Towards the end of last year I started sending poems off to magazines and competitions – the silence was deafening, and silence in the world of poetry amounts to ‘no thank you.’ It was nothing I wasn’t used to, rejection is a fact of life for any writer.
Now, I’m pleased to say, things have started to look up. I’ve recently had acceptances from both Strix and Snakeskin (link below) and to my great surprise and delight my poem Skomm (you can read it below – just scroll down) has been awarded first prize in the York Lit Fest/ York Mix Poetry Competition, judged by Clare Shaw. I’m a huge fan of Clare’s poetry, if you haven’t read her collection Flood, you should. Vital, accessible, sung from the heart, as Jackie Kay says ‘Hold you breath when you read Clare Shaw’s poems.’ I read it in one fell swoop – I couldn’t stop myself – and then went straight back to the beginning to start over and read again. I’m naturally hugely proud that she singled out my work.
The prizegiving uniquely took place on a river boat. While poets read we sailed down the Ouse from dusk into darkness and back to King’s Staith, where a gaggle of geese awaited us on the quayside – I think they’d heard I written a poem with geese in. A brilliant conclusion to the Lit Fest – it was a real feast of poetry. The poems I’m writing now, including Skomm, are all part of a sequence I’m working on reflecting the 25 years I spent working in HMP Low Newton women’s prison. Because of this, when any one of them is published or heard in any way, then so are the voices of the women we imprison.
Skomm
(an old Norse word meaning shame)
The girl with the goose on her head sits by the window in the corner of the classroom,
there are others with her – among them her sister – their geese barely a wing less visible.
The weight of goose swells the air, the room is ripe with the scent of goose shit.
I put down my bag, take off my scarf and coat and wonder about the snow covering
the road. Outside the wind is up and the yard is frosting over.
Better make a start, I say. They pick up pens, open books. The girl with the goose
on her head declines to write, says she cannot concentrate,
for the load, the poundage, her shortened neck, compacted spine
for centuries of carrying: scamu, skomm, shame, the bird force fed, gavage-pipe
in the oesophagus, on its back, legs splayed, neck craned, half-buried in its chest
the words whispered in a father’s bed.
She says she cannot stop thinking, None of us can Miss, the nights are the worst…
corralled, wings beating they leave their bodies, fly up in a blizzard.
A captive murmuration.
Jesus, look at the snow. Will you get home alright Miss? What about the kids?
I look out at the fattening flakes, the absent ground. I taste the goose, all twenty pounds of it, sweat and stink,
snow falls on my tongue, the lightest it’s been.
I’ll get home alright, I say. Now close your books. What will it be?
A story, say the girls with geese, and they fold their arms, lay down their heads.
Four more of my prison poems are published here, this month- April – on Snakeskin
Totally awesome x