Blood Salt Spring E-Book

Hannah Lavery

• Herausgeber: Polygon
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Seitenzahl: 49

Beschreibung

From Hannah Lavery, Edinburgh's Makar. 'Speaks to and for the conflicted conscience of Scotland ... with a power and authenticity like perhaps no other' – The Scotsman In a moment that is demanding you to constantly choose your side, how do you find your humanity, your own voice, when you are being pushed to find safety in numbers? Blood Salt Spring is a meditation on where we are – exploring ideas of nation, race and belonging. Much of the collection was written in lockdown and speaks to that moment, the isolation and the traumas of 2020 but it also looks to find some meaning and makes an attempt to heal the pain and vulnerabilities that were picked and cut open again in the recent cultural shifts and political wars. Organised into three sections this book takes the reader on a journey from the old inherited wounds, the trauma of tearing open again these chasms within recent discourses and events, to a hopeful spring, where pain and trauma can be laid down and a new future can be imagined. In this collection, the poet has sought to heal these salted wounds, and move out of winter and into spring – into hope.  The National Theatre of Scotland has launched a new digital visual album, Blood, Salt, Spring - a digital accompaniment to Hannah Lavery's collection. You can view the visual album  here .

Leseprobe

BLOOD | SALT | SPRING

First published in Great Britain in 2022 by

Polygon, an imprint of Birlinn Ltd.

Birlinn Ltd

West Newington House

10 Newington Road

Edinburgh EH9 1QS

9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

www.polygonbooks.co.uk

Copyright © Hannah Lavery, 2022

The right of Hannah Lavery to be identified as the author

of this work has been asserted in accordance with the

Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced,

stored, or transmitted in any form, or by any means electronic,

mechanical or photocopying, recording or otherwise, without

the express written permission of the publisher.

ISBN 978 1 84697 607 0

EBOOK ISBN 978 1 78885 490 0

British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available

from the British Library.

The publisher gratefully acknowledges investment from

Creative Scotland towards the publication of this book.

Typeset in Verdigris mvb by Polygon, Edinburgh

Printed and bound in Great Britain by Clays Ltd, Elcograf S.p.A.

For Beldina Odenyo

CONTENTS

BLOOD

I have rubies sewn in . . .

Questions of Percentage

The Galley Kitchen

The Long Walk

Cartographer’s Trap

Pocket Money

Inheritance

Make a Den

Last in the Film

Backwards

The System, 1985

My Mum Wears Pink Lipstick

Leeds Cathedral

Six of One and Half a Dozen of the Other

Filled Notebooks

Halfling

Grieving

Remix for the Brown Girl

15th December 2014

SALT

Now only the supervised showing of skin

Fake News

Untitled

Black Cat

Spilt Milk

We’ll Be Polar Bears

Fragments, 2021

The Way of Things

Everyday Racism

The Anti-Racist Working Group

Hush Now (Shitty Brown)

Scotland, You’re No Mine

Thirty Laughing Emojis

I Sang You Rainbow Songs

Abigail Says She’s a Witch

The Wild Names Us

Plastic Binoculars

Japanese Mountain

Kissing Toads

You Missed the Birds

Dear Mum

Daily Exercise (and Shopping Online)

Proposal

Snowdrops

Lapwings

SPRING

I would be powered by only you

Firefly

Flying Bats

Bears

Outwith (Writing Workshop on Zoom)

Rewrites

Poetry Platforms

Chapel

The Perfect Shade

Glorious

Mind the Gap

Missed Trains

Leaves Fall Gold

Murmuration Passes

Broken Shell

Day of Our Dead

Cassandra

Mum’s Things

Them Apples

Preserving the Sun

Fifteen Year Honey

The Poet and Her Son

It’s This

Green

Acknowledgements

A note on the author

BLOOD

I have rubies sewn in . . .

QUESTIONS OF PERCENTAGE

are you done

with the percentages – yet?

which side are we

falling down on – then?

THE GALLEY KITCHEN

In her narrow kitchen

above the pinboard

with the calendar

from the Chinese takeaway

and a family photo that came in the post

she imagines a picture of the Pope

(beside a picture of the Queen).

Watching over her

as she brings the soup

up to boil. Gazing upon her

as she adds in cannonballs

of peppercorn.

THE LONG WALK

I have rubies sewn in, but he

says, that this is where I am

this room with its three-bar heat.

In our afternoon stupor, Bing Crosby

emerges in low hum, and we

sit here in this cardboard house

tea drinking and bickering like cats

but I have these blisters buried deep

and a whip of the fronds on my back

and even in this central heat I am cold

sweat. In my hand, I am still

holding Aunty’s tiffin tin, still

putting off the chore of serving her

lunch in her cane chair

in her golden throne – Buddha Aunt.

I light candles in the cathedral

incense in the chapel, hold ledger

and spice. Swing the tiffin offering

before removing silk slip, pushing over my ayah

to run free – calling for my brother but

met by Mother Jamaica at the shore

reaching in to our great ruby days

with old shackles

she burns sage.

Takes my dying brother

from my arms

(leaving me his hand always to hold).

This handing down of corpses.

We wear bones. Smuggle

them with the golden bangles. Each

one an inheritance to hold

as our neighbours lay down in the ditch

to die. Our black crone pulls at the tree

handing my mother an urging of fronds

for when they put us out like rats

in their kitchen, like bats in their attic

(she hands down the palm switch).

In this refuge, he croons, this is the end

of my story, but I carry these blisters

and hold out this lash of bound leaf . . .

He gets another pot of tea and fetches

the packet of McVities. I will like this one

he announces, and we spend the rest of our day

watching my war made real

with white faces. I say it wasn’t

like that, except the planes.

The planes were really bombed

before we could get to them. We

really did have to walk. Did you

know? I tell my granddaughter

my mother made a switch from a palm tree

to whip me up the road when I wanted

to lie down and die

You wanted to die?

She cries.

CARTOGRAPHER’S TRAP

She always loved a fresh start

like she always loved fresh sheets

a new dress and the start of the school year

but she never thought they would leave

and when it came, the leaving

it was not fresh but stale.

She pulled all she was behind her

and left. They all did. Leaving

only weight. A dent of their dragging.

Yes, she always loved a fresh start

but this leaving was bloodshot

snot faced, tear streaked. A leaving

without orchestra.

Her land hidden in her knickers

a secret wee piss stain.

POCKET MONEY

He never had a wallet

kept his money like dirty hankies

stuffed in back pockets

was always losing fivers

money slipping away like eels

to be found stranded

in sofa cracks

dragging knuckles

stuck to the arses of jockeys.

Stuffed in back pockets

falling out, like family.

INHERITANCE

For my sisters