Tag Archives: poem

Joan

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To honour International Women’s Day I’m posting this poem about a woman.  It was first published in The Best of Manchester Poets, vol. 2, published by Puppywolf (2011).  I aimed to give the reader enough clues (the Gauloises cigarettes, the stubborn streak) for them to be able to guess the identity of this woman before they read the final lines.

It’s a good prompt: with which historical figure (famous or infamous) could you have gone to school, college, university with?  Did you even sit next to them in the classroom?  What were they like then?

Joan

One of the girls I went to college with

was Joan who’d left home early.

She smoked Gauloises, had a stubborn

streak, wanted to study philosophy.

We thought she was depressed; she cut

herself and once put out a cigarette on her arm.

I wish I’d asked her why.  I can see her now

with that hair cropped short, staring straight ahead.

People shouting, the smoke, the crackling fire.

Too hot, I need to step back.

 

 

 

 

Paterson

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During the Christmas holidays I went to see Paterson, the delightful film about a bus driver who writes poems.  The poems in the film are by the New York poet Ron Padgett.  Back home I found his work in the New York Poets II Anthology, including the Love Poem that Paterson writes in the film.  The first line is: We have plenty of matches in our house. 

Paterson is also the title of a long poem by William Carlos Williams, so I re-read him.  Seeing Paterson sit in his bus scribbling away each morning before he drives off for the day reminded me of another American poet, William Stafford.  He wrote a poem each day, starting with a brief description of the weather, then a short aphorism, then a poem.  I believe his “hit rate” for acceptances was 1 : 7, or 1: 8.  I’ll settle for that!

May you have a healthy, happy and creative year.  If you’re short on inspiration, you can always write about the matches in your house.  Over Christmas I used up a couple of boxes of good old “Svalan” from Sweden.  Now I’ m on “Flix” from the Netherlands.  The packaging is modern, but the tips are brown…