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Copyright: me me cummings 2020
You’ll never guess but a poem in part inspired by Tish has won a competition run by the Holland Park Press, a small independent publisher that specializes in Dutch literature translated into English. Yet another weird combo for “Merrily”.
The Dutch have a royal family too of course, without our pomp and ceremony, so I expect the judges had a lot of fun dealing with entries on their “Is Royalty relevant?” theme.
Royalty was certainly relevant to Tish. She did have a distant relative who regaled us with stories of having tea with Princess Margaret in her later years, but it was Tish who spent her childhood in a Hammersmith children’s home where she adopted the royal family as a substitute for her own. So “Auntie Florence” is a composite figure and the poem is not about one person. It’s about a state of mind.
When researching for a lecture on Women's Magazines many moons ago, I came across the "Knit your own Royal Corgi!" feature. In the same magazine could be found "50 ways with Sausage Meat."
I must admit I have always found the British obsession with the Royals ridiculous - as I hope the Royals must do themselves, Their cage is gilded, but it remains a cage and they must need all the light relief they can lay their hands on. Imagine their memoirs of eccentrics they have met. The way in which we use them and celebrities, in general, to give our lives an uplift is fascinating. For some, they clearly fulfill a deep psychological need. So I wanted the poem to mix comedy and pathos. Our Auntie Florry was a lovely lady who warranted respect. Those suffering from Alzheimer's often seem to have become calm and gentle souls, but our Florence was a kindly person long before she was afflicted.
You can find the poem here: https://www.hollandparkpress.co.uk/winner-of-the-is-royalty-relevant-competition/
It did not exist a fortnight ago, so I feel very lucky. These publishers have around two dozen authors on their list and their comp. was free to enter but with a cash prize, so my thanks to them. They seem to combine the feel of a cottage industry - selling books at stalls in market towns where you can, of course, enjoy a chat with your customers - alongside full exploitation of 21st century IT and social media. One of my favorite mixtures.
Updated: May 28
Freda and I are lucky in having access to three parks at the moment, so while we keep being told how “abnormal “ everything is, it can take only a minute or two to realise how, for every other species on the planet, 2020 is completely normal. Except perhaps where we are destroying habitat, although that has become entirely normal now so they are probably used to us doing that.
Apparently one of the positives emerging from the crisis is people reconnecting with nature without Sir David Attenborough doing a running commentary. Closer contact with landscape and animals can help with mental health as well as phusycal, though not necessarily on grouse moors…
Anyway, you have got some “nature” poems coming up.
I have always loved the way Gerard Manley Hopkins, DH Lawrence and Dylan Thomas in particular tried to render natural subjects in poetry without drifting into sentimentality. Nature is red In tooth and virus. Trying to express the physical, though not or landscape, and only exercising anthropomorphism with comedy in attendance is an enjoyable technical challenge too
The bridge in “Swallow” is the Victorian metal bridge over the Thames linking the South end of Port Meadow in Oxford with Bossoms boatyard. Hopkins stood there and of course, the churchyard where Tish is buried is at the back of Binsey that Hopkins wrote on as well.
I have no axe to grind in these poems. They are just descriptions designed to underline beauty. I hope they work that way for you.
Sunflowers
The first shoot
presses out like
a baby’s head,
A soft, white
knuckle nudging
crumbs of soil
aside, before
moisture-hoisting
centimetres
stretch all
summer long,
cell-by-cell,
into metres
draped with floppy
heart leaves
hanging like
elephant ears.
An invisible
rocket has
vapour-trailed
a barnstorming
beanstalk,
at the last up-
periscoping
its crowning
glory: ramming
a golden
tatty hat down
on a dark, close-
cropped skull.
Swallow
If you stand still
in the middle of this bridge,
air softened by the blooming
warmth of a summer dawn,
swallows can slash
inches from your face
like a Samurai sword.
A milky breast
bullets past with
a flash of sharp focus,
so that invisible midge
about to feast on
your skin is now
stuck in a red throat
awaiting digestion.
Evenings, their aerobatics
nip to within millimetres
of the river: ancient
arrowheads, skimming
to drink and feed off
long, scimitar curves,
wings dipping for the final
twists of the knife.
At their twin
tips, wings
scissor open and close.
Blue Tit Feeding
In flight,
bouncing on air,
skimming the sky,
between slim trees,
the line like a child’s,
drawing a bird.
Back. About.
Blue spikey
skull cap. Face:
white, black slash,
white. Beak: dart
tip. Here. Now.
Eyes: tiny
holes. In. Out.
About. Dart up.
Down. Peckish.
Peck. Peck. Flee.
Back. About.
Hop. Wait. A
tic? Scratch. Llllegggg-
blurr. Toc. Peep.
Fidgety fluff
up. Sleek. Right.
Left. Peek. Hop.
Pop off. Back.
About. Peck.
Now. Here. Peck.
AGHH! Great Tit.
A bout. Nearly
pecked.
Gone.
Orgy
Gnats can fly backwards and upside down and they can turn on the spot.
Their wings beat 1,000 times a second. Roughly.
More tango than tangle,
these tiny flies are hanging
out on their 3D dance
floor, quickstepping on
air.
Their elastic chassis involves up
and down like a siren’s song.
Invisible eyes, legs and wings
(plus systems to feed them/reproduce)
knit this floating Ball
of dizzying precision,
making synchronised shoals or swirling
flocks seem mere conformists.
Here’s instinct at its most ingenious and fecund:
if they were exercising choice,
they would be choosing several times a second.
Have they all met before?
Don’t be absurd.
Will they ever meet again?
In the stomach, maybe
of spider, bat or bird.
Are they all the same?
Are some a bit of a character?
A “Look at Me!” male, pumping fizz into his
bzzzz and aiming for the closest near Miss?
A double quick spin
turn, reverse, flex
and then he’s topped her.
If we had sex like this
we’d fall out of bed;
then out the helicopter.....