A fascinating and fun hour on Brum Radio with Rick Sanders aka Willis the Poet, and Sam J. Grudgings 😄
I’m sure there’s a better way to do this (!) but click on an audio file by MixCloud here.
Monthly Archives: November 2021
Pale Horse
Pale Horse was one of two poems that were part of the Worcestershire Poet Laureate Nina Lewis’s project back in 2018 when she asked poets in Worcester UK and Worcester USA to collaborate in a Call and Response project. To see the poems that were published, click on the image below:
I was lucky to have been paired with Beth Sweeney from the States. We got on well and came up with four poems that we were both proud of 😄
NB: The Next of Kin Memorial Plaque is a bronze plaque known as the dead man’s penny. They were issued to the next of kin of those who died serving in WWI, nearly a million individuals. Only 600 if those plaques were issued to women who died.
Pale Horse
Heels down. Head up. Look
where you’re going.
Go to a place
where you can hear your heart;
listen to the beat,
forget the drub of a thousand pale hooves
and the horsemen of the apocalypse.
We rise and fall together.
Grandma had a penny to remember you,
a bronze memory she Brassoed weekly,
cast in physical prowess, spiritual power,
in devotion to the triumph of good,
Britannia faces left, holds a laurel wreath,
there’s a box beneath, holding your name in raised relief,
and you, a man of miracles.
We rise and fall together.
A circular coin made whole, inscribed:
‘He died for freedom and honour’.
You are a man, who has gone,
yet nonetheless lives.
Your Penelope still waits.
Put the littered marshy slew behind you,
put it behind you.
We will start again.
Go to a place
where you can hear your heart;
listen to the beat.
No pale horse snickers,
no harbinger rides quicker,
no more horseshoes, trench fever, heat.
We sleep.
We rise and fall together.
Polly Stretton © 2018
Published in Contour WPL Magazine Issue 3 https://issuu.com/ninalewis3/docs/special_edition_contour_atotc_issue by
the 2017-2018 Worcestershire Poet Laureate Nina Lewis for her call and response project: A Tale of Two Cities
in Openings 36 the annual anthology of the Open University Poetry Society
and in Growing Places (Black Pear Press, 2021)
Here is an audio recording of the poem.
Boxing Hare
On a bleak November day, here’s an Englyn–a Welsh poetry form–from my very first collection of poetry Girls Got Rhythm to remind us that spring will come along soon…😄
Boxing, racy, hatted hare, mad in March, much startled air. Take care! Long ears and nostrils full flare, strong limbs, swift, free, outrun scare. Polly Stretton © (Girl's Got Rhythm, Black Pear Press, 2012)
Just to clarify, for the purists out there, this is an Englyn unodl union. The straight one-rhymed englyn. This englyn form (there are at least eight different versions) consists of four lines of ten, six, seven and seven syllables. The seventh, eighth or ninth syllable of the first line introduces the rhyme and this is repeated on the last syllable of the other three lines. The last syllable of the first line is rhymed with a syllable early in the second.
Somme Song, and, Remember the Animals
To commemorate Armistice Day, here are two of my WWI poems.
Somme Song
You smell the fire and sulphur,
you see the flames and fear;
according to the date you died
you’d been there just one year.
One year of mud and mire,
stink of trenchfoot’s black-dead-rot;
of wondering if you’d get home,
fearful you would not.
Letters from your girl,
back in good old Blighty,
you read how proud of you she is,
that she prays daily, nightly.
The seeping chill, the icy times,
the nights’ illumined shocks,
the bullets’ hateful murky crimes
which your mind surely blocks;
dead men all around you,
scattered in dark ditches,
littering the ground,
fury’s fathomed riches.
You got home part way through
they thought you fortunate,
you lasted two months more,
but came back far too late.
What did your life have in store
that you could not have found?
What more could you have given,
as you lay, on cold bleak ground?
You fought for us to have a life,
you fought for King and Country
you gave your life, and, God knows,
this is duty…most ugly.
Polly Stretton © 2016
First published in ‘Remembering The Somme’ (Black Pear Press, 2016)
Remember the Animals
Hold your horses, cuddle the cat,
when you’re alone, this is where it’s at,
creatures of comfort, of work, of play,
living beings to help through the day.
Carrying water, food and meds,
helping the men lying low in their beds.
Ammunition, so needed in trenches,
dogs delivered, using their senses.
Canaries detected poisonous gas,
the rabid rats never got past
dogs and cats who patiently waited,
and cleared away all of the hated
rodents.
Monkeys and foxes, pets and mascots,
cleaning wounds, clearing foot rot,
they raised morale, provided solace
amidst the hardships of war endured.
They worked, they played: they played their part,
we remember them with all our heart.
Polly Stretton © 2018
First published in ‘The Unremembered–World War One’s Army of Workers–The British Story’ (Black Pear Press, 2018)
Review of OU Poets’ 40th Anniversary anthology
Rodney Wood has written a review of the celebratory edition of ‘Openings’ for Write Out Loud ‘a…hub for participation in poetry, encouraging everyone who writes poetry – from still-too-nervous-to-do-open-mic to Nobel Prize winner – to share their words with others.’ ‘Red Letter Openings’ marks the occasion with 52 poems from members and founder members.
To read the OU Poets post, click here.
To see the full review click here.
Dandy
I drift, a dandelion clock
breathing through sunlight,
waving to daisies,
my elderflower years have begun.
Once, there were duster yellow petals,
green leaves shiny and new,
when I had you.
Seasons change.
Polly Stretton © 2021
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