Written on Slate

Now that I am embarking on my PhD on cultural memory in the African diaspora I enclose my poem which I originally wrote on slates. For reference, the sankofa bird is an image representing a bird flying forward but forever looking back to its roots.



kyrie eleison -
as the sun melts
and darkness slides in

the heartbeat of the eath stills
and oceans spill
on the tilt

rocks crumble and cry
dry
tears

and particles colouyr the breath
of the
wind

and the sankofa bird flies forward
forever looking back

to when the rainbow itself was
enough

poetry evening

I am looking forward to taking a new poetry class at HannaCherries teashop this evening. We are starting obviously just after Valentine's day with a look at romantic imagery - poems such as Donne's "A Valediction forbidding mourning"which has the famous image of the twin compasses; and of course Burns and Shakespeare, Shelley and Rossetti! So nice to spend time with words in the company of other wordsmiths and tea and cake! A perfect Monday night!

"A Bright Nowhere"

Watching a recent programme on Seamus Heaney I realised that I had been shutting out reading and writing poetry whilst I studied and that this was what was making me feel unsettled. His lyrical poetry is so powerful and beautiful and as the Nobel Prize acknowledged, he took the local and made it global. I have no right to put my name on the same page as his, but listening to his words has inspired me, finally, to start writing again so I present my latest poem following  Heaney’s “Kite for Christopher and Michael”

somewhere between here and there

ebullient kites skirl lightly above us

strings aching with every wind blown

twist and turn

to pull us upwards 

into the blue mirrored horizons.

floating ribboned tails flick
the last stripped tree branches
caressing their nakedness
and in this high, privileged space
the coloured canvasses sketch our unknown sequels

in an aura of bright imagination.

and now, as late shadows start to cross the sand

it is our turn to stand with planted feet and take the strain,

where before us, elders hands wrapped around the cords
severed by our own births.