Isolation (writing day 1)

So, (hello Michael) I am 4 years on from my last post. But I'm not going to catch you all up on my soaring life. I expect most of you know anyway.

I am instead going to write a short story today. We're 17 days into isolation here in Ramparts Walk and I'm wondering why it hadn't occurred to me to write a story before today, but there you go. The last one I wrote was published so even though that would be nice, that is not my motivation today. I awoke this morning with a curiosity about a time/era in Norway and explored it, as can only be done if you don't have to get up for work at 6am.  So a few hours of percolation later and I ask my Facebook lovelies for a first sentence. I chose one. Here I go.






First, you select a knife. Not just any knife but your biggest. The one that gets stuck in the block because the blade is a tiny bit too wide for the spalte, so it drags a little and probably blunts it further every time you drive it home.

Second, because you've probably blunted it, you sharpen it. Take a steel and draw the blade towards you repeatedly until it is sharp enough. You will know when it is.

Now, you are ready. I am ready. I crouch by the closed door. It is locked but that means very little.

The Germans have been here for 4 years. Every winter the bones of my country are depleted further. Leeched of goodness;  my homeland becomes harder to recognise. Only the forest and the fjord remains the same so I have come here. I fish and I try to remember what life was like for my people before. The Wehrmacht have come and there is nothing to be done but survive the best you can. The front face of a nation that cares nothing for individual nations unless they are their own but some individuals are not so bad. But you will be called a quisling, or traitor, if you try and survive too well.

My thighs start to burn but I can't sit down. I must be ready.

The first time I saw Jan was in the village. The King had watched my village burn to ash after the bombing and left us to flounder in the charred remains. Whole families had been destroyed while he watched from the forest. The ground covered by a thick layer of soft snow. Black ash; white snow; yellow heart. I spied Jan the next day. His big hands rifling through what remained. Looking for money, or someone still alive to torture, I assumed. Maybe a still-breathing jew or two. He hadn't stayed long. Someone taller with a crueler face came for him and he left the burned timbers of my life to be swallowed by another snowfall.

I shift my weight onto my heels, stretch my calves as I rock back and forth. I think I hear something moving in the night. Not a hint of what it is, but I run through an inventory in my head. Could be an elk, or a beaver, the fjord is home to both. But somehow that step sounds more deliberate.

That's when I came here. This cabin had been my family's for generations. My grandparents had decided the forest life was not for them at the turn of the century although to be fair I think my bestefar loved the solitude. I suspect he'd have been happy as Odin up here communing with the red squirrel and taking his orders from the raven even on his own. It was my bestemor who finally wanted the company of women in the village. I often think that they should have parted ways then but that was not the way of things. I've been here 3 years, 2 months, 1 week and 4 days. They were here for over 40 years. I often wonder how my gregarious bestemor survived it. My bestefar was the most loving man I ever knew but he was silent. He fit best with the mountains that protected the cabin from a never-ending sky.

I grip the knife hard. I am sure that I can hear something, no, someone out there. I hope it is who I want it to be but you can never be sure. Once the Germans catch wind that you are a Quisling, they think you are fair game. Their programme of Lebensborn, not surprisingly, is hardly a difficult way to be patriotic: Impregnate as many women as you can; spread that Aryan blood far and wide, soldier.

My mamma was born up here. Bestemor told me of my mamma's birth many times and I never got tired of hearing it. It was fast, luckily, and bestefar had cut the cord with a hot knife and they had laid with the windows open listening to the summer forest awake and alive around them. Their youth had given them each other and this child was the result of many years of grieving. They had thought my mamma was never going to come, but she did, always late, and feisty with life. Then, in turn she had given birth to me, not here, but at the village after my grandparents had returned. My bestefar cut my cord too but with a midwife present this time.. My father, a logger, was away as always. I wasn't a big enough draw to take him away from the forest. Now, I live up here, I understand why.

"Quisling..." A man's voice whispers at the door. It's been several months but our secret word springs alive from his lips.

Others have been but I didn't want them to come. I fought them every time, but it was obvious that they never learned the Norwegian for no.

"Jan?"
"Kjæreste..." Liebchen in his tongue.

I straighten up from behind the door. Not as light on my feet as I used to me. My joints creak and my back takes a few seconds to realise that I am standing.

I open the door a crack. Knife still clenched in my defiant paw. Just in case I am mistaken, just in case this isn't him. The door creaks like my bones. He pushes in and looks at me. His eyes sparking something. It's been so long. My hair is unwashed and tangled but Jan pushes his fingers into the strands and I grab his hips.

"Is it you?" I ask.

"Who else, Kjæreste?"

I do not answer. I am still holding the knife. He strokes my wrist and I let it fall. As he does his big hands find the swelling curve of my belly, and he asks without words.

"Yes," I whisper, "it's yours."

Poetry Never Fails Unlike my Mother's Cooking....

I've been having a crisis of writing these last few months.

It's been a time of word barrenness due to high stress and balls of anxiety nestling in my belly. This is not unusual I expect... Graham Greene famously used dream journaling as a way to move through his creative blockages.

I use napping. Afternoon snoozes, windows flung wide open to the smells and scents of burgeoning Spring trees ripe with underground life. What better metaphor for that poem that you know is biding its time. The words still shyly waiting in the corner of school halls waiting to be asked to dance. Each one beautiful, perfect but not yet noticed.

I haven't written a decent poem in quite a while. And I know they've been there. They skulk and shift in my mind. And sometimes I get a glimpse of them smiling patiently.

So when I woke up this still-light evening, Beltane Eve, still groggy from that kind of nap you're not even sure you've had - just a soggy pillow as evidence that you did, indeed, sleep. And a first line was waiting for me, I had that profound sense of relief you feel when you finally get home after a long time away. That feeling of sinking into a lover's arms who knows you - REALLY knows you.

So here she is. I love it when my mum visits me in my writing. It's never an affront and always a wonderful welcome flash of recognition. My childhood memories are few and hazy so when one reaches out to meet me halfway, it feels so right...

NURSARY TEA
My mum would put a whole tin
of baked beans in her cottage pie -
Fry off the mince in lard, add onions,
never garlic, and maybe, if a special dinner,
a freshly opened packet of Colmans
seasoning entitled 'Cottage Pie’,
sprinkled with intention.

She had a deep pyrex dish kept especially,
(although occasionally it was used for roast potatoes,
that never worked - she never learned that the secret
of decent, crispy on the outside, fluffy in the middle,
roasted potatoes, is a single layer).

She spooned in her mincey bean concoction
using the same tablespoon I now have in my drawer.
On top, the mashed potato, not creamy
but skimmed milk lumpy and if the week’s diet had gone well
a grated thin scatter of red leicester.

At 4.30, we sat down, she, me and my sister,
just us three, awkwardly spaced at the bench set.
Low fat gravy pre-whisked in a plastic jug
gluggled over our nursery tea.

Survivor of Christmas here :-D

I do love Christmas. I don't mean the over-full present-buying frenzy that takes over even the least materialistic of us. I mean the intention of relaxation, love full  days with those we cherish. And want to spend time with. For many of us duty has to take precedence of course, at least for a little while over the season and there's nothing wrong with that. After all this isn't a season which purports to be selfish. And surely often the giving of our time even to those we'd rather not is all part of the parcel, no matter how it's wrapped.

I'm lucky I do get to spend real time with lovely loving people and for that I'm very grateful. This poem came out of a beginning about being stretched thin by others' expectations and became a poem (as all mine seem to at the moment) about love. 

GUM

I was stretched, 

like gum pulled thin,

two thumbs pressed

at either end

of a chewed up piece

and pulled until a string formed

between two opposing wills.

The taut fragile line

folded up, 

slung low under a full belly

and an even fuller moon.

You pulled me apart,

snapped past my elastic limit,

in a night drenched garden

under an alcove built especially for two.

Us two, in fact -

you with your hollow rimmed edge 

and me,

exploring what your mind meant 

when it spoke of love.

For your frilly words filled a tiny pocket

in the smallest part of my heart

and as my blood pulsed through it, 

it whispered of a start.

The Darkest Day

Just a quick post today as I wander out into the darkest night to enjoy some yule mulled wine on the streets of Totnes. 

Wishing you all a light filled season whatever your religious beliefs or lack thereof. All I really wish for this time of year is a ceasefire to the fighting and for us all to live in a safer, fairer more sustainable way. Here's a poem to ponder as I think, inevitably, on this darkest day of fear, illusions and shadows. 

Merry solstice to all xxx

Much love Kate x

SOLSTICE ON THE 22nd

On a pivot point
we spin, reaching
higher, eyes wider,
stretched to understand
that somehow there’s a plan,
a fundamental place
to safely land.

From the darkest well
we gaze on stars,
as the moon travels past,
taking with it night
after night, and replacing
with light, recycling
our wishes for a home in a jar.

Still we spin, silently weaving
fragile futures, placing coins
in boxes, pretending that
a prosperous spring will protect,
that all is not lost. A cynic once said
that optimism is born of fear,
in this darkest day of the year.

LOVE

So, I'm reaching the end of 2015 with clenched teeth in a permanent smile and a chest full of deliciousness. It sometimes feels that love such as is flowing through me these days is too good for me. Even though I know secretly that I'll embrace it because when I feel it I can let if flow out of me and touch everyone I connect with. If that feeling is even a tiny bit contagious then let it come...

It also means that I'm feeling everything to the max at the moment. Which is no bad thing for a poet and writer, but does mean that everyday living can be game of emotion tennis... volleying each ball as it enters my side of the court. 

Yesterday I visited my mother's house for the last time. She died 19 years ago and since then my sister and I have been kind of stuck in limbo. My mother's new husband (only a year into marriage) was allowed to live in our family home until he saw fit to leave. This year he died and the home where we grew up, became ours again. Back in June when I first entered it again, it felt like all trace of her (and my dad) who died 7 years before her, was gone. Her husband had chucked away all that was hers and had left the house an empty shell. I felt nothing but sadness that he'd treated her, in the end, with so little respect. So, fast forward six months to now, and the house sale finally going through. I stepped back in again and while standing in the kitchen I was bombarded by memories. Mostly of our family christmases when my dad was alive, that year after year we celebrated in the tiny kitchen. 

It felt good to have some glimpses again of a past which did have some happiness infused within them. It gave me, this empath, a pathway to start a different type of grieving process... Here's a poem that is the  beginning, I think, of something bigger.

DEAD
They say the dead
leave fragments
but they’re wrong.
What’s left is visuals
sunk in shadows. 

Spits of sound appear and
with each slight turn of head,
glimpses of light
and the smell of bleach.

They say they leave
pain and agony
but they’re wrong.
What’s left is a room
stuffed to the rafters
with laughter infused
with the cheapest sherry,
newly papered walls
fresh and ready for Christmas.

Each year, a dusty tree
extracted from the downstairs cupboard,
silverfish shaken
from its wire branches. 

And she, bending each arm
to make a tree-like shaped thing,
covered in no time
with bits and bobs pulled out of school bags
year after year with a flourish.

They say the dead
leave fragments,
and if they mean love
that inflates like a balloon
expanding your heart
until it bursts out of your eyes,
they are half right.

Poetry Schmoetry

Busy doing stuff.

So, once a year blogposts seem to be the order of the day *ahem* year... How could I let a year go by without updating, especially as I'm pretty sure I've written about a million poems in that space of time. And probably without too much exaggeration.

Poetry as always has been a good friend to me. It's always a way for me to access, reassess and make sense of my emotions. It also helps me with getting my thoughts in order.

An old friend used to say that poetry is the merging of the technical and the emotional. That definition works for me in many ways. Not least because for me it's a process that allows me to attempt to make sense of feelings and take them to a brain level by choosing and fitting that feeling into words... Sometimes it helps. sometimes it diminishes the feeling which can be helpful in some circumstances, but mostly it puts it into another perspective which can be really helpful.

In September I embarked on a Facebook challenge to post a poem a day onto a challenge page. I didn't miss too many days - even if I did cheat a bit by occasionally posting an edited version of an old poem (so spank me)....

Here's a couple of the new non-cheating ones:

MARS AND VENUS

Simplicity, he said,
Makes deeper seas
In which we can swim.

Complexity, she said,
Warms the water,
Wards off goosebumps.

Clarity, he said,
Means bigger fish
Follow the boat.

Obscurity, she said,
Makes them swim
Right into the net.

KS

GARDEN

You can borrow my body
I have no need of her today.

Landscaped lawns
Preened and weeded

With a little wild corner 

Set aside for the fairies.
Sunshine makes shadows 

As readily as trees.
You can have me today 

From my ears to my knees.

KS

I CAME BACK 

Swallows circle
in autumn air
as thin as gossamer 

and yet as swollen
as this gilded lily
who awaits your command.

They will fly south soon
as sure as this next hour
will swoop into another, 

bringing me back
to circle over
this ploughed field. 

You let me go
and therefore
I came back. 

KS

I think it might be time for another poetry challenge... any ideas?

It's been a while...

Hey you,
I've been pretty busy the last few months, both physically and mentally; lots of aliveness and along with that, lots of thinking, going on.
I've been teaching my own devised short story writing course; Totnes Writers' Playshop , which I'm loving so much. Plus finishing off the sequel to Dark Sleepers & writing another short story to sell. I'm also looking into funding to run a workshop in Exeter with Dan Metcalf friend and writer.
But I haven't stopped writing the poems - they've been churning out of me most days. Currently, I'm into week 4 of my MA poetry course, which has been a revelation, and I think, it's taken even my meagre words to a whole new level.

I'll share one that came out of an exercise on Wednesday that looked at traces left behind. Showing presence in absense...

ABSENT

Brushing cake crumbs

from clothes

into dead ash,

the bare warm seat

still sighs

sunken like tired eyes,

still stinging from your scent

as it clings to molecules

not yet homed.

Clustered round the half-empty

glass, or to you half-full, 

are remnants,

skin-cells, a golden hair

or two.

Two sticky rings

from clumsy coffee cups.