Helen Dunmore

I have long admired the name. It is the name of a poet. It may also be a boast.

Another Yorkshire poet, born at Beverley, one of the upmarket corners near Hull, with a rather brooding Minster. I did not know this, but Wikipedia would not lie I am sure.

I have made my funeral plans, and only a few months separate me in age from Dunmore, and she has done more. A writer of stories for children and adults she was a poet first, with her first collection when she was thirty; but I have not found them easy, I have not connected with the subject matter.

But here I do. I have planned my funeral and it will take me under the trees and peoples feet where, in decay, I can be fed back into vegetation. Once upon a time I planned to be buried under a dance floor so that people could dance on my grave, perhaps I could be kept awake by their banging, tapping feet. Now it is a woodland burial, quieter, calmer. In a cardboard coffin painted white with ‘Eat Me! Eat Me!’stencilled on the outside. Can I, I wonder, have the cardboard pressed from my favourite books?

Here the people come to spend the day tripping to and fro above her, the children, childrening, eating the fruit, grasping the nettles of life. And in the end the dark spreads quiet across, chased by the coming day.

Helen Dunmore ‘I should like to be buried in a summer forest’ 1997

I should like to be buried in a summer forest

Helen Dunmore

 

I should like to be buried in a summer forest

where people go in July,

only a bus ride from the city,

 

I should like them to walk over me

not noticing anything but sunlight

and patches of wild strawberries –

 

Here, look under the leaves!

I should like the child who is slowest

to end up picking the most,

 

and the big kids will show the little

the only way to grasp a nettle

and pick it so it doesn’t sting.

 

I should like home-time to come

so late the bus has its lights on

and a cloud of moths hangs in their beam,

 

and when they are all gone

I should like to be buried in a summer forest

where the dark steps

blindfold, on cat foot-pads,

with the dawn almost touching it.

 

From Helen Dunmore ‘Bestiary’  Bloodaxe (1997) p.26

Kevin Powell

The title name checks Langston Hughes a poet of the first part of the 20th century linked to the Harlem Renaissance. He was an exponent of jazz poetry, poetry linked to jazz, poetry about jazz, poetry with the rhythms of jazz. Here the reference to the ‘horn’s lip’ shows the link, but so too does the reference to lenox avenue.

Langston Hughes in ‘The Weary Blues” wrote:

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
He did a lazy sway . . .
He did a lazy sway . . .
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.

Here is the poetry of the moment, in the same genre as Adelstrop.

It is one of the less political, more reflective poems in the collection.

Kevin Powell ‘Genius Child’ 1995

Genius Child

                     for Langston Hughes 

Kevin Powell 

 

simple ain’t it?

the words flow

like a river

winding

your smile

 

a thumb snaps

an eighth note

bebop!

a horn’s lip curl

at a girl

in a red dress

 

you too, fragment

a dark vein

it sings

it sags

like a blues bag

weighing dreams

on lenox avenue

 

From Kevin Powell ‘recognize’  Harlem River Press (1995) p.24

Saundra Sharp

Now 74, Saundra Sharp was in her late 40’s when this collection was written. The poems (and photographs) are political, but focus on the need to work for change, not just complain. But also recognise how difficult the path is. We can also see with the growth of ‘Black lives Matter’ and the greater aggression of the white supremacists (supreme over single celled organisms mostly) that not enough has changed.

Perhaps it is things deep in the American psyche, and that is what the poem says. It is up to each of us not to be unpleasant – to be gentle. The laws may not change, but life will become better if we live by the maxim ‘Do unto others as you would they would do unto you’; and places at the base of this self respect, self confidence, self love.

She herself has had a career acting as well as writing – even in Wonder Woman – I will have seen her when I was younger, as a character called ‘Eve’ – ‘First Woman’ to Linda Carter’s ‘Wonder Woman’.

Saundra Sharp ‘It’s The Law’ 1991

IT’S THE LAW

                       a rap poem

 

Saundra Sharp

 

 

You can learn about the state of the U.S.A

By the laws we have on the books today.

The rules we break are the laws we make

The things we fear we legislate.

 

We got laws designed to keep folks in line

Laws for what happens when you lose your mind

Laws against stealing, laws against feeling,

The laws we have are a definite sign

That our vision of love is going blind.

(they probably got a law against this rhyme.)

Unh-hunh…..

 

We got laws for cool cats & laws for dirty dogs

Laws about where you can park your hog

Laws against your mama and your papa, too

Even got a law to make laws come true.

 

It’s against the law to hurt an ol’ lady,

It’s against the law to steal a little baby,

The laws we make are what we do to each other

There is no law to make brother love brother

Hmmm…….

 

Now this respect thang is hard for some folks to do

They don’t respect themselves

                    so they can’t respect you

This is the world we should get around —

These are the rules: we gonna run ‘em on down.

Listen up!

 

It ain’t enough to be cute

It ain’t enough to be tough

You gotta walk tall

You gotta strut your stuff

 

You gotta learn to read, you gotta learn to write

Get the tools you need to win this fight

Get your common sense down off the shelf

Start in the mirror ….Respect your Self!

 

When you respect yourself you keep your body clean

You walk tall, walk gentle, don’t have to be mean

You keep your mind well fed, you keep a clear head

And you think ‘bout who you let in your bed —

Unh-hunh ……

 

When you respect yourself you come to understand

That your body is a temple for a natural plan

It’s against that plan to use drugs or dope —

Use your heart and your mind when you need to cope . . .

It’s the law!

 

We got laws that got started in ‘86

And laws made back when the Indians got kicked

If we want those laws to go out of favor

Then we’ve got to change our behavior

 

Change what!? you say, well let’s take a look

How did the laws get on the books? Yeah.

I said it up front but let’s get tougher

The laws we make are what we do to each other

 

If you never shoot at me then I don’t need

A law to keep you from shooting at me, do you see?

There’s a universal law that’s tried and true

Says Don’t do to me —

What you don’t want done to you

Unh-hunh!

Don’t do to me —

What you don’t want done to you

It’s the law!

 

From Saundra Sharp ‘Typing in the Dark’ Harlem River Press (1991) p.33

Annie Foster

‘cannister’ in line 4 caught my attention; windows autocorrected to a single n, and I had to put the n back in. I hope it is not a typo!

A poem about finding home, finding a place, settling, becoming part of a place, part of a family, a community surrounding and extending forwards and backwards in time.

The gentle tone is the tone of others in this collection. there is not much more. She was featured as one of three poets in Flambard New Poets 1 in 1994.

I have looked on google. They offer me the Flambard book, and a song ‘Gentle Annie’ by Stephen Foster, and Annie Fosters who are estate agents and intramural officers (policing people being walled up as a punishment I suppose, estate agents I hope – this would be quite apposite, ‘ a cosy singles residence, no challenging views, no food waste to dispose of, haunt somebodies future’).

I looked on Facebook. There was an Annie there who kept juggling photos of herself, and might have been the right age, but the photo in the book is over 25 years old, and I could not decide if it was her. One photo struck me, outside a garden centre a notice that said ‘It’s Spring, I’m so excited I wet my plants’.

A search for Lake District poets only produced the Lake Poets; one for Cumbrian Poets noted a 1998 anthology but did not indicate who was included – beside that only programmes to encourage young poets. This is important, but so many do not publish until late – especially women.

Annie Foster ‘Ashes’ before 1991

Ashes 

Annie Foster 

 

We haven’t spoken of it since the early days

when I came to you like a half wild cat

looking for a warm place to winter.

What I wanted then was my cannister of ashes

thrown onto the oily sea from the end of a stone pier,

to join the pull and heave forever.

 

I have changed my mind.

There should be ashes but I want them to go home

to the slope of churchyard

with your grandfathers.

When the tattoos of my flesh are dust in a pot

I will be anchored and still.

 

From ‘The New Lake Poets’ ed William Scammell, Bloodaxe (1991) p.39

Djuna Barnes

Through the poem Barnes effectively, myth by myth, removes people from the planet; everything cycles back to start again.

It seems apposite to our time, with the threats from changing climate to the continuation of human life; but also going beyond to look at the cycling of the material back from the current expanding universe, and then thrown out again in a new configuration, a new throw of the cosmic dice.

I only vaguely knew the name of Barnes. For the last thirty years of her life she published little, working and reworking pieces but in her early life she produced journalism of the most idiosyncratic type, drawings, poems, novels – Nightwood described as a classic of lesbian writing and still described positively – among them.

I shall look for more

Djuna Barnes ‘Transfiguration’ 1938

Transfiguration 

Djuna Barnes 

 

The prophet digs with iron hands

Into the shifting desert sands.

 

The insect back to larva goes;

Struck to seed the climbing rose.

 

To Moses’ empty gorge, like smoke

Rush inward all the words he spoke.

 

The knife of Cain lifts from the thrust;

Abel rises from the dust.

 

Pilate cannot find his tongue;

Bare the tree where Judas hung.

 

Lucifer roars up from earth;

Down falls Christ into his death.

 

To Adam back the rib is plied,

A creature weeps within his side.

 

Eden’s reach is thick and green;

The forest blows, no beast is seen.

 

The unchained sun, in raging thirst,

Feeds the last day to the first. 

 

Orig publ ‘’London Bulletin’ No 3 (1938) revised and reprinted in ’Surrealist Poetry in English’ ed E B Germain, Penguin (1978) p.156