Second Place Rosette E-Book

• Herausgeber: The Emma Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Serie: The Emma Press Ovid
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 66

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

Second Place Rosette is a calendar of the customs, rituals and practices that make up life in modern Britain. The poems take in maypole dancing, mehndi painting, and medical prescriptions. Some events, like the Jewish Sabbath, happen every week; some, like the putting away of Christmas decorations, thankfully come only once a year. The subjects range from the universal to the personal: every family might have its own ritual, and each culture its own important figures to remember and commemorate. In the introduction, co-editor Emma Wright notes how, as the daughter of a refugee, she felt 'deeply disturbed by current discourse about Britishness and how it seems impossible to separate talk of national identity and pride from talk of exclusion and isolation.' Against that divisive rhetoric, Wright and co-editor Richard O'Brien have assembled a refreshingly inclusive take on national identity. Poets from different cultural backgrounds speak to their sense of what Britain means through their own daily lived experience, through what they care about on a grass-roots level. The nation which emerges from the poems is a patchwork quilt of betting tips and TV dinners, nights out on Bold Street and strolls in the park. While the years pass, the seasons cycle, and the people who make up the country change, these poets reveal how much stays the same. In Britain, there will always be a man running late who really should have been allowed to get the bus, and a warm spot by the fire in a pub in December. Much of the book displays an ambivalence towards the land and its rituals, but there is also love, affection and pride. Mixed feelings: what could be more British than that?

Leseprobe

SECONDPLACEROSETTE

POEMSABOUTBRITAIN

OTHERTITLESFROMTHEEMMAPRESS

POETRYANTHOLOGIES

The Emma Press Anthology of Aunts

The Emma Press Anthology of Love

Some Cannot Be Caught: The Emma Press Book of Beasts

In Transit: Poems of Travel

BOOKSFORCHILDREN

Queen of Seagulls, by Rūta Briede

The Book of Clouds, by Juris Kronbergs

Everyone’s the Smartest, by Contra

Once Upon A Time In Birmingham: Women Who Dared to Dream

PROSEPAMPHLETS

Postcard Stories, by Jan Carson

First fox, by Leanne Radojkovich

The Secret Box, by Daina Tabūna

Me and My Cameras, by Malachi O’Doherty

POETRYPAMPHLETS

Dragonish, by Emma Simon

Pisanki, by Zosia Kuczyńska

Who Seemed Alive & Altogether Real, by Padraig Regan

Paisley, by Rakhshan Rizwan

THEEMMAPRESSPICKS

The Dragon and The Bomb, by Andrew Wynn Owen

Meat Songs, by Jack Nicholls

Birmingham Jazz Incarnation, by Simon Turner

Bezdelki, by Carol Rumens

THEEMMAPRESS

First published in the UK in 2018 by the Emma Press Ltd.

Poems copyright © individual copyright holders 2018Selection copyright © Emma Wright and Richard O’Brien 2018

All rights reserved.

The right of Emma Wright and Richard O’Brien to be identified as the editors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

ISBN 978-1-910139-55-4

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

Printed and bound in the EU by Pulsio, Paris.

The Emma Press

theemmapress.com

[email protected]

Jewellery Quarter, Birmingham, UK

INTRODUCTION

‘Britishness’ is a battleground, and often it feels like the only thing we can say for certain is that the people who confidently claim to define it are usually talking bollocks.

To some, talking about ‘Britain’ for any length of time can smack of nationalism, jingoism, imperialism and misty-eyed fascism – all the bad -isms. But for some who have fled trauma to make these shores their home, the dismissal of any idea of national belonging – however arbitrary or fragile, however bound up in destructive institutions – might signal only the privilege of those who have always known where they belonged.

With the isolationism of Brexit looming, we wanted to explore the idea of Britain in a way that allowed for a multitude of interpretations: not denying the shameful aspects of our history, but recognising what we can be proud of. For all its flaws, Britain is the country that offered a better future to our parents and grandparents as immigrants from Ireland and refugees from Vietnam.

For this book, we decided to reject top-down, ‘official’ images of what it means to be British in favour of a grass-roots understanding of nationhood, borrowing the ‘almanac’ structure of the Fasti – a chronological compendium of  Roman beliefs and festivals by the Latin poet Ovid – and concentrating on holidays, customs and rituals.

Our selection process as editors started from the premise that anything can be a ritual, even if it only matters for one family or one person. Dean Atta’s ‘The Door’, for instance, explores the recurring experience of visiting a grandparent who refuses to put the central heating on, while Carolyn O’Connell’s ‘On July 28th’ describes a summer holiday feast with strolling neighbours popping their heads over the garden fence. Over the course of the year we see celebrations and moments of mourning; mehndi painting and Saturday soup; a pub Christmas dinner and the season’s aftermath, pine needles glittering on the floor.

What emerged from our submissions is a patchwork quilt of Britishness, made up of many fabrics and textures. We were surprised by some omissions in the work we received: no poets we chose addressed Easter, or Diwali, or St David’s Day, as significant customs. But the local focus of many writers brought its own riches: we have poems about snacking at the Sabbath, watching trash TV at Eid, the Abbots Bromley horn dance and the Haxey Hood.

The voices in this book are warm, plural, and distinctively individual. But as a collective, we feel these poets have captured something true and enduring about life on a bit of land shaped by its geography, its weather, and its sometimes painful history.

Emma Dai’an Wright and Richard O’Brien

BIRMINGHAM, OCTOBER 2018

CONTENTS

January

Twelfth Night, by Sarah Barr

The Haxey Hood: Clarifications and Confusions by Rob Walton

Lighthouse, by Casey Bailey

Up Helly Aa, by Cheryl Pearson

February

Lancashire Blues, by Claire Orchard

Children celebrate the arrival of the Sabbath, by Natalie Shaw

Leaflet accompanying his prescription, by Clare Best

The Door, by Dean Atta

March

The First of March, by Margot Myers

ABCs, by Shruti Chauhan

Tahara, by Aviva Dautch

Everything bad, by Fiona Moore

April

Mehndi Night, by Shruti Chauhan

Mending hedges, by Claire Askew

Liver Bird, by Beth L. Thompson

May

The Girl With the Rubber Boot, by Tracy Davidson

Maypole Dancing in 2000: Wellow, Nottinghamshire by D A Prince

Kernowek Stone, by Derek Littlewood

National Lottery, by Steve Harrison

June

Nettle eating contest, by Laura Seymour

Mrs J, by Clementine Ewokolo-Burnley

The Support Group, by Claire Collison

Midsummer 2017, by Julia Bird

July

Seaside Beauties, by Kim M. Russell

Showtime, by Nicola Jackson

Swan-Upping, by Ros Woolner

On July 28th, by Carolyn O’Connell

August

Carnival, Leicester, by Pam Thompson

Torchlight Procession, Sidmouth, by Tom Moyser

Break, by Fiona Moore

An Ordinary Miracle, by Louise Walker

Walnuts in August, by Maryam Hessavi

pastoral, by Maryam Hessavi

September

Conkers, by Ros Woolner

The Last Katlama, by Kibriya Mehrban

The Abbots Bromley Horn Dance, by Alan Buckley

Hi-Vis and the Whorl, by Claire Collison

October

Blackberrying, by Ramona Herdman

Edge Hill, by Oliver Comins

21st October, an apology to Cox and Russet by Kathy Pimlott

November

Mischief Night, by Carole Bromley

November 5th, by Cheryl Pearson

Fall Guy, Angela Kirby

Saturday Soup, by Roy Mcfarlane

Frank, by Nick Littler

Let’s all go down the pub, by Jerrold Bowam

December

December 8th, l943, by Angela Kirby

Tradition, by Ramona Herdman

The Queens Head at Christmas, by Hollie-Anne Slatcher

Boxing Day Mummer’s Play, by Ian Dudley

First-footing, by Jo Brandon

Hogmanay in the Hills, by Joan Lennon

Acknowledgements

About the editors

About the poets

About the Emma Press

Other books from the Emma Press

SARAHBARR

Twelfth Night

You unwind the lights.

The carpet crunches with needles

but the tree still looks healthy.

I lift tinsel and unhook baubles,

the mother of pearl star,

milky glass teardrop,

pink raffia people,

Peruvian clay bells,

and homemade fairy cat,

put them all in the box.

Still glitter-dust may linger

tucked in edges behind the sofa.

You drag the tree out, down the path,

chop it in pieces, onto the bonfire,

create festivities of smoke, sparks, flames.

ROBWALTON

The Haxey Hood

Clarifications and Confusions

So I was talking to Russ

about never having seen it

and my parents just a couple of villages away

and we tried piecing the rules together

pleased that there were few

but we came up with lots of questions.

In this or that rolling maul,

this ruck in motion and most likely mud,

who really holds sway and can be swayed

in these parts at this time?

If the scrum collapses

and people help each other to their feet

as the battle rages, how much of a hand

offered to others is acceptable

in this place, in this day and age?

When folk are trying to get this thing

to one local pub or another

where Haxey and Westwoodside people

drink local beer with other locals, would I be welcome

if I only knew the rules

to other games?

On the Twelfth Day of Christmas

(only never on a Sunday)

when this moving scrimmage sways

would it be all right to nip off

and take my Christmas tree down?