Red Devon E-Book

Hilary Menos

• Herausgeber: Seren
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 45

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2013

Beschreibung

In 1997 Hilary Menos and her family left Camden for a farmhouse in rural Devon. Over the next ten years, with her husband and three young sons, she transformed fifteen scrubby acres into a hundred acre organic farm. They kept Red Devon cattle and Wiltshire Horn sheep, made bacon and ham, grew vegetables. In 2009, with the organic market in decline, they decided to scale back, selling most of the livestock, the farmhouse, and part of the land. In Red Devon this 'blow-in' from 'upcountry' reveals her experiences of moving into a tight-knit rural community, and examines the human and animal costs of the conflict between traditional farming and modern commercial agriculture. She also tells the story of a burgeoning love affair between farmer Grunt Garvey and haulier Jo Tucker, a romance which ends in tragedy. Alongside these two stories, one fictional and one very real, runs a concern for farmers around the world threatened by global forces. "Hilary Menos confirms her reputation as one of the strongest emerging voices in British poetry. These are local poems in the best sense, rooted in a particular ground and community, but the poems of Red Devon deserve - and will find - a much wider readership." - Michael Symmons Roberts "Menos creates small worlds packed tight, seamless, masterfully compressed. Her poems have wit, range and strength; they are contemporary, varied and highly imaginative." - Ruth Padel

Leseprobe

Red Devon

To organic farmers and smallholders everywhere

Hilary Menos

Red Devon

Seren is the book imprint of

Poetry Wales Press Ltd.

57 Nolton Street, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 3AE

www.serenbooks.com

Facebook: facebook.com/SerenBooks

Twitter: @SerenBooks

The right of Hilary Menos to be identified as

the author of this work has been asserted in accordance

with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.

© Hilary Menos 2013

ISBN print: 978-1-78172-054-7

ISBN kindle: 978-1-78172-056-1

ISBN e-book: 978-1-78172-055-4

A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.

The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Welsh Books Council.

Cover photograph: Shastajak

Printed in Bembo by Berforts Group, Stevenage.

Author’s Website: http://www.hilarymenos.co.uk/

Contents

The Ballad of Grunt Garvey and Jo Tucker

Being Grunt Garvey

Knackerman

Burgoo

Grunt’s Bane

Wheelbarrow Farm

Mates Rates

The Blue Hour

Colin

Rammed

The Great Hog Oiler Round Up

The Harrowing

Badger Season

Full Load

Kingdom Come

Once Upon a Time in the West

A Load of Old Bull

New Blood

Shoot Supper

Tercio de Muerte

The Ballad of Grunt Garvey and Jo Tucker

Shambles

Agnus Scythicus

Witches’ Broom

Shambles

Pigweed

Pietà

Kissing Cousins

Red Tide

Dead Zone

Long Pig

Operation Blessing

Pig Out

UK 364195

Bob’s Dogs

Stock Take

The Organic Farming Calendar

Woodcock Hay

Portrait of the Artist as Venus Anadyomene

Aileen

Red Rosette

Handshake

The Deal

Viaticum

Cleave Farm

UK 364195

Fat Hen, Few Eggs

Milk Fever

Acknowledgements and notes

The Ballad of Grunt Garvey and Jo Tucker

The secret of a good ley is a firm bottom

– Devon farming proverb

Being Grunt Garvey

Winsome is sixteen today. She sprawls

like a crumpled ballerina straddling the drainage gully

while her sisters mill around and munch hay.

Grunt brooms slurry off the concrete floor.

There’s more than one way to skin a cow

but, this being Grunt Garvey, he will do it the one way

and sling her from the spike with webbing strops

like the special delivery under a stork’s beak

or Darcey Bussell performing a grand jeté.

It could all go wrong. I see her paddling the air,

the noose – which it is – too high, too low, or both

and, this being Grunt Garvey, things don’t go to plan –

she proves to be quite the Houdini, although

it’s rather more than two minutes thirty-six seconds

before she hits the straw with a wet thud.

Grunt goes for the JCB with the gap-toothed scoop

to shovel her up like chippings, or so much grain.

Of course it can’t go wrong, but this being, etc.

she rolls in like a set of bagpipes with a low moan,

steam from her paunch soft-focussing her face

and more than a little damage to her tail bone.

Midday tomorrow, if she’s not on her feet

(on pointes if you’re chasing the extended metaphor)

the local knackerman will bring his gun

and attempt a short duet

before Winsome struts her stuff for the last time

along the tightrope of his winch and chain

into his tatty van. For those familiar with the charm

of a cow’s final fouetté,

this is a good time to look away.

* grand jeté – a ballet term indicating a long horizontal jump

* on pointes – dancing on the tips of the toes

* fouetté – a quick whipping around of the body from one direction to another

Knackerman

Rattling down the lane comes John Teague,

eager to please, eager to do his job,

partly because he is four days late

and the ewe dumped by the shed is on the turn.

Don’t ask him what he knows,

John Teague, with his aura of flies,

one eye up the chimney, one eye down the pot,

leaving nothing but a damp stain on the road.

He knows the inside of a pig’s mind.

To put his gun to the back of a ram’s head.

How a cow falls to her knees as if in prayer

in this reverse nativity in a half-dark byre.

Burgoo

“You got livestock, you got dead stock,” hollers Grunt.

He slams the tailgate, waves Teague off the farm.

Stan from Stags has come to talk about forms

and how everyone’s going to die of BSE.

In the kitchen Stan’s telling Dad about New Variant CJD.

Grunt makes mugs of instant on the Rayburn.

Mum says she knows a man with a sponge for a brain.

Dad says he knows a mad cow

but they must be proper mental in Kentucky,

eating road-kill varmints in a stew.

“A few ears short of a bushel,” says Stan,

“and five of them dead too.”

What sort of varmints, Grunt wants to know.

“Used to be squirrel or possum,” says Stan,

“but these days it’s beef or lamb.”

New Variant burgoo.

“Eggs and brains,” says Mum, “the butcher’s treat,

we had that every week when we were young.”

“No wonder your brains are scrambled,” says Grunt,

and throws his slops down the sink.

That night they sit out, skimming stones on the slurry.

Teague says, “Remember the road-kill kid,

spit-roast rats, hedgehogs wrapped in mud,

what happened to him?”