A poem that has two fathers in it, with a photo of the actual building.
When Sunday is not a day of rest
Two narrow wooden benches form the arena. Both gladiators enter through the main left door. The one with the brown perm has an entourage: three boys (one with red hair), a girl with braces, and the eldest son with glasses, the creepy smile inherited from his father, a businessman with butter in his mouth who happens to be our uncle. As church elder, he’ll collect in the interval, holds out a long wooden pole with black velvet bag. Both gladiators buy at Stoutebeek, the town’s upmarket department store.
Our gladiator has better legs, better posture, a striking hat, which makes up for just three of us. She is a semi-professional singer. Our gladiator chose to marry the controller of church proceedings – the organist. Outside, afterwards, the light ammunition of smiles, air kisses and compliments.
I’ve just renewed my annual Museum pass. With a typical entry fee of 15 Euros, it’s well worth it: over 400 Dutch museums take part. There is usually a top-up fee for major exhibitions. I wrote the prose poem on a recent workshop.
Exhibitions
You can’t just wake up and decide to visit an exhibition. Not a major show. You must book a ticket online beforehand and choose a time slot. I managed to get one, Saturday lunchtime, for the Manhattan Masters. Rembrandt, aged 52, poster boy.
I was way too early (I’d gone with Astrid to collect her prize from the Xmas competition and have our photo taken) so I ended up buying books in all three bookshops near the Mauritshuis. Manhattan Masters, ten paintings over from New York while the Frick is being refurbished. The Fricks went to Europe to buy, do the grand tour. They were booked to travel back on the Titanic. She sprained her ankle and they postponed.
I won’t even tell you about the Vermeer at the Rijksmuseum, the coloured lines on the floor, everyone taking photos, the horse-tooth woman who needed to be in the photo with the painting. I gave up after 30 minutes. I think it’s well-known that the exhibitions of prehistoric art take place in replica caves with fake bones and spotlights on those red hand prints and bison on the walls. I’ll give it a miss. I’ll order the catalogue and a pack of six postcards from the museum shop online.
Friendship is the theme of this year’s Poetry Week, celebrated in The Netherlands and the Flemish-speaking part of Belgium through 400+ events. It starts on Thursday 26 January. Miriam Van Hee (B) and Hester Knibbe (NL), two poets who have been friends for almost 40 years were commissioned to write five poems each for a book. In a recent interview they said that trust and curiosity are key elements for a friendship to endure and last.
Anyone who spends over 12,50 Euro on poetry books during Poetry Week will be given a copy. It’s not hard to spend that sort of money, as poetry books are expensive in The Netherlands!
Here is my poem on the theme of friendship: memories of a long weekend in Vienna in 1994.
Vienna
I would gladly return, walk with Wendy through the rain to the museum, see the Hunters on the Hill – tired, wet dogs, in the Little Ice Age when frozen birds fell from the sky.
I would gladly go back there, view grey buildings slide past, hear the clanging bell. Schwedenplatz, umsteigen. A trolley bus securely attached to the two lines above.
Storks are said to bring happiness. The bird has been the official emblem of The Hague for centuries. Until the beginning of the last century, storks with clipped wings walked the many fish markets in the city, keeping the streets clean.
I hope this new year will bring health and happiness to you and those you hold dear. The poem is from my new collection Remembering / Disease published last October by Broken Sleep Books. It first appeared in the online magazine Dust, edited by Tara Wheeler.
Storks also feature in my poem High wind. It was selected as one of 20 poems by a jury for the Poetry Archive’s Poetry Archive Now! Wordview 2022. You can see and hear me read it here.
Waiting
The water meadows are waiting for the storks to return
always invisible the other side of her face
in this book there is snow on every page
even an old potato can be turned into a Christmas stamp
the naming of colours is not a science. I vote for bird’s nest grey
One of the most enjoyable things I did recently was read the manuscript of FEET. Elsa Fischer had asked if I would write a ‘blurb’ for her collection coming out a few weeks from now. Elsa’s poems from her two pamphlets (Palmistry in Karachi, Hourglass) have featured here in May 2020.
erbacce press in Liverpool run an annual poetry competition. In 2012 I was a runner-up and had 12 poems in the quarterly magazine, along with an interview. There were around 6,000 other entries. This year over 15,000 poets worldwide sent a selection of their work. Elsa’s submission was one of three to achieve publication.
Elsa was a young child in The Netherlands during WW2 and her collection includes some poems about that experience. Here is Hunger Winter about the winter 1944/45, followed by the poem Remembrance Sunday.
Veteranendag, Den Haag
Since 2005, the last Saturday in June has become ‘Veteranendag’, a day to honour the more than 100,000 Dutch veterans. There is a flypast and a parade of over 3,500 serving soldiers, several forces’ orchestras, old and new equipment. On the Malieveld, the large green area near The Hague central station, are marquees and vehicles. A good PR opportunity: the army, navy and air force all need recruits …
Hunger winter
To blunt the pangs of hunger my mother would copy recipes. In her wartime diary, between salmon mousse and boeuf bourguignon I find the birthdays of uncles and aunts, lists of friends, their ‘phone numbers in four digits. Crossed out the names of those who perished. Lines of French poetry: how dawn had chased the night the poet would have wanted to last longer. A list of socks, hats, underwear and who she knitted for. A monthly record of her bleeding. Exclamation marks around my name on a page in September.
Remembrance Sunday
One hundred years old. And two months, he adds and in my regiment the last man standing. Holding a globe he points at El Alamein. That was a good one, he says. Grins.
This w/end my poet friend Kathleen Kummer will be celebrating her 94th birthday. We first met 20 years ago on a writing week held near Cambridge. Kathleen lived and worked in The Netherlands after marrying a Dutchman.
To mark her special day, I’m posting a poem from her debut collection Living below sea level, published by Oversteps Books. The poem first appeared in the original 14 magazine, edited by Mike Loveday.
Whistling for Stalin
Circus performer summoned to the dacha, you arrived empty-handed, no sign of the treasure at the tip of your tongue. The signal was given, you pursed your lips, made them a channel, floated a tune on a cushion of air, like a bird in a cage, lusciously trilling. They sat around in their white, belted tunics, he and his henchmen, legs stretched out rigid, but ready to jack-knife to a Georgian folk song.
Did your whistling enliven the poker-face, make it genial? When he clicked his fingers, your tune slid back into its voice-box. How much did you know about Uncle Joe? When you whistle, you’re bound to sound carefree.
Fruit & veg, toms, salad, mayo, salmon, ½ loaf … I’ve not yet managed to write a shopping list in Dutch even when the words are shorter (sla) or similar abbreviations (gr & fruit). It’s too much hard work late on a Thursday evening when I’m sitting with a glass of wine (wijn) and contemplating the moving project: flooring, top-down & bottom-up blinds, two chairs – ordered; research on fridge/freezers needed, also a new GP practice and pharmacist.
Here in the Netherlands the distance is important: the GP must be able to get to your home within 10 minutes. That doesn’t mean it’s easy to register. In Scheveningen (where I spent the winter) three practices did not take on new patients or had a four-month’ waiting list. A tomato a day may keep the doctor away …
Tomatoes
I am stepping away from my life, my life as short as a haiku. I have turned biographer, am writing vignettes, pale green, the length of celery.
My vignettes may concern elderly mules with dental decay, the struggle to remember maternal aunts. I am numbering my vignettes 1A, 1B, 1C, 1D – narrow seats in the small airplane Aer Lingus would use on the late Saturday flight.
I could write a vignette about the plastic dummies they use in ambulance training. Today I’m going to focus on pretend tomatoes. My invisible friend has started her new diet.
Tomorrow is the first Monday of the month when the 4,000+ alarms through the Netherlands are tested. This alarm-and-warning system was set up after the Second World War. The monthly test stopped after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and for a period the sirens were only tested once a year. The government wanted to introduce a warning system by mobile telephone, but this did not prove effective. So, from September 2003 the monthly sounds can be heard for exactly 1 minute and 26 seconds.
The alarms aren’t rung if the first Monday falls on a religious or national public holiday, or on the national Remembrance Day of 4 May. This month, the Dutch people will be reminded beforehand that the sound is just a test.
On Monday I am sending the final manuscript of my collection Remembering / Disease to Aaron Kent at Broken Sleep Books. I have chosen a poem from the new book that includes a siren and want to thank Isabelle Kenyon of Fly on the Wall Press for first selecting it.
Credit: TBIT via Pixabay
Voice
I’m scared of the voice that tells me to let go of the wheel it’s an old man’s harsh gritty cold pushing me that time Monday sunny A487 heading for Porthmadog
black figures carry bags home whatever home might mean
silence only sirens calling the dog-end of the year
falling is kind of doing something you can fall sideways head-first backwards I have worked all these years to stay upright running like a rabbit on a metal track
If the United Kingdom was still in the EU, I could have carried on driving on my British licence for another five years here in NL. I discovered recently I only have a few weeks left to convert the UK licence into a Dutch one!
Because of my age, I need a medical. Getting booked in with a local GP would have taken too long. Online I found ‘Rijbewijsdokter.nl’ and I and got myself an appointment for yesterday morning at a hotel in Leiden. The regional bus from The Hague stops right in front. The hotel has a great location: by the side of the Old Rhine river, close to Leiden station.
Eyes ok, blood pressure ok, urine ok. The medic did the form online after I left. It’s an automated process, a few hours later the confirmation came that I’m fit to drive. I’ve put in a request with the Town Hall for an urgent appointment to sort out the paperwork.
Totem
Three years since I gave away the blue hatchback for a pile of dirty £20 notes.
I made sure I removed it from its space behind the handbrake where it had kept me safe on motorways, on narrow lanes in Cornwall, Devon, Suffolk, on roundabouts in Holland with their shark’s teeth. Kept me safe for almost thirty years.
A bunny from Liberty’s in King Street (long since gone). Fluffy ears, tiny brown boots, denim trousers.
Today is dovetailed between yesterday’s National Tulip Day and Blue Monday. NationaleTulpen Dag is an initiative started by Dutch tulip growers 10 years ago. On the third Saturday of January, about 200, 000 tulips are placed on the Dam Square in Amsterdam. These free flowers start the tulip season. This year people will be handed two bunches and are asked to give one to someone else – share the happiness.
Credit: WCoda on Pixabay
Research seems to have pinpointed the third Monday in January as the worst day of the year. There was some easing of the lockdown here in The Netherlands. However, the hospitality and cultural sector are still closed. I’m leaning more towards being blue … Here is my poem about tulips.
Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds
They’ve not yet reached one of the tulips, the central one of this display. You can imagine a window, if you like. Five parrot tulips lean towards the light. Degrees of purpling. The ants appear half-way up the bulb-shaped vase. I’ve left the thin pencil lines indicating a flat surface. Look closely and you’ll see this vase should tumble, fall or slip. Three fingers’ width, water level in the glass. Greying water extracted. The tulips were a present. You can count the ants, if you like.
Note: This is the title of a watercolour painting, donated by the (anonymous) artist to Manchester Art Gallery. The poem was published in my second collection Nothing serious, nothing dangerous (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2019).
Acacia Publications 