horse.
I found it on the path to the supermarket
where it stood, eyes closed, by yellow gorse.
All this happened a long time ago,
before I was born, before the war,
and the rope in my hand smells of horse.
We can turn to the right, walk over
the dual carriageway, head for the dunes,
four bronze crosses to remember
the war dead and we’ll arrive,
place our feet on the beach
where it’ll soon be night.
Photo credit: oho725 on Pixabay
Poetry readings and workshops have been cancelled. People are panic-buying pasta and toilet paper. A few friends have cancelled lunch dates: I have an empty diary. So, I have started packing boxes for my move later this year, while listening to the radio. My flight is booked on 5th of April and I hope that the borders are still open by then. I can blog over in the Netherlands just as I can here: I have Wifi inside the caravan. If I become ill, it’s easier to self-isolate over there.
Meanwhile, here is a short poem about chaos. It first appeared in The North magazine and was later published in my debut collection Another life. Look after yourself, keep safe and look out for those around you.
On the town
In the time it took to buy a birthday card, a special
80th birthday card, they had arrived in a long, black limousine,
jumped out, set fire to the hotel and released wicker
baskets. The flying baskets with wicker wings chopped
tops of trees, trees falling on traffic lights – chaos everywhere
and in the middle of it the small bronze statue.
A smiling woman holding doves covered in bird shit.
The wind howling, sirens crying like the end of the world had come.
And me and that card that had cost me £2.99 and nowhere
to buy stamps, no letter box to post it.
The Departure, book and me (Photo: copyright Sophie J Brown)
Here I am with my second collection Nothing serious, nothing dangerous at the launch, held at the International Anthony Burgess Foundation, Manchester on the 3rd of March. It was a wonderful occasion, made very special by Graham Kingsley Brown’s painting The Departure being there too.
His daughter Sophie Brown (herself a talented artist) designed this website. Visit www.grahamkingsleybrown.com and click on the Curator’s Diary for her account of the launch and to read what the meaning of the painting may be (entry 28 November 2019).
Below is the first poem of the book. This may well be the ferry from Harwich, UK to Hook of Holland, the Netherlands. A ferry crossing is a departure of a kind …
Ferry crossing
Two people sit at a table by an oblong picture window.
Sun lights up their hands which are curled round coffee cups.
The window is made of safety glass. There have been announcements:
location of lifebelts, life rafts, long and short blast of a horn.
While words are hidden at the obscure side of imagination,
other people are queuing for lunch or buying alcohol in the shop.
The folded hands are the back of playing cards, The Queen of Spades, operas, novellas, the shortest of short stories.
It is not strange to see these cards turn into sea gulls.
A white ferry is a city where nothing is permanent.
Photo credit: Pixabay
It is March, so here is an example of personification. It comes from a workshop: we were asked to choose a month and write about it, as though it was a person. Do you see March as a man too? Does his emotional state reflect typical March weather?
March
He is a man with a frown,
walking in a military
manner. He is the eldest
son of a Rossendale baker, who
married young and placed his hopes
on other people’s shoulders.
He studied accountancy at a redbrick
in the Midlands, ironed shirts himself,
lost his accent, met a nurse
in town one night, got drunk,
a lower second degree, a baby,
a small semi in the suburbs.
Last year he didn’t get a rise,
didn’t get promotion either.
He thinks about renewing insurance,
calculates the cost of divorce,
puts his hands in his pockets and
strides over the zebra crossing.
He often feels like going crazy, going
off with a woman half his age, living
in the south of France, but he walks
back to the empty house, hiding
under a large black umbrella,
cursing under his breath.
Acacia Publications 