Two Poems for British Polio Month

The Polio Pond by Ann Alexander

Couldn't get there quick enough,

legs pumping bikes

down nettled alleys,

over bomb sites and the dangerous road,

out of the light

and into this cool spinney, where

a pond of standing water waited,

still as a crouched cat.

We'd heard the polio lived here,

biding its time in mottled dark,

belonging to neither day nor night,

nor any certain thing.

That smell. Sharp underbelly stink.

Breath, in gassy bubbles

pocked the surface, where

a dead bird floated, wings outstretched.

Red ribs of a child's pram, half submerged,

told their tremendous tale.

We threw sticks, threw stones.

Well back, on guard, then inching close,

we stared into its clouded heart,

swore we saw the bloody eye,

the tentacles,

the curled chameleon's tongue.

© Ann Alexander (from the collection Too Close)

A picture of me from the local paper at the Infantile Paralysis Fellowship party in
Wakefield Town Hall 1956, on a rare outing from Pinderfields Hospital.

In 1952 I contracted polio which left me with a paralysed leg. In the 1940s and early 1950s there were major polio epidemics in Britain and naturally there was huge fear around them. The virus was thought to lurk in water and warnings were given out in schools and signs hung in public swimming-pools. As well as The Polio Pond being an excellent poem, a piece of social history and a depiction of the way children are attracted to danger, there was something about the way Ann Alexander portrayed polio as a dangerous beast rather than an invisible virus that I found very empowering.

I used to go to a pond in the overgrown garden of a deserted house, with some children from the village, when I was a child and it reminded me of Ann's pond. At a mythic level, a tale began to unfold in which I had been one of the children who didn't get away in time when the beast emerged. So I was wounded by it and also in a strange way tainted by it - which explained the fear I engendered in other children sometimes, their own fear of disability or fear about how to relate to someone who is not like them perhaps. There is a kind of power in being able to make people afraid, but also I felt curiously strengthened by the feeling that I had encountered the dangerous beast and survived - had more than survived. 

The poem worked on me on various levels, showing how magical poetry and stories can be. Disability is so often about disempowerment that it's good to have a sense of the opposite in a new way. Here's a draft of my own poem written in response to Ann's (which I have copied here with her kind permission) in which I've taken the story further. I've also implied that hate and cruelty are monstrous too.

Picture by Sulamith Wülfing

The Polio Monster

Biding its time, the pond lay watching,
a bright eye in the tangled waste;
the bars of a gate floated
dismembered and useless,
dotted with pondweed like green confetti.

The children threw stones and gobbets of mud,
their eyes gleamed, reverting to feral
and catching their offerings
the pool gobbled them down,
sent up bubbles signalling relish.

Strengthened, the monster emerged,
black slime ribboned his scales.
A dark bridegroom, he leered towards them

and all valour lost, they turned and fled,
except for the one who was left behind.
In the claws' grasp there's no time for fear,

there's only surrender, the rushing descent
into the tunnel, the muscular throat.
Claimed by the monster the girl becomes It,

scales now exchanged for an iron splint,
talons curved to the arch of a wheelchair.
 

Disallowed sticks, the children throw insults;
sticks and stones would break her bones
but words as well could harm her.
Yet where there’s fear there’s always power:
to become what is feared is to move beyond fear.

In the alien form she discovers her might,
feels the rush of sinewy wings
and knows her new world is still the whole world,
the monster now fled to the pools of their eyes.

© Hilaire Wood

If you have enjoyed these poems and would like to know more about the British Polio Fellowship, you can find out HERE and make a donation HERE. If you can, please spread awareness of Polio, a largely forgotten disease which still affects 120,000 people in the UK, and of the work of the Fellowship. Or if you are outside the UK, please find out about how polio affects people in your own country. Thank you!

Launching The Sea Road

Reading from The Sea Road in London at the Poetry Cafe

I'm slowly recovering from a busy few weeks. The launch of my book of poems at the Aberystwyth Art Centre bookshop went better than I could have imagined, I'm pleased to say. None of the disastrous scenarios I'd envisaged came about :-) About 50 people turned up - the result of myself and Ken Jones (my co-launcher) having sent out invites and flyers to our friends and fellow-writers and Simon, the bookshop manager having done a wonderful job of advertising with a piece in the Cambrian News, on the website and posters everywhere. (It was rather unsettling having my face beaming down at me from pillars in the cafe, but eventually I got used to it and ignored them.) I've never read to so many people; it was a great privilege.

It's also the first time I've had such an opportunity to showcase my work (usually I'm part of a group or just reading one of my poems from a mixed anthology) and that was a good experience, giving me the chance to talk more about what the poems were about and what I was hoping to do in the collection. I'd found a poem by Wendell Berry, that morning which seemed to sum it up and so I started with that as a point of orientation:

A Spiritual Journey

And the world cannot be discovered by a journey of miles,
no matter how long,
but only by a spiritual journey,
a journey of one inch,
very arduous and humbling and joyful,
by which we arrive at the ground at our feet,
and learn to be at home.

~ Wendell Berry ~

All the available copies of the book sold out as well as three I had in the car and Simon said he could have sold twice as many. I think my publisher's marketing officer (i.e. me with another hat on) had got the marketing strategy right. I'd planned to produce a pamphlet/small book and price it reasonably so that people would find it easier to give it a try and see if they liked it. 

The following week I was taking part in an event at the lovely Pen'rallt Bookshop in Machynlleth for World Book Day/International Women's Day. I was on a panel that included poet Chris Kinsey, from Newtown, Caroline Oakley, editor of Welsh Women's Press, Honno (and Ian Rankin's editor), Emily Trehair, editor of Planet and Manon Steffan Ros, Welsh language novelist. There was a full house and a full programme - which was interesting and inspiring as each woman talked about her work and read something of it and of another writer she admired. I'd chosen my poems for an audience of women as the event had been advertised under the International Women's Day banner elsewhere. I was aware that if there was a mixed audience I might have to revise that in hurry but in fact the audience was almost a hundred percent women so it worked out all right.

Afterwards there was tea and the most delicious cheese scones and delicate pieces of carrot cake and everyone mingled and made contacts and chatted - it was a great atmosphere. I hadn't had supper so a friend and I (Jane Whittle who will be reading from her inspiring books, along with Ken Jones, at the bookshop on May 2nd) went over to the Wynstay Hotel where they'd finished serving food but very kindly rustled up a leek and potato soup followed by apple tart. We nattered about writing and the time flew so it was 11.15pm before I drove back towards Aber.

The following week I was going up to Sheffield for my granddaughter's first birthday party/naming ceremony.  My son and daughter-in-law had invited me to read my poem to her which I was dead chuffed about. I hadn't been nervous about it at all as I was so delighted - until I walked into the public house were it was being held and suddenly thought, I'm going to have to think about how to introduce it, what shall I say! I took myself off to the Ladies and practised to the back of the door - as you do - and it all went ok. Afterwards, we ate the most amazing cake made by Leila's other grandmother. It was called a Red Velvet cake and the sponge was red. I told Dylan and his friends it was dinosaur blood which didn't seem to put them off...                                           

After a lovely weekend it was the long drive back to Wales but once I'd negotiated the motorway I listened to T S Eliot reading his Selected Poems and Four Quartets and could have gone on driving for ever. Well, maybe not for ever.

Writing poetry: Coming at it slant

I've got off to rather a slow start this year. After ending 2012 full of enthusiasm and ideas for working on my poetry in 2013, during the Christmas break I became ill and exhausted and I've been recovering by centimetres, a little at a time. I think I am almost back to normal - I can at least see blue sky now.

My plan for the first half of this year was to do Roselle Angwin's Poetry Correspondence Course which I thought would suit me very well. Roselle says about it: "While it’s an approach that favours the holistic, I’d like to think however that authenticity of voice, knowledge of the requirements of poetry & of the poetry world, & mastery of technique are given equal attention. I’m keen that literary quality is not sacrificed to the demand that poetry be also a means of connection, & a vibrant & essential aspect of inner work."

However, Roselle has decided not to run the course until July and since I'm always busier in the second half of the year and need something now to give shape to my work, I looked at other courses. The Open College of the Arts, the Poetry School... Nothing seemed quite right and so I decided to fashion my own Gelli Fach Poetry Course for myself. I'm structuring it loosely around two books: Jay Ramsay's The Poet in You and Stephen Fry's The Ode Less Travelled. They cover what for me are the twin aspects of poetry - inspiration and craft. I had started to work with Stephen Fry's book last year (which is an absolute delight to read, erudite, quirky and surprisingly soothing and encouraging). I have to say that, although I did the exercises and felt I was learning an enormous amount, when I tried to apply it to my poetry it was a dismal failure; trying to channel my inspiration into a strict form had the effect of making it dry up. Nevertheless, I'm going to persevere - to a point anyway.

Jay's book is working with imagination and inspiration and gives a series of 9 exercises to be done ideally over 9 months. I wasn't sure how it was going to be but I have done the first one and although I wasn't expecting to get very much out of it, it was very rich, interesting, inspiring and rewarding. So, a good start. I may write about it at some point but for the moment I am concerned that some of the potency will be lost if I share it here.

As well as giving time to these two aspects of poetry, I am also reading some books about poetry which have been stacked in a pile by my bed for... well, too long. I've dipped into them but have decided I need to take one at a time and make notes as I go along. I'm starting with Imagining the Earth: Poetry and the Vision of Nature by John Elder.

And of course I shall continue to attend the Poetry Reading Group once a month and the Poetry Workshop once a month - so that I am reading published poets, ancient and modern, and gaining from that, and offering my own poetry for feedback and constructive criticism from my peers, as well as offering feedback on theirs. Both of these groups I find invaluable as well as enjoyable.

I also have some readings and performances coming up. At the end of the month I'm launching my booklet, The Sea Road, at the Arts Centre Bookshop, alongside Ken Jones, a Buddhist and writer of haiku and haibun whose book, Bog Cotton, has recently been published. At the beginning of March I'm going to be reading at the Pen'rallt Bookshop in Machynlleth for International Women's Day and I'll also be giving a talk on self-publishing poetry. In May, the Word Distillery, the performance group I work with, will be presenting an evening dedicated to Coleridge at the Arts Centre - we'll be reading the whole of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, accompanied by slides of the Gustave Dore prints illustrating the poem, as well as some of Coleridge's other work. I'm very much looking forward to that.

Making up my own 'Poetry Course' means that I shall miss out on the discipline and the feedback which I wanted, but given the lack of energy so far this year perhaps it's no bad thing. I've discovered before that trying to impose a rigid structure on myself is a sure way to a collapse. I seem to be at my most creative or productive when I come at writing casually-  when I'm just having a look at a draft while the potatoes are boiling or jotting down notes which later I realise are nearly poems - or when I'm washing up and thinking about some image or potent experience that has occurred that day. I find I have to come at it slant.  "It's as if you have to sneak up on yourself", Eluned in the  poetry group said. But that doesn't mean that a more organised approach isn't useful for providing material and word music and improving skills. And practice, of course, makes perfect. I plan to write about this more here another time.

Wishing you- belatedly - a creative and fulfilling 2013!

PS - the submission deadline for Valleys has been changed to March 24th 2013. 

Honno Poem of the Month: Rapunzel

I'm pleased to announce that my poem Rapunzel is Poem of the Month on the Honno website.

Honno was established twenty-five years ago to increase opportunities for Welsh women writers and to bring Welsh women writers to a wider public. It is currently the only independent women's press in the UK. Rosanne Reeves, one of the founders, interviewed in The Cambrian News, gave an account of the situation in Wales which led to the setting up of the press:

"None of the publishing houses in Wales were particularly interested in promoting women's literature or writers, especially not in English... the thought of going out to look for new female talent and female voices was not a priority. It was in the 1980s that Greenham Common started, when women from Cardiff marched to the base; Welsh Women's Aid extended to rural Wales; the Miners' Strike brought women of the valleys out of their kitchens, to return to their kitchens empowered;... and a political branch of the Women's Section of Plaid Cymru was developed.

The opportunity to sell women's literature became a possibility - the influence of Virago, The Women's Press, Spare Rib, Onlywomen and the Attic Press in Ireland led the way. But of course Wales was different from England and there was a gap in the market in Wales for books which were relevant to the women of Wales, in both languages."

Honno's authors have included Sian James, Malorie Blackman, Tessa Hadley, Lindsay Ashford, Patricia Duncker, Kitty Sewell and many others. There have been several high-profile awards, including most recently Bethan Darwin's novel Back Home which won the Aur Pur Award 2010 and Cold Enough to Freeze Cows by Lorraine Jenkin which was shortlisted for the People's Book prize.
Jane MacNamee's anthology of women writing about nature, In Her Element, includes essays by Christine Evans; Sian Melangell Dafydd; Jane Matthews; Dee Rivaz; Jay Griffiths; Patricia Barrie and Sue Anderson. The book was serialised on Radio 4.

Sadly Honno no longer publish poetry books but they have established the Poem of the Month feature on their website to promote the work of women poets in Wales. And one of my favourite books of poetry, Vixen, by Glenda Beagan, is still available. In this, her first collection of poems, "she dips into the world of nature and myth to draw on themes, which though ancient, still have a powerful effect on the modern world. Through the central figure of the vixen she looks at the twin pulls of motherhood and independence, and explores how it feels to be a woman in Wales today".

There is also a collection of Welsh Women's Poetry 1460 - 2001 which includes brief biographies of each poet, and some daring new translations. The editors have produced "a superbly researched anthology that illustrates the breadth, power and skill of Welsh women's poetry". "This groundbreaking volume is the first bilingual anthology of Welsh women's poetry, demonstrating the rich, varied canon of poetry by Welsh women, in both the Welsh and English languages. It ranges from Gwerful Mechain, the Welsh women's Chaucer, to acclaimed contemporary poets such as Menna Elfyn and Gillian Clarke, and many works which previously existed only in handwritten manuscripts in the National Library of Wales.

The Welsh word honno is the feminine form of  'that one' (who is elsewhere).

Join the first Mindful Writing Day on 1st November

This Thursday the 1st of November is the first ever Mindful Writing Day, organised by Kaspa & Fiona at Writing Our Way Home.

I'm going to be travelling to London on the train in the morning  to perform in the evening at the Poetry Place, Covent Garden, with the Word Distillery. I shall have plenty of time to be mindful, gazing out of the train window. I wonder what I'll see?

To join in simply slow down, pay attention to one thing and write it down (making a small stone). Read all about it here. Small stones are easy to write, and they will help you connect to the world. Once you've started, you might not want to stop...

You can read more about small stones and find out about Lorrie with pea-green eyes in Fiona's free ebook, Write Your Way Home. If you visit Writing Our Way Home on Thursday you'll find out how to download your free kindle copy of the new anthology, 'A Blackbird Sings: a book of short poems' (which contains two of my small stones). You can also submit your small stone and see it published on the blog, and be entered into a competition to win one of five paperback copies of the book.

 There's a Facebook invite here if you'd like to invite your friends, and do feel free to copy this blog onto your own blog. You can tweet this: Connect with the world through mindful writing - join the first Mindful Writing Day on the 1st of November: bit.ly/VjzRKe #smallstone

The Sea Road: available soon

My poetry booklet The Sea Road is now in print. I'm very pleased with the way it's come out. There are twenty-five poems and artwork by local artist Jenny Fell. I took down my previous post about it as I had a hitch with the payment details and it seems to have disappeared! As I'm busy again preparing to go away for the poetry performances in London, I'm going to wait until I get back to launch it here. Meanwhile, you can see an image of it on the sidebar.

Book Launch: Ruth Bidgood and Matthew Jarvis

Ruth Bidgood

(I wrote this post back in July and forgot to post it!). 

I recently attended a book launch at the Aberystwyth Arts Centre bookshop for Ruth Bidgood’s latest volume of poetry Above the Forests and Matthew Jarvis’s study of her work for the Writers of Wales series, called simply Ruth Bidgood. It was also a celebration of the poet’s 90^th birthday a few days before.

Ruth Bidgood is an accomplished reader of her own poetry. As the medieval Welsh Bardic Grammars point out, it is rare that a reciter is able to read a poem exactly as the poet composed it and listening to Ruth reading her poems with ‘fluency of expression, elegant sense and full understanding’ was a privilege; especially perhaps, as her full understanding of the poems includes bringing out some of the humour in them which we might otherwise have missed.

The evening included John Barnie, poet and one-time editor of Planet, interviewing Matthew about his book with occasional questions passed to Ruth herself. The book is a fascinating study with some interesting and appropriate biographical details and a close examination of many of the poems. It also includes in an appendix an unpublished letter Ruth wrote to the editor of Poetry Wales about her long sequence, Hymn to Saint Ffraid, which throws light not only on the genesis and intent of the piece but also on the poetic process.

                                                                    Matthew Jarvis

However the poems themselves must take centre stage. They address memory, its importance, its effect on the past, its relationship with what is real. Often they engage with the unseen, the numinous, in a delicate and clear-headed way. The ground of their being though is the landscape and communities of the area surrounding Abergwesyn in mid-Wales, Ruth’s ‘home patch’ as she refers to it. Ruth Bidgoood observes in fine detail the life in the locality, past and present. Written over four decades, such an achievement must be almost unique and, as Matthew suggest, the work amounts to a mid-Wales epic. It is a record of the milltir sgwâr, the square mile, a Welsh phrase used to describe the patch of land that nourishes, sustains and calls to you. Matthew Jarvis describes it as ‘a bluntly defiant commitment to the region’s memory and its yet-surviving life’. Ruth says simply:

It seems important 

to remember right:
know exactly the angle
of house to hill, be able
to count the pines…

as though the intensity
of my recall
ensured the reality
of the place, its being…

as though the existence
of a loved place were something
to be built, sustained
each moment, held to, against
the cold and cancelling wind.  

( from Recall)