Tormentil E-Book

Ian Humphreys

• Herausgeber: Nine Arches Press
• Kategorie: Poesie und Drama
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 37

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2023

Beschreibung

'I can't face the big stuff so I comb the moors for a tiny yellow flower' – so begins Tormentil, the second poetry collection by Ian Humphreys. Set largely in the starkly beautiful West Yorkshire moorlands, these poems creep and bloom across geographies and time. Isolated by grief in the first months of the pandemic, Humphreys goes in search of hope and blessings among the burnt heather, tumbledown mills and canal locks near his home in the Calder Valley. He unearths a landscape of wildflowers and wildlife, a soundscape of rain and birdsong, at once healing, threatening and under threat. These are richly textured poems of living and resisting, anchored by connections to family, food, community – and an acknowledgement of the precarious root-holds of hard-won freedoms. A soaring, defiant hymn to recovery, this vital book contemplates migration, otherness, and all the internal and external elements that bind us, make us unique.

Leseprobe

Tormentil

Tormentil

Ian Humphreys

ISBN: 978-1913437787

eISBN: 978-1913437794

Copyright © Ian Humphreys, 2023.

Cover artwork: Design by Jane Commane. Tormentil pictured in an antique illustration of medicinal and herbal plants, published in 1892 in Medicinal Plants of Russia. Scan by Ivan Burmistrov.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Ian Humphreys has asserted his right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published September 2023 by:

Nine Arches Press

Unit 14, Sir Frank Whittle Business Centre,

Great Central Way, Rugby.

CV21 3XH

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Printed on recycled paper in the United Kingdom by Imprint Digital.

Nine Arches Press is supported using public funding by Arts Council England.

for Mum

Contents

Tormentil

Earthworm on tarmac

the grasshopper warbler’s song

First signs

Lady Luck

Bad egg

Wasp in a jam jar

Pansies

Hak gwai

Walltown

Petrified

Scrimshander

The other lot

On spilling a jug of Mai Tai plus half a pale ale over the new marketing director’s lap during her welcome drinks

desire

Liberté

Firecrest

There’s a walrus on my windscreen

The wood pigeon’s song

rubber pup at the Queer Rights in Chechnya rally

Babysitting in Ho Man Tin

Of course, I don’t mind

Remote

The sign language of trees

When trees burn

Punch and Judy on the West Yorkshire Moors

love hurts

Rope-grown mussels

Nomi

Grey matter

Paucity

Whose story?

Refrain

Discarded wardrobe on Deansgate

Wrong uns

Like a record, baby

Before leaving

Prayer for The Fabulous Ones

The Rochdale Canal

crazydream i

crazydream ii

tormentil +

The wave

Morning swim

Water brought me to you and it will sweep me away

Silverfish

But where do you really come from?

Rebirth

Cotton-grass, late spring

Out of nowhere

Mouse-ear Hawkweed

Hairspray

Falling galaxies

Vanishing act

The wood warbler’s song

Hymnal

Notes and Acknowledgements

About the author and this book

Tormentil

I can’t face the big stuff

so I comb the moors

for a tiny yellow flower,

treasured in wartime

for healing wounds.

Some named it Bloodroot

orFlesh and Blood,

others,Shepherd’s Knot.

Up here, gold thread

creeps through boggy

peatland grass. Splashes

of sun under a dark sky.

Earthworm on tarmac

O silent concertina:

one mouth, five hearts,

one arsehole.

Dirt pearls

cast in your wake.

How did you get here

needled

by the furious sun?

Half an hour ago,

soft sanctuary.

The drag

of home

through your body.

I could pick you up,

flick you

onto the grass verge.

I could leave you

frying on the kerb,

plump & sausage-pink.

The magpie

would thank me

& that curious child,

his scalpel

fingernails.

Can you eat pain

earthworm?

Do you swallow

buried mistakes?

You, who ploughs

the muck at our feet,

stirs the soup

of forests past.

Earthworm,

are you worth

bending for?

Kneeling for?

the grasshopper warbler’s song

the singing will never be done

  – Siegfried Sassoon

rising and dipping

cool seeds of springtime

hidden in the long grass

notes balanced

on swaying stems

mirroring

the viola flow

of bristled leg against wing

rising and dipping

no melody

just

air decanted

just

       how light through cloud might sound

following footsteps like green shadows

rising and dipping

rousing as a chorus

softer than feather moss

and the grass and the trees and the sky

First signs

After I post the snowdrops photo,

a friend opens up: I could use some hope x

Seems everyone’s hurting and down with cold

and your Alzheimer’s has stopped you cooking.

You no longer know saffron from salt,

can’t quite appraise the depth of blue glazed

serving bowls or savour late morning light

sprinkled over the church roof. And when I think of it,

I don’t remember the last time your clay pot sputtered

and clunked on the stove. The communion

of rice, Chinese sausage and shiitake mushrooms

filling the house with a blessing.

Lady Luck

 You’d never seen snow   it slid through your fingers like rice flour

                You missed your flat      on Prince Edward Road

     Mong Kok’s leaning towers           of dim sum baskets

In Hythe      boiled-cabbage streets steamed with winter breath

   Under a cold tin sink    your carved camphorwood chest

        cradled memories in padded brocade          You developed