Legs and literature (and lapwings)

Legs and literature (and lapwings)

Dear computer users, this is a cautionary tale. I am shuffling around with a Dickensian bandage on my right ankle and it is (partly) Facebook’s fault.

All stupidity is unique. I don’t suppose that you stand up for most of the working day battling with metal finishing (thanks to the capacity for panic of Rolls-Royce subcontractors, and our failure to clear low tables in our family business’ small, overcrowded workshop). Nor do I imagine that you sit up for most of the night. Kind recipients of my emails have asked if my computer’s clock is wrong. Unfortunately, no.

People who knew the clock was right – especially my husband – did point out my folly. What was I doing? Well, certainly not writing. The Muse clocks off at midnight. Sometimes I was typing poems, but nocturnal word processing is erratic. Once, during a conservation campaign, I sent the Highways Department a formal objection to the dangers of parked cats.

No, in the years following the Millennium, my fiftieth birthday and the deaths of my parents, I had, unfortunately acquired a mission. I decided that I had failed my poems. I had managed to write them, and steadfastly published them, but I had not tried hard enough to find them a wider audience in the great spaces Out There.

Living apart from other writers, and busy all day, my gateway to There was the computer screen, with a wealth of online magazines, the free fields of MySpace, and finally, and most fatally, Facebook. I think this dark beavering may indeed have helped the poetry. But it did not help my right leg.

Now, the cautionary tale. You do not have to be as stupid as I am to damage your circulation by sitting at a computer. Tesco’s Healthclub magazine, my preferred alternative to NHS Direct, warns that sitting at a computer without moving for 4 hours or more, as many office workers now do, can cause as much damage to veins as a long distance flight. Nettie the Nurse, the experienced and kindly sister at my busy GPs’ practice, tells me that sitting too long at computers is now a major cause of circulation problems. She recommends raising the legs slightly if possible. I need hardly point out that writers can be far more obsessive computer-users than officer workers. I fear that my activities would be easily matched by a novelist on the home run.

So: no cycling for two months, and no riding, although the pony is graciously accepting her buckets before wandering off to her field. I have written a little more. Mysteriously, I’ve read very little. But my new collection, “Singing in the Dark”, was published in February by Carcanet and has done its best to console me. It had an appreciative review in The Guardian on 8th March (available online at Guardian Unlimited; if you’d like to glance at it, please go to

http://www.guardian.co.uk/

and search for Alison Brackenbury).


Poems from “Singing in the Dark” have indeed gone Out There, into The Guardian and The Financial Times (poetry in the FT? excellent; hope that’s not why the stockmarket slumped). My moles poem also burrowed into the Glasgow Herald, who, I realise, have a daily poem online, which I recommend. It is at

http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/poetryblog

Do read it. Then get up, and go for a walk.

And what is the rest of the world doing on the Web? Here is my computer magazine’s introduction to a new game: “Guide the rocket through the cheese to help the lunar mice escape…” Best of luck, mice. Look out for your legs!

P.S. I had a marvellous time reading at the StAnza Poetry Festival at St Andrews. Do go, as reader or listener, if you ever have the chance. St Andrews has ice cream, kittiwakes and the warmest of welcomes. The poetry is pretty good too.

Finally, here is an almost-spring poem.

Lapwings


They were everywhere. No. Just God or smoke
Is that. They were the backdrop to the road,

My parents’ home, the heavy winter fields
From which they flashed and kindled and uprode

The air in dozens. I ignored them all.
“What are they?” “Oh – peewits – “ Then a hare flowed,

Bounded the furrows. Marriage. Child. I roamed
Round other farms. I only knew them gone

When, out of a sad winter, one returned.
I heard the high mocked cry “Pee – wit , “ so long

Cut dead. I watched it buckle from vast air
To lure hawks from its chicks. That time had gone.

Gravely, the parents bobbed their strip of stubble.
How had I let this green and purple pass?

Fringed, plumed heads (full name, the crested plover)
Fluttered. So crowned cranes stalk Kenyan grass.

Then their one child, their anxious care, came running,
Squeaked along each furrow, dauntless, daft.

Did I once know the story of their lives?
Do they migrate from Spain? Or coasts’ cold run?

And I forgot their massive arcs of wing.
When their raw cries swept over, my head spun

With all the brilliance of their black and white
As though you cracked the dark and found the sun.


Alison Brackenbury

(Published in Poetry London and in
Pendulum: The Poetry of Dreams
Ed. Deborah Gaye, Avalanche Books, 2007.
ISBN 978 1 874392 42 2)

Singing in Scotland

Singing in Scotland

“Singing in the Dark”, my new collection, is out on February 27th, and on March 15th, thanks to very kind timetabling by the StAnza festival organisers, I hope to do a reading in St Andrews.

Anyone studying the defects of British public transport could start by planning a journey from the West of England to Scotland in a limited time. Alas, I’m flying. In the last twelve years I have only made one other flight, which was to my daughter’s wedding. I am afraid this had more to do with income than principle, but I trust the planet’s chemistry won’t notice the difference.

So, March 15. 5 a m. Wake on daughter’s sofa in Bristol next to guinea pigs, Bubble and Squeak, slumbering in cage. Daughter (not a morning person) has loyally promised to abandon husband, guinea pigs and sleep to drive me to the airport. Plane from Bristol to Edinburgh (sorry, planet). Bus from Edinburgh to Inverkeithing. (Is there coffee still in Inverkeithing?) Train from Inverkeithing to Leuchars, (“the scenic route”). Taxi from Leuchars to St Andrews. 5 p m, do reading. Has a poet ever fallen asleep during their own reading? No, there’s always adrenalin. And caffeine.

I am reading with Michael Schmidt, so, in addition to having published my poems for 25 years, he can throw things at me if I sway too much while reading them. The Muse is never just. Michael, who I don’t think has ever kept a cat, has recently written one of the best cat poems I know. I hope he’ll read that.

The following poem is not based on my plans for the evening of March 15th at St Andrews.


Night out


Brahms? Yes, the story. While he was drinking
The door was kicked open, a girl crashed in
A man on her arm, a brooch on her shawl.

The first drink drained, she turned, in a rush,
Wheedled, “Herr Doktor, play something for us!”
It seemed, said the diarist, she knew Brahms quite well-

Flushed, Brahms bent to the untuned piano.
Notes flew in flocks, soft as doves, quick as sparrow,
While the girl swept the stranger through dance after dance.

How long would she last? A winter? A year?
Brahms had his honours, his pupils, his dear
Untouchable Clara, too heavy to dance.

Symphonies, lullabies, songs filled his days,
A whisper his nights. Give all to one glance,
Pound the dust’s dark piano, whirl dance after dance.


(First published in Stand; to be published in February in my seventh collection, Singing in the Dark, Carcanet.)

New Mummers Play

Here is the text of a thoroughly updated Mummers Play which I’ve just written, including a migrant worker, a modern fanatic and St George as AA man! The play should be performed on regional radio (Shropshire/Stoke/Hereford and Worcester) available via the Internet, live and on Listen Again. I think this will be on Sunday evening, December 23rd. If you’d like time/date, do please email me via the Home page of my website, and I’ll send you the details as soon as I have them.

I do have a family connection with mummers. My father’s family were shepherds for generations, and I inherited a penny notebook of Victorian sheep cures. Amongst the drenches and wormers was the Lady’s part from a Lincolnshire mummers’ play. So either my great-grandfather or one of his shepherd friends had the drag part! This Lincolnshire Lady is very outspoken:

“All I want is a nice young man!”

This all encouraged me to play fast and loose with the tradition – which is, I believe, what traditions are for!

I’ll have the copyright for a few years at least. I’m very keen to spread work around. If anyone wants a short modern Mummers Play, they are most welcome to use it (or any part of it) a) with NO FEE b) to adapt it as they wish. The only condition is that I would love to know if it’s being performed. I can always be contacted via my website www.alisonbrackenbury.co.uk

Here are the mummers!


CHRISTMAS FOLK: THE MUMMERS RETURN
by Alison Brackenbury

YOUNG WOMAN
& MAN We are the lovers

SHE One black

HE One white

BOTH We fight half the day, then we dance all the night.

HE But now we are moving

SHE With caution and care

BOTH Since our child will be born
In the cold of New Year.

SHE And how will I cope
In a small rented flat?

HE My love and my dear
It’s too late to mind that.

SHE But now, with our car in a ditch,
We have come

HE To this barn, where the cows’ breath
Smokes timeless and warm-

(LOUD MOO.)

SHE (STARTLED.)
When will the van come?

HE George said half an hour-

SHE Who stands, in the moon’s
Shy blue gleam by the door?






(MUSIC. INSTRUMENTAL OPENING OF COVENTRY CAROL.)

FIRST CHILD I am the child
I am one in three
Quiet on the edge
Of your shining country
No tins in the cupboard
No gifts on the tree.

SHE Child, what is your name?

FIRST CHILD (FADING.)
It is Poverty-

(MUSIC. EASTERN EUROPEAN. ?GYPSY FIDDLES?)


HE Who is that, with new papers
Clutched in his hand?

FIRST MAN I am the stranger
Working your land
In the long field’s rain
In the factory’s heat
With a few words of English
A cramped room to sleep
I travel, I build,
Snatch a few hours’ rest.

HE What is your name?

FIRST MAN (FADING.)
Please call me your guest-

(MUSIC. OPENING OF MARS, FROM HOLST’S PLANETS.)

SHE Who is it that glares
With a moon-blinded face?

SECOND MAN I come from God!
Any state, any place
Can make me, a White House,
A hut by a well.
God keeps Heaven for me,
For my enemies, Hell.


SHE I will not ask your name.
I am frightened of you.

SECOND MAN Your fear is my friend.
(FADING.)
I have more work to do-

HE Who is that standing
So far from the door
Ringed by the soft rain
Familiar, unsure?

(MUSIC. FIRST CHORDS OF STAIRWAY TO HEAVEN,
LED ZEPPELIN.)

SECOND CHILD I am your child.
No, do not step near
I am your future
The sky you must clear
The light you must switch off
The bridge you must build
I am your gamble
The seeds you have spilled.
Do not make the poor rob,
Let your guest be my friend,
Be patient. God’s soldier
Dies man in the end.
My mother, my father
Hold to the dance-

SHE Come here!

HE What is your name?

SECOND CHILD (FADING.)
I am your chance-

(LOUD VEHICLE NOISE.)

SHE What is that engine?

HE What is that light?

SHE Is the guest back-


HE - God’s soldier,
Wild as the night?

SHE The fumes rise like dragons-

HE Ghost? Saint? Or a man?

THIRD MAN Wake up! Happy Christmas!

SHE It’s George!

HE And the van.

SHE (SPEAKING)
We wish you a Merry Christmas

HE (SPEAKING)
We wish you a Merry Christmas

BOTH &
THIRD MAN (SINGING.)
We wish you a Merry Christmas

THIRD MAN (SINGING.)
And a Happy New Year.

ALL (SINGING. WITH ANY EMBELLISHMENTS YOU WANT!)
Good tidings we bring
To you and your kin.
We wish you a Merry Christmas

CHILD-LIKE IF
POSSIBLE.
OTHERWISE,
ALL, LOUDLY, And a Happy New Year!









Alison Brackenbury www.alisonbrackenbury.co.uk

s

Roots

Last night I listened to the Ghanaian-born poet Kwame Dawes reading on the radio from a poem he wrote after talking with old women who had spent their lives in South Carolina. The poem was about potatoes, carefully stored in straw away from frost. Shift a few details, forget the three continents, and this fine poem could have been about my own family: root vegetables, roots.

Both my grandfathers were able gardeners. My father grew vegetables obsessively, planting out seventy-five leeks just before he died, aged eighty-two. My sister seized a fork and dug some for me after his funeral. We grew up chewing on orange swedes, which our father’s father also fed to his employer’s prize sheep. I think swedes are probably best left to the sheep. But as the light dips and the frost sharpens I begin to crave the old foods of winter, the red flush of King Edward potatoes, the curled parsnips, sweetened by frost, which my father grew so well.

Death throws you back to roots. I realised, left alone with those curling leeks, how close I had stayed to my working class grandparents. At first the differences seem immense. They did not listen to music, or read anything beyond the local paper and Farmers Weekly. They never owned a house, or travelled outside England. But my poor parents, who thought my Oxford scholarship would lead to wealth and glory, were dismayed that I remained in a tiny house, spending too much on horses, watching badgers, (which my grandfather got up at five o’clock to see, tumbling on sunlit banks, on his way to work up the limestone hill. Gloucestershire, too, is limestone.)

I ruined my skin riding in hailstorms. I ruined my hands hacking through the clay of a recalcitrant garden, where I still have the descendants of the white bluebells my grandmother dug from her small garden and sent for me, because I had praised them. Then I ruined my worldly prospects, as my parents thought, working in a sky-blue boiler suit in my husband’s family’s metal finishing business. I did not give dinner parties; I did not even have a dining table. I was uneasy in large houses, and did not covet expensive clothes. I did not, arguably, keep enough time for poetry. But anything that was good in it owed much to these stubborn roots.

“Roots” was the title that Steve Knightley, from the duo Show of Hands, gave to one of his best songs – darkened only by a rash verse about the Union Jack, which was seized on by the National Front. Roots have little to do with flags. They touch death, of course, as Rilke’s Eurydice must. “She was already root.” “To pastors (shepherds) and to poets the angel first appeared” wrote Langland. It is not enough to go back to roots. They are there to produce: potatoes, poems. Here is one, kept from the cold.

The shed


He looked after tools, not just his own,
Palm-polished handles, Victorian elm,
Stamped with initials for John Maidens Barnes

My grandmother’s father, who never bought farms,
But his own clutch of ditch-tools. Reach down the hoe

A blacksmith beat for the left-handed twist
Of his father, the shepherd, who weeded bean rows
In after-work dazzle, the pipe’s long blue mist.

How far they have travelled. This death is still raw.
Shallots’ small worlds, held by knots of string,

Spin as I brush them. I unhook the fork
He had wiped clean. Soil’s finest grains cling.
Though I know it is sun, swept through glass, over land,

The handle grips hot as his palm to my hand.

Alison Brackenbury

Cuts and cats

I knew the book was too long. As a gardener (of sorts) I think it is better to prune than to make garish last-minute additions (though we have all done that in our time). Chris, our plumber, said my garden was “floriferous”, but I don’t think anyone has ever accused it of being over-designed. So I am grateful for Carcanet’s decisive secateur work on my MS (otherwise known as editing).

What is going? The horse-trampled spaniel, the laminitic pony (she recovered, thank goodness. In fact, they both did. I should set up in animal witchcraft.) Then, rather a lot of cats.

I am slightly regretful about the cats. They may be a specialist taste. They do tend to take over, in a way non-cat people observe sternly. I let Shadow, my young tabby, into a blog about the new book (Singing in the Dark). Now I see that some publicity pamphlets proclaim that the book is called… Shadow. Perhaps temporary exorcism is called for.

But the cat poems continue to haunt me. I think I should Do Something With Them (another nagging literary ghost). I did put Shadow and some cat poems on a MySpace page.

www.myspace.com/shadowthepoetrycat


Two clever and capable people have since told me that my cat poems make them cry. Let’s hope they were therapeutic tears. Would the world be improved by a Book of Sad Cats?

For now, the rejected cat poems will join others, in folders and bags in my wardrobe, finished, some published in magazines, but unanchored in the safe bay of a book. There are dozens, maybe hundreds. I do keep them. When I am old, I must find them a safe home. But I am not old yet.

So, back to re-shuffling. Type carefully. Dear Judith, Page 32 is now Page 99… The sun is shining. Shadow has her nose to a bumblebee.

Hear another poem-

Thanks to the indefatigable Poetry Library, and Magma magazine, there is a recording of me, on the Poetry Library site, reading "Geranium Rozanne".

If you'd like to hear this (for me!) unusually sunny poem, please paste the following link into your browser

http://www.poetrymagazines.org.uk/magazine/record.asp?id=18937

Listen to my poems

Hear my poems-

As well as reading my poems on this site, you can now listen to a selection, or download them as a podcast, from the excellent site www.poetcasting.co.uk

The exact link to paste into your browser is:

http://www.poetcasting.co.uk/?p=22

If you are an emerging or published poet, have a good look at the site. Alex Pryce, who runs it, is keen to record more poets. Requests from poets are, I gather, already piling in!