Unsuitable blog and HappenStance news

Heather Trickey, author of Sorry About the Mess, died on 21 July, 2021, aged 50. It feels like yesterday.

It's customary for publishers to put out a notice of regret, some words of praise, when one of their poets dies. It is so hard to do, in this case. Heather had become a friend, and obituaries make death real.

Heather loved being alive. She lived with fierce intensity, whether she was crying, raging, howling with laughter, or splashing in the freezing waves off the Welsh coast. She had a gift for friendship, and for making people smile in dark times. As she slipped further and further into illness, her friends, new and old, drew closer. She gently placed her 'lovely shattered friends' into poems. 'Tell me about your heart,' she said to them as she danced down 'the long red carpet of the hall'.

Those phrases are her own, of course. They are drawn from Sorry About the Mess, just a little book, but it's alive, and it will last.

When a poem works, that's one of the magic things it does: it creates a tiny flicker of life. A bit of the poet is alive inside it for as long as the text is read, like the filament inside an old-fashioned light bulb. 

One of Heather's favourites was the ancient song 'Westron Wynde', a poem that's alive if ever one was. She loved 'the smalle rayne downe can rayne'. She loved the yearning in that poem, the aching loss.

And now Heather Trickey herself is lost. Heather who adored her family with every fibre of her being; who cherished her friends dearly; who loved language, and the traditions of poetry, with every last scrap of her keen intelligence. It was vital to her to articulate the truth with precision and care, whatever it cost. 

And here she is still, illuminating her own lines.

Pobble

After I leaked hot tears onto the radiotherapy bed
and the nurse said she would have liked to give me a hug
but couldn't, I swung by our local patch of water.

This is the Channel. And I am the Pobble,
recklessly dabbling my toes
having already removed my paper mask.

A friend once sat hereabouts and sang a song to the Severn.
Brown/blue, two things can be true. Right now it looks
like sparkling shit. This poem is not about Pobbles
and it will not win prizes.  

There are four new HappenStance poetry pamphlets. Would your friends and relatives enjoy one of them as a seasonal gift? Which one? I don't know. I love them all.   

But ever helpful, I thought I'd offer some buying tips. (All are the same price – £5.00, or £3.75 to subscribers.)

Bookmarks, D.A. Prince

A set of poems inspired by the markers we leave in books. It would appeal to the sort of person who loves reading, and leaves piles of books lying around (it comes with its own bookmark so that's a special touch). Poets should be inspired by it too: there's food for thought here about poem-stimuli. All D.A. Prince's poems have layers: you can read them for their surface meaning and immediate interest, and then go back many times over.

Honeycomb, M.R. Peacocke

This is a slender set, only 24 pages long. The poems inside are delicate, careful and emotive. The connecting theme may be age and ageing but the touch is light. It does make a good gift for the older reader, but I think those who love lyrical work would also take to it instantly, at any age. And for anyone who already knows M.R. Peacocke's work, it's a must.

The Lesser Mortal, Geoff Lander

This is a great gift for scientists —perhaps in particular scientists who don't think of themselves as poetry readers (also a good gift for artists who don't think of themselves as scientists) — or young folk planning on science degrees. The contents are beautifully formal (rhymed and metrical) and fun to read, though far from trivial in their preoccupations. Geoff Lander is meticulous in his footnotes too, added value and pleasure here.

Briar Mouth, Helen Nicholson

An unusual first collection by someone who hails from the west coast of Scotland —some of her more eccentric Scottish relatives feature here, as does her experience of growing up with a stammer. Helen Nicholson, (a founder member of Magma) writes with wit, subtlety and charm. An especially good gift for those with Scottish connections, or interested in communication (Helen is now afundraiser for a Dundee-based charity for children and young people with speech, language and communication difficulties).

And what about Now the Robin by Hamish Whyte, published earlier this year? There's a seasonal bird on the front cover, and two festive robins on the last page too (see illustration below). One of the finest feats for a poet is to write simply: Hamish Whyte does it with bells on. Now the Robin will appeal to anyone who loves sitting in a garden. And of course people called Robin.

Last but not least, there's a HappenStance poetry party next Saturday at the Scottish Poetry Library where you can see these publications and decide for yourself. Do come if you live near enough — but reserve a place because space is limited. There'll be cakes from Alison Brackenbury's Aunt Margaret's Pudding, something festive to drink, and of course some poets and poems.

Since my early twenties, I've owned a little brooch, a gold 'true love knot' dotted with tiny pearls. My mother gave it me, but it belonged to my father's mother, and was given to her by her first boyfriend Jack. Jack went off to the war and didn't come back.

So that was the end of Lizzie Wray's boyfriend Jack's story. I never knew his second name. 

Meanwhile, Annie Wray, her younger sister (my great-aunt) also had a boyfriend who went off to fight. He was called Hamlyn Radford, and he went to France and did come back. He came back because he was shot through the chest in 1916. He survived that, and mustard gas, which he told me had made his hair fall out. He was indeed entirely bald.

Lizzie married someone else: Joseph Curry. And when her son to that someone (my dad) was ten, that husband died too, though of natural causes. And she married for a second time: Harold Essex (I have a silver lapel button with a tiny photo of Harold inside it). 

But she kept Jack's brooch, because I have it now. I've just cleaned and polished that little eternity symbol for the first time in nearly half a century. It seemed appropriate on Remembrance Sunday.

But recently something else happened. I was going through photographs of my mother's (she died at 91 in 2015) and I came across a yellowing card: a sort of postcard with an embroidered panel, and the lacy panel has a flap, beneath which something presumably once went.

The card is marked and dirty. You couldn't wash the embroidered section because it's firmly fixed to the paper frame. Should I keep it or ditch it? I was in the mood for throwing things out. Then I turned it over and saw the handwriting (I have never noticed it before). It says, in faded letters, Yours Jack.

Do you ever feel as though you've had a little nudge? As though someone, not here, is sending a tiny hint that you should pay more attention?

Of course it could be any Jack. Any Jack could have written this on the card. But he's also dated it, and the date is 26/7/17.

Does that mean he was killed at Ypres not long after? Maybe. 

In tiny print, I can see the card announces its provenance as Paris, though the red, white and blue of the embroidery makes me think it was made for the British. I always assumed Jack had bought the brooch in England and gave it to her before he left. But perhaps he bought it in France and posted it to her. Either way, I think the brooch may once have been pinned to the card, and may have sat beneath the flap that says BEST LOVE.

Who were you Jack? How old were you when you died? What was your second name? You might have been my grandfather – or at least somebody's grandfather – had you only survived.

All the people who might have known about my grandmother's first boyfriend are long dead, and Jack even longer. I would have shared this with my sister, but since last year she's gone too. So here's to the memory of Jack. To Jack, and all the other Jacks.

If I were to wish anything for my own grandchildren, and for all the other children in the world, it would be for human beings to find a way to stop making war, to put all that behind us. Isn't war the single most stupid thing an intelligent species could ever make?