A Square of Sunlight E-Book

Meg Cox

• Herausgeber: The Poetry Business
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 34

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Fearless and unsentimental, this remarkable collection encapsulates a whole lifetime. Sometimes serious but always fun, these poems are accepting in the face of heartbreak and often ground world events (such as the assassination of JF Kennedy) in among the business of being human. A Square of Sunlight has a wise understanding about how people work that can only be gained from living life to the full with honesty and joy.

Leseprobe

A Square of Sunlight

Published 2021 by The Poetry Business

Campo House,

54 Campo Lane,

Sheffield S1 2EG

www.poetrybusiness.co.uk

Copyright © Meg Cox 2021

The moral rights of the author have been asserted.

ISBN 978-1-912196-85-2

eBook ISBN 978-1-912196-86-9

All rights reserved.

Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

Designed & typeset by The Poetry Business.

Printed by Imprint Digital.

Cover Painting: Together by Rose Arbuthnott (rosearbuthnottartist.co.uk)

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Smith|Doorstop is a member of Inpress

www.inpressbooks.co.uk.

Distributed by NBN International, 1 Deltic Avenue,

Rooksley, Milton Keynes MK13 8LD.

The Poetry Business gratefully acknowledges the support of Arts Council England.

Contents

A Square of Sunlight

The Law of Unintended Consequences

Stan

‘She was the kind of person who keeps a parrot’

Showing Promise

The Best Medicine

Aldermaston March 1962

1963

Second Person Personal

Break

Very Small Italians

Ah Yes I Remember It Well

Flat Lands

Sometimes It’s a Quiet Poem

The Next Holiday

Tourists

The Third Person in the Marriage

Europe

Awake at Night

Cadeau

Recollected in Herefordshire

Nightingales

L’esprit de l’escalier

‘a boy falling out of the sky’

I’ll Never Again

Near Ypres

Today’s Headlines

LBJs

Impressions of Jordan from a Car

Remember This

Dear Frank O’Hara

Strawberries

Argos

Bird of Prey

Brief Encounter

Cowlick

Never Mind D H Lawrence

Wearing Purple

Red Tulips

Déjà Vu at the Surgery

Just When You Thought You Were Safe

Five a Day

Woman’s Hour

Faithless

Not So Much

Mismatch

Ode to my Bosch SPS 20/24

Sea Fever

One Reason to Go Out When It’s Raining

Brian

I Could Kill that Bloody Dog

M40 to M42 to M5

This is an Announcement

Garden Cows

Marmalade

The Local Park

My Friend the Prize-Winning Poet

Landing

For Deborah Almapoet, generous mentor and loved friend

A Square of Sunlight

She dawdled home as usual through the town

with school friends. One was left at the station

another at the library. Three of them stopped

at the bakers in the High Street for free stale cakes

and after some window shopping by the time

she reached the Butter Cross she was on her own.

She turned into the Close and took the short cut

through the Cathedral, in the front and out the back,

touching the Jane Austen grave, then hurrying

under St Swithuns church, into Kingsgate Street,

through the garage to the front door at the back

under the scent of ripening pears against the wall.

The hall, shadowy dining room and its candle smell,

through the breakfast room, by the walk-in larder,

shedding satchel, blazer, boater and shoes as she went

into the kitchen, back door open, and her dad

in his cricket whites, prone and beating his fist

on the quarry tiled floor in a square of sunlight.

The Law of Unintended Consequences

I blame my mother.

Aged four I ran home

from school to tell her

my new word ‘fuck’.

I didn’t say it twice.

She said she didn’t

even like to think it,

let alone speak it

and it was a very,

very naughty word.

I said it a lot after that:

in my bedroom

under the bedclothes

savouring its sinful sound,

and aloud when alone

walking the dog

in the water meadows,

practising for my future.

Stan

Cricket Field Road in Horsham

was where I went once a week

for piano lessons with

the village organist, a family friend.

I can remember walking

along that road admiring my feet

in new Clarks sandals

but few other memories.

I do remember a metronome on the top

of the shiny black upright piano

and Stan’s shiny black hair.

I would remember more

but luckily for me Stan liked to play