Author Archives: acaciapublications

‘Good things will continue happening…’

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Linda Chase at the 2006 Garden Party

‘Good things will continue happening in her name and spirit…Manchester became a poetry city not because of the university writing programmes…but because an expatriate American found a vocation there.’ Michael Schmidt; PN Review

Today would have been Linda Chase’s birthday. She volunteered to run and organise courses for the Poetry School. She ran the first one Autumn 2004. She started Poets & Players the same year. I was there and at the amazing Garden Parties. Here is a photo of me at the 2006 one, selling donated poetry books to raise funds for bursaries. In the background is the wonderful Village Hall.

Linda arranged for Sharon Olds to read in the Manchester Museum and to run a workshop at the Village Hall behind her house. It was all amazing and she was amazing.


Her online archive site is at lindachase.co.uk

Sharon Olds reading at Manchester Museum

Taking other routes – a poem

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Rock church, Lalibela – Heiss via Pixabay

With my birthday coming up, I am posting a poem that celebrates key experiences in my life. These include visiting Lalibela in Ethiopia in 2007, travelling with the friend who set up the Lalibela Educational Trust, to meet the boy I sponsored and his widowed mother. My parents – a church organist father and semi-professional singing mother – did pass on the creative gene, for sure.

Thank you for liking these posts and for following my blog!

St Mark’s Venice – Hermann via Pixabay

Taking other routes

My parents never taught me to swim; didn’t take me skating
on those Christmas-card frozen canals. I have never
been famous, but I have sung in Burgos and Florence,
Vespers in St Mark’s. My singing has made grown men cry.

I have not travelled on ferries, floating from one Greek
island to another, forgetting the name of the day.
I have never stroked a giraffe, nor given birth to a baby boy.
But I have picked redcurrants from the back garden, sharing
rich crops for over twenty years with small black birds.

In Ethiopia I have a son and I sat with him in his Physics class.
And for a few years I was a sailor, snatching a few hours
in Sydney, shopping in Hong Kong. I danced in a grass skirt
and flew across Alaskan glaciers with the man I loved.

My father’s hands – poem

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Photo Credit Pavlofox on Pixabay

As today is Father’s Day, I’m posting this poem by Kathleen Kummer. Here she combines the personal and the public, with her reference to the miners’ strikes and the General Strike of 1929.

My father’s hands

For a short time they handled a pencil, maybe
a squeaky one on a slate. Abruptly,
they, they found themselves grasping a pick
in the dark. When the strikes came, obedient,
they downed their tools and, at street corners,
were clasped and breathed into for warmth,
patted the greyhound of a mate waiting
for the pubs to open. They withdrew their labour
from the mine owner once and for all
in the General Strike of 1929.
In the next phase, though, still handling the black stuff,
they weighed it, bagged it, loaded it onto
the back of a lorry. Then it was clay pipes
instead of coal, contorted monsters,
drab, glazed brown, easily chipped.

This is the time from which I remember
those hands, their dull sheen, as if
sanded down, the skin agonisingly tight,
with cracks, near the nails, manicured with a penknife,
not made for tenderness and caresses,
but good safe hands to be held in.

Last night, as I warmed my hands at the fire,
I winced at the memory of his, held so close
to the flames and hot coals, they almost touched
so cold, they could never again be warm.

Animals in Lockdown – guest poet

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I am pleased to introduce this month’s guest poet: Judi Sutherland. We met as poets on Facebook a few years ago and I attended a recent online event where she read her poems.

Judi Sutherland has lived and worked all over England and is now based in North County Dublin, Ireland. She writes about the natural world, about home, place and belonging, and things she reads on the internet. She obtained an MA in Creative Writing from Royal Holloway, University of London, in 2012 and was awarded the Margaret Hewson Prize.

Her first pamphlet The Ship Owner’s House was published in 2018 by Vane Women Press (available here: The Ship Owner’s House by Judi Sutherland – The Poetry Book Society) and focuses on north south contrasts, specifically Oxfordshire and County Durham. Vane Women Press is a writing, performing and publishing collective based in the North East of England. It was formed in 1991.

A recent booklet Animals in Lockdown was published as a hand-made edition by Kazvina (Karen Little). Copies can be obtained from kazvina@yahoo.es, and proceeds go to Happy Tails Halfway Home animal rescue.

Here is my selection: the booklet’s title poem and three poems from The Ship Owner’s House.

The Animals in Lockdown


The mountain goats have noticed something’s wrong.
Their anxious hooves trot into town
tap-tapping on our tarmac. They’ve come to browse
verges and hedges, keeping down


the wildness, which they know distresses us.
In clearwater harbours, dolphins nose
the prows of empty boats drifting at anchor.
Songbirds note the silence in the air.


A fox sniffs for contagion, scenting only spring,
he knows we’ve gone to earth. He has
mixed feelings about this. The dogs
who shepherd us on our permitted walks


leave smell-messages for each other, asking
‘Lads, what’s going on?’ And here at home,
my cat tucks me into bed each night, checking that I’m safe.
All through the night, she listens for my breathing.

Looking for Kites


I went over to Kinninvie
because I had heard you were there.
I took the straight, whitelined road
that wagtails across the fells.
There were sheep, carpet-backed, in a row
ripping grass, and mottled cattle,
cream and brown like chocolate truffles
tilting their long horns at the sky.
A hawk held steady over a whin bush
and I thought I saw you eddy into the wind
over a broad, shouldering field.
When I turned homewards, the valley
was bright with gorse and rapeseed flowers
and sunshine flooded the far slopes
with summer.

Epigenetics

Certain fears can be inherited through the generations, a provocative study of mice reports. The authors suggest that a similar phenomenon could influence anxiety and addiction in humans.
http://www.nature.com/news/fearful-memories-haunt-mouse-descendants-1.14272

And what scented his fear was this:
the fleet chill of clear air rushing,
the flap of canvas, the propeller’s
halting stutter. Hanging suspended
between sky and Crete, and the silver-drab
of olive trees reaching up to meet him.
I still dream that flight and plunge,
the terror and the black; feel the dull
indentation of the skull, the buzz of metal plates
beneath my scalp. I’m always writing Icarus;
afraid to fall, finding life vertiginous.
He very nearly died. I very nearly remember.

Relocation


So, the place I thought was home turned out to be
somewhere we were passing through, and we
have traded all the grey, red, cream of flint,
brick, render, for this buttered stone;
beechwoods for bare hills, accents clipped like lawns
for vowels as broad as fells. The green-spined lane
became a hard grey road, the kites are hawks,
and the placid boating river is a rocky fall
past a castle keep. Life pitches our tent
in a different portion of the desert. We make it ours.
I can no longer tell you where my heart is.

That summer day – a poem

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Dartington Hall, Devon

My friend and poet Kathleen Kummer will have her birthday soon. We have visited the Dartington Estate in Devon several times: to hear the then Poet Laureate Sir Andrew Motion read, to listen to music during the Music Summer School & Festival which was established in 1947. Alwyn Marriage of Oversteps Books invited me to read during the Ways with Words Literary Festival. It was wonderful seeing people out on the lawn, resting in deckchairs, or queuing up to get their book signed by famous authors.

Dartington Hall is a spectacular Grade I listed building. The gardens are grade II listed: a sculpture by Henry Moore, a yew tree that is 1500 years old and a row of sweet chestnut trees believed to be about 400 years old. The gardens are a delight in every season. Here is Kathleen’s poem about the gardens.

The Tiltyard, Dartington Hall Gardens

That summer day

That summer day at Dartington,
everything familiar, beautiful:
the corrugation of the bark
of ancient trees, the sun behind
the scarlet maple leaves, the swathes
of wildflowers in the glades, warm
to the touch the might buttocks
of Henry Moore’s reclining figure,
the bench, its oak smooth, silver,
following the stone wall’s curve,
on which we sat. Unexpected,
the robin landing next to us,
a fledgling, plump, who stayed ten, fifteen
minutes until his mother called him.
And, in the little wave of sadness
which washed over us, because
he looked so young, indivisible
as water is, this swell of happiness.

Horses of a different colour – prize-winning poem

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Anthology, publ. Dempsey & Windle

It was a lovely surprise to get this anthology ahead of schedule, so I could read it before leaving for the Netherlands. Dempsey & Windle organise an annual competition, with options to enter single poems as well as a batch of 10 to win publication of a pamphlet. The anthology has poems by the winners of both categories, as well as the highly commended and longlisted poems. I was glad to have my tribute to a poet friend included. On Thursday 10 June in the evening there will be a reading on Zoom with a number of poets reading. Contact Dempsey & Windle for the link.


This poem by fellow poet Rod Whitworth has it first publication in the same anthology. Rod and I met several years ago on writing workshops. I admire its economy and delicacy. It’s not surprising it gained a 2nd prize.

Demobbed

Go on. Hold his hand. You’ll be all right.
I looked at the man in the new suit
they’d told me was my dad and I walked
at his side, hands in my pockets.

We stepped into the street, his right hand
steering Megan’s pram with ease and command
past Cropper’s with the pigeons, and I walked
at his side, hands in my pockets.

Down Platting Brew, round the curve
over the culverted brook and a hard shove
to the road to Daisy Nook, me walking
at his side, hands in my pockets.

Past the milk farm – Whitehead’s –
and the field with the pond and reeds,
the greying April snow. I walked,
my right hand warm in his left hand.

The day we switched off the machine,
I told him they’d arrested Pinochet,
though he was past cheering, and he lay,
his right hand cold in my left hand.

Bitterne Park, Southampton – charity anthology

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Last year Amanda Steel of Printed Words produced her first charity anthology Words to Remember. It includes fiction, non-fiction and poetry, some of it related to cancer. I was glad to have these two poems accepted for the anthology.

Printed Words has its own Facebook page. Even with the lockdown last year, the anthology has done well, and Amanda was able to make donations to two cancer charities: Marie Curie and Cancer Research UK. Amanda Steel is on https://amandasteelwriter.wordpress.com

Bitterne Park, Southampton

The blackout curtains
don’t let the sun through.
I wake to the small sounds
that come with morning:
squirrels jump around the oak tree
at the heart of our cul-de-sac.
A bus strains up the hill.

At the Triangle, the bank opens
and the smiley greengrocer
limps his vegetable crates outside.
On the river Itchen
John strokes his beard, thinks
about brewing tea.

It is meant to be an ordinary day.
But this month is a long-distance runner,
this month is a marathon.

On the other side of the narrow bridge,
a woman is taking two large black bags
into a charity shop. Suits and shirts,
all washed, dry-cleaned, ironed.
She had forgotten the silk ties.
Now they’re rolled up, placed
in a see-through Biza bag
that once held duty-free cologne.

May

Living one day at a time
will be like walking
through a tunnel, away
from being held by memories.
The smell of petrol, choking.
Cars driving close and fast.
The red rear lights in pairs,
an illusion of safety and warmth.

Do not turn round now, back
towards that day when you viewed
daffodils through a thin black
veil from a car at walking speed.
Decide to live this day.
Summer will slowly creep in,
its light, colour, the company
of bold blue, orange, pink,
the grass that will keep growing.

Item – poem and writing prompt

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Photo credit Stux via Pixabay

This week I am featuring another one of Kathleen Kummer’s poem. It’s short and the neutral title belies the heart-breaking content. The poem is addressed to her adult son.

Item

You left behind: your silver spoon –
there are days when I stir my coffee with it;
the drawing of yourself with the Mona Lisa eyes;
I sometimes wonder how you got the chestnut avenue
from that angle, and I’m suddenly happy, as though
you’d just sauntered in from school and were upstairs
moving your table, shouting down you were hungry;
all the photographs of you – if I flicked the pages
fast enough, would those in the top right-hand corner,
at least, spring jerkily into life?

Item: a bank account – didn’t you need
the money? Your sisters; me. People hope
I don’t mind them asking about you. As if
in a language I’m learning, I say, no, I don’t mind.

Prompt: What item do you still need to write about, even if a part of you doesn’t want to? To whom are you writing?

Journey – guest poet

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It’s a great pleasure introducing this month’s poet Pat Edwards. We met on Facebook and then discovered we both have a book with Indigo Dreams Publishing.

Pat is a writer, reviewer and workshop leader from mid Wales. She also offers a poetry feedback service on her site Gold Dust. Her work has appeared in Magma, Prole, Atrium, IS&T and many others. Pat hosts Verbatim open mic nights during more ‘normal’ times and curates Welshpool Poetry Festival. She has two pamphlets: Only Blood (Yaffle, 2019); Kissing in the Dark (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2020).

Today is Mother’s Day in many countries. Pat’s dedication for Only Blood reads ‘For Mum and Dad if only we could all try again.’ Here are three poems from Only Blood, followed by Journey, from Kissing in the Dark, in Pat’s honest and compassionate voice.

The year Mum died

She is cutting tiny pieces of foam rubber
to comfort-cushion her feet in pinch-painful shoes.

There’s that look in her eyes, the one I don’t yet understand,
that gives away the cell-division in her breast.

She has a box of keepsakes I’m allowed to sift through:
the silver clasp for keeping sixpences together;
the golden compact that clicks open to reveal a mirror;
the trace of bronze powder that smells like ladies.

Here in 1963 amongst the fullness of her skirt,
I am barely five and only know I love her.

Gems

I want to find my mother’s jewellery,
to lift the lid on a tin box
of paste and pearls;

to find drop earrings that glint,
necklaces that lie on collar bones,
a charm or two for luck.

I want her wedding band,
brooches that once fastened scarves,
all the souvenirs and sentiment.

But I bet the first went to pay the gas,
the second to buy the weekly shop,
the third towards a gambling debt.

Gee-gees

Teenage me always knew when he’d put on a bet.
The channel would get changed,
there would be an urgent tension,
tight as a fist.

We’d sit saying not a word,
for fear speaking would fracture us.
Then, in the closing furlongs,
I’d know for sure.

Dad would bounce on the edge of his seat,
building from a hushed Come on my beauty!
to blatant demand of it.

We would both urge the horse
across the finishing line,
jockey standing in his stirrups,
cracking the whip.

Then the relief.
Let’s get your hair done.
I can buy you a new coat.
As if I was my mother.

Journey

I draw a blue-black line under my eyes,
trace it across the tattoo on my left arm.
I watch it slide down the veins of my leg,
to settle in a grey graffiti pool by my feet.
That’s quite some journey I say out loud,
so the man on the train looks up from
his screen and glares at me like a priest.
My thin mouth flashes a penance smile
back at him and he absolves me I think.
That’s quite some journey I say silently
so the man in my dream looks up from
his book and smiles at me like a friend.
My full mouth offers him a lover’s kiss
which surely changes something I think.
I draw a blue-black line under everything.

They came at night – a war poem

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Credit Diane Moss on Pixabay

In the Netherlands, on the evening of 4 May, the war dead will be remembered. Here is my friend Kathleen Kummer’s poem about an event that happened in Holland during the Second World War. Kathleen’s mother-in-law was a published poet.

They came at night

Then there was the night they came for the horses.
There would have been no warning before
the clang of jackboots on the cobbles in the yard
of the outlying farm and the hammering on the door.

By the time they reached the edge of the village,
the farmers were up and had slipped their bare feet
into clogs. Behind the door, they were waiting
for the clattering of the hooves on the road to cease.

Not that there would have been silence as this farmer
moved, if need be at gunpoint, to the stable:
the shifting of hooves, the neighing, the whinnying,
he would know, without finding the words, meant betrayal,

his, as far as the horses knew,
which may be why he came to my mother-in-law’s.
I want that poem you wrote, he said,
that’s being passed round, about the horses.

And now I write mine, seventy years since then,
for when I can’t sleep, I often listen
as the clatter of hooves on those roads in Holland
swells in the peace of a night in Devon.