Thorpeness E-Book

Alison Brackenbury

• Herausgeber: Carcanet Poetry
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

There is something richly circumstantial about Alison Brackenbury's poems: they are often rooted in a rural world, or in townscapes which sustain communities and preserve a strong sense of their history and what it gives them.Thorpeness has delicious surprises, among them 'Aunt Margaret's Pudding', a rewarding culinary experience based on a black-covered handwritten notebook of recipes from Dorothy Eliza Barnes, 'Dot', the poet's grandmother. 'When I knew Dot, she was a Lincolnshire shepherd's wife. But, as a young woman, she had been an Edwardian professional cook,' the poet explains, making her notebook a resource for the contemporary reader.The world of nature – birds, plants, weathers – comes alive in poem after poem, but there are also important poems of nurture. Brackenbury belongs in a long line of rural and provincial poets who bring England alive in forms and rhythms of renewal. She is a familiar radio voice, performing her won poems and narrating programmes she has scripted.

Leseprobe

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Thorpeness

ALISON BRACKENBURY

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CONTENTS

Title PageNorburyPurple HazeFernCucuMay 9thSunday on the coachPostcard1975PonyWork experienceSummitShepherd BrackenburyScythian ice burialStableGoing to the yard on May 19thPony. Blind. Age: thirty-one.HopeNear Lakeside SchoolBishop Norton, 1932W.J.SeamarksThe oldest tree in Mercombe WoodThe Staffordshire HoardHousehold godsWoods, and usArrivalAlong the roadThe Aldeburgh herringThe Green Plover (Lapwing)Apollo, 1968LostSt Mary’s Church, Patshull (redundant)6ElderThe disused stablesMeeting 1919Ethel: shots from a lifeFoundMatchedOn the edgeCar park, Christmas EveMy grandmother waits for ChristmasToadstools, New YearJanuary 1stJ.The Queen’s apartments in the Palace of HolyroodhouseTerritoriesMr Hill and meThe woods of Bohemia6.59King’s Cross HotelAunt Margaret’s PuddingStart All change High-class foodIngredients Dot Summer fruit SamphireLincolnshire waterThe Lincolnshire ChronicleOn Horkstow HillYour great-granddaughter cooksBefore they wakeThe train: 1993, 2020Willow patternThe signs of spring7Mothering SundayThe last day of MarchMid-MarchMarch 4thWednesday on the 97Wellington SquareThe country writers‘My Lady Newcastle… in a large black coach.’Thomas Hardy sends an emailDirectionsJenny Joseph‘Honeymoon’AfterPacking the papersCharles Dickens at homeFlashShingleAcknowledgementsAbout the Author Also by Alison BrackenburyCopyright8

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NORBURY

(a hill in Gloucestershire)

I was almost hurled in the ditch.

For my first mad pony would switch

from gallop to halt in one stride.

Each ride he would swerve, fling me back

to the deep, tumbled gorge by the track.

Dark beeches hung on each side.

A hill fort? No life but its name;

‘Norbury’, mapped ‘Iron Age’. The same

June wind conjured sweat, flies, of course.

I soothed the tossed sun-bleached mane down

by the dyke, rough grave to the town,

bones of child, wrecked fighter, horse.

What are twenty years to hill wind?

I trudge, horses out-lived. I find

the highest beech drought-struck. A rich

crest springs: orange fungus. Its throat

gapes to the war-trumpet’s long note,

the lost leader’s last lying which

tumbled us all in the ditch.

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PURPLE HAZE

When Jimi glanced into his small attic mirror

while parting his lips, unteasing his hair,

in a candle-like glint he saw George Frideric Handel

alarmingly wigless, alarmingly there.

‘What have you been taking?’ said Handel to Hendrix.

‘Only the usual,’ Jimi replied.

‘I adore your high notes,’ Handel whispered. ‘But listen!

You cannot cheat sleep. I went blind when I tried.

Make friends with your sound man. Then fix the fuzz pedal.

But discipline, boy! Cut your endless tracks short.’

Jimi shook his fine head. With no more breaths to meddle

George sank to roast chicken, his cellars of port.

From 1968 to 1969 Jimi Hendrix lived in an upstairs flat at 23 Brook Street, London, next door to Handel’s long-term home. He claimed that he had seen Handel’s ghost: an old man, with a grey pigtail, wearing a nightshirt. Handel reputedly went blind because of the hours he spent copying out his music by candlelight. His huge meals were legendary.

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FERN

Does anyone wear ‘buttonholes’?

We made them for the village fete.

So I was sent up to the gate

of the old man who would have gone

to ‘Grammar,’ if they could have bought

a crested cap, soft shoes for sport.

He passed from village desk to farm.

The one girl he had waited for

ran to an airman in the War.

His sister kept the tiny house.

A courteous, clever man, all said.

In June heat, at a long lane’s end

through the blue gate, on a grass path

I stepped beneath the roses’ cloud.

I saw him bend to stakes, head bowed

by billows of asparagus fern

for farmhand’s collar, or the Queen,

webbed, spread like hands, its tiny veins

crisp as dead leaf, all green, so green.

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CUCU

Quick April’s coolest voice,

its cry came commonplace.

On farms for forty years

it flew to the same place.

Droughts, shooting leave it rare.

Now June’s hard rain is falling,

so long, so late, so clear

why is the cuckoo calling?

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MAY 9TH

She wears a sun hat. The child wears a sun hat,

perched before her on the bike. They dip

along their path, beside the motorway

whose trees crowd thick.

                                        There is no murder,

no accident. The air stays calm.

Only that flicker in the mind forever,

of oak, lit ash, harsh reek of hawthorn, shadow.

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