/1

You stand in the reeds that tickle your cheeks.  Everything is taller than you,

the grass, the fence, the trees, the bush, the wall.  There is gold everywhere.

Buzzing things glint as they flit and zuzz and you move your head to their

dance.  You stare up as the clouds drift.  When you first notice them falling

off the edge of the sky you are filled with a wonder so deep you understand

God and when you stare at the sun little, white tadpoles dart on the bright

green light inside your eyelids.

/2

You are free.  You and the air are one speeding over the vault,

your fear, a tight hub in your throat, the still point, as you turn like a wheel.

When you land well, arms up in a ‘V,’ happy heat spokes out of your chest;

the rays of the gymnast-queen, you are at least one whole inch taller.

You spend lunchtime recess upside down doing handstands.

For months there is nothing else.  Then Alisdair Reynolds says,

“You’ve got tits!” And next time going over the vault the PE teacher says,

“Well, well young lady you aregrowing up!” Your big wheels stop.

You curl up like a woodlouse.  She buys you your first bra, takes you to see

Jesus Christ Superstar.  He buys you a gold ring with a sapphire in it.

It’s too important to wear, so it stays in its serious box for years.

Much sooner than your friends you bleed, it makes you quiet.

The world smells different. You dance to ‘I Will Survive’ until the spins

cancel you out. They clap in a circle around you until it’s their turn to go in

the middle.  You want to rub bits of yourself out with the eraser on the end

of your pencil.  You pierce your ears instead.  You write poetry about

snakes.  You start to love French.

/3

You want to leave but can’t.  The others have untangled themselves, but

your ravels are like spaghetti and stickier to loosen.  Your friends have been

bought a duvet cover from Habitat, potted plants, pots and pans.

You move but only half way out to a flat around the corner.  

You go, but have not gone.  You are neither here nor there.  You join in.  

You stay apart.  And it is not you that in winter faints after a very hot bath

in the coldest house in South London.  You act, you read, you write.

/4

He is tall.  He belongs to another.  He wakes your heart, where inside now a

bird drums her wings on your breastbone.  It is Easter. You are crucified

with longing. You are a virgin.  An, old one.  You go back with more books

and a new hat. He talks to you and you find out that he is now free.  You are

paralysed.  He isn’t and walks 13 miles back to his digs in Deptford into the

early-morning darkness after talking to you until 3am in your parents’

downstairs kitchen.  You held hands.  You fear you will not match up.  A

confident beauty is already scoping him out, his previous lovers were all

long-thighed goddesses with glabrous skin.  You hold hands. You decide. 

You take a bloody risk.  There is no poetry it is matter of fact.  If it’s

like that again he may have second thoughts.  It isn’t. He doesn’t. But your

father can no-longer look you in the eye.

Shudda read the poem out loud before posting.  Here’s the corrected version:

Cover me with warm, red earth to bake my grief

My father has died, my father has died

Tamp my body with heavy, wet earth for stillness and quiet beneath the leaves

My father has died, my father has died

Stop my eyes, fill my mouth and ears with hot, dry sand, to mute wind-blown dagger thoughts that jab my brain, scoop out my heart and scrape my soul

My father has died, my father has died

Fill me with all the world’s wettest soil, then stone heavy, seal me in a pitch-dark kiln

and bury me beneath everything

My father has died, my father has died

I am counter-seasonal this year.  As leaves fall and nature prepares for retreat into winter, I feel a fizz of energy coming on and a sense of expansion and possibilty, especially where writing is concerned.  I have just finished a brilliant online course, Plotstormers II: The Editing Strikes Back and am on the first leg of another, Publishing 101, both, provided by the most excellent, sweary, super-bargainous and enormously helpful, WritersHQ.  Seriously, check them out if you need a bit of stimulating and expert handholding as you set pen to paper on your latest project.

So, that’s a weeny snippet of an update from me, which is all for now, as I need to get back to my editing but/and here’s an offering to you of a scribbled first draft of a poem.  Warning.  It’s not cheerful because it’s about bereavement.

Cover me with warm, red earth to bake my grief

My father has died, my father has died

Tamp my body with heavy, wet earth for stillness and quiet beneath the leaves

My father has died, my father has died

Stop my eyes and fill my mouth and ears with hot, dry sand, wind-blown by dagger thoughts that jab my brain, scoop out my heart and scrape at my soul

My father has died, my father has died

Fill me with all the world’s wettest soil, then stone heavy, seal me in a pitch-dark kiln

and bury me beneath everything

My father has died, my father has died

Excellent article. All women should read this!

…I know I/we shouldn’t be so attached to material possessions but I can’t tell you what an awful, totally sleepless night I’ve had since leaving my stuffed-with-precious-things, poppy red holdall on last night’s chunder express bound for Bedford.

Desperate, moribund and inconclusive nocturnal efforts to trace-it/replace-it and utter frustration at not being able to call Bedford Station direct myself, led me at 6.45 this morning, to send devoted-&-slightly-to-blame(!) bf Paul, back to St. Pancras Internazionale prontissimo, to see if there, they might contact the train’s terminus & check if the bag had been found overnight.

I am utterly overjoyed to tell you that soon after, I got a call from said bf, to say that the bag was indeed in Bedford and that after kissing the station supervisor who gave him the good news, he was already en route on his First-Capital-Connect-mission of contrite retrieval.

…As I set down this happy conclusion, I notice that approximately two mega-tonnes of stress are finally beginning to uncoil their sickening grip from my fraughtest of guts.  Although I think it will take several brandy-tanked, earl grey, celebratory cuppas to release the remaining 50 tonnes, still making an Isambard Kingdom Brunel fist of it in there.

Hard-earned thought for the day:

“Mostly it is loss which teaches us about the worth of things.”
― Arthur Schopenhauer, Parerga and Paralipomena

Happy Days.

Lesson to meek, newbie authors seeking representation – I’d sent a personalised submission (I name-dropped a mutual acquaintance) to an agent ten days ago and this morning still hadn’t received an acknowledgement.

I thought this odd/unusually rude, as the name-dropping usually works a treat and elicits interest, or at the very least, a quick response.

Anyhows, not being afflicted with too much meekness, I didn’t leave it there but called said agent, whose assistant was very apologetic and did some research on my behalf. Only to find, that my original email and its various attachments had never arrived.

So at her request, I re-sent…..and re-sent, to, btw, the address cited on the agent’s website for such submissions(!)  Several phone calls later from the now very befuddled assistant, resulted in the happy news that…err, my submission had finally arrived/been found….in….err….wait for it……the ‘junk mail’.

Omen? Let’s wait and see….

And this poem sets the tone before the novel starts…

Duende

Between ecstasy and despair

In that

Sliver of a gap

Is Duende.

From whence,

Comes the rap

The clack, clack, clackety-clack

Of the Flamenco tap

And cry.

Comprende?

Duende is the soul

As it is riven

As it is shriven

By the Dance

By the Song

That rips out

From the womb of non-being

And, as it is born

Calls Life to Life

Christening with a scream,

With an arc

Through blood

In passion

From black, then red

Then back to black

Clack, clack clackety-clack

Clack, clack!

Duende.

Last Friday I was part of an  august group of Art Workers (http://www.artworkersguild.org) who went to The Coniston Institute, home of Grizedale Arts (http://www.grizedale.org) in the Lake District for the weekend, to begin, what will hopefully become, a fruitful and ongoing artistic cross-fertilisation and collaboration.  Our hosts, Grizedale Arts asked us to think about our various disciplines and how they might contribute to the programme of events currently offered by the organisation, and taster workshops in, stone-carving, screen-printing, lace-making, slipware and painting were offered as ways of sounding out present and possible future interest, (http://artworkersguild.tumblr.com/)

I was the self-designated poet/writer of the group and on the last day my absorption in matters Ruskin – he founded the Institute’s previous incarnation and his values still inform the ethos of the place, plus his museum is just next door –  burst forth in the shape of a poem, the Ruskin Rap in fact.  Hope you enjoy it……

The Ruskin Rap

What a rum chap was that.

A very clever stick and don’t he know it,

Clap, clap

Clap, clap, clap,

Or?

Slap, slap,

Slap, slap, slap?

Cos,

It turns out,

Apart from some of the great and the good,

Who thought he was dope, sick and bare-good,

He wasn’t that popular, with most of the ordinary folk.

You dig?

Even so –

It’s true to say,

He did bring serious skills to them-there-hills,

With his ergonomic pens and giant quills,

And penchant for wool, fossils, copper and lace

As he educated the populace,

Popping word and material shapes,

While leaving in his wake,

Traces of his ruminating face

All over the place

Behind an imposing beard

Which grew over the years to look

More like the fleece of the sheep

That walked on the hills and ended up in his lace.

– Truth is, we’ve got his housekeeper to thank for that,

Cos, fed up with her bossy boss and his high-handed ways

She sold his image for 30 bob

To anyone

Looking to flog

Tobacco, liquour or soap on a rope.

Which was definitely, not dope.

Just heard too, from the dudes who now run

The place he founded,

That sometimes

When he delivered his erudite words

And busted his critical moves

The effect, intentionally or not,

Was likely absurd,

Especially when he turned up dressed

Like an anti-Darwinist bird

And went, flap, flap

Flap, flap, flap.

Don’ think anyone that time went

Clap, clap,

Clap, clap, clap.

So, he was eccentric

But hey, wot’s the rub, guv?

There’s a long line of geniuses

Similarly complex

For us not to get too vexed about that –

And by the way, more hot news just out

He wasn’t the perv recent history’s made out

Just a nerd who stopped digging his wife

More loved up with ideas, than the

Fleshy side of life.

But back to the rap chaps,

More than a hundred years since

Old JR popped to the dark side of the lake

To what of his legacy,

Does Grizedale that thought him a bore

And bore him for a while still roll, rattle and shake?

A banging, well-curated museum for a start,

Dedicated to our man, and

Filled with the tools of his trade

And evidence ample of the difference he made

Through his words on politics, architecture and art

And the passionate principles underpinning his thought

Even more relevant today –

About not giving unbridled Capitalism

Sway, about protecting nature and being commercially

Kind, about practicing fairness, a life of the mind,

About imparting skills so a community can share

Companionship through industry;

A sense of care, for self, the other

The big and the small

To respect one another,

For we is bruvs, innit?

God’s creatures, one and all.

And alongside that,

An institute still doing its best to

Remain old school, for body, soul and brain

True to the Ruskinian paradigm –

You get me?

Of benevolent artistic, utilitarian exchange,

Only now keeping it real on a well-global scale – Fresh!

From Coniston to China

One. Loved Up. Solid. Chain.  Def!

And we, the AWG brethren

Who, all the way from London

Did go, to find out wha’ssup,

With our Cumbrian bros

And their ho’s

And to lend ‘em an artisanal hand,

Are now so feeling it –

Cos, like Ruskin’s blood Morris,

Our main man, once said,

Forget everything else y’all

And listen to me good,

The most important thing you need

To get into your head

Is this –

Art. Is. Unity.

And we and they is doin’ it, doin’ it, doin’ it.

‘Nuff said.

Stephanie Gerra. Written at the Coniston Institute 8^th June 2014.