Stepping Out

Eleanor Rees enjoys the engagement with specific, sensual experience in the responses to this month's workshop
Eleanor Rees
'Out of the moment' ... Eleanor Rees Public domain

These poems offer a privileged insight into the poets' experiences of late autumn 2007. I like the specificity of this: as if language has arrived out of the moment and found a form and presence in poetry. There are two poems on November 5 and then a range of places offer up their significance. It would be interesting to try this exercise all at the same time on the same day to see the contrasts and similarities that arise ...

I'm also fascinated by how the different poems position the speaker in their respective landscapes; the dominant theme seems to be a tension between the desire to find relationship with place but a struggle to allow the self to do so. Often it is a problem of how to move from the general to the specific or to "open up" the first person speaker to integrate place into the voice and not merely comment upon the place - to be it, embody it, not just speak about or for it. This troubled relationship seems appropriate to our position as individuals in the modern world.

There's an insightful blog on the Salt Publishing website right now called On Writing. I recognise my experience of writing on place in the idea that poetry "doesn't involve power and determination, but rather their (Keatsian) absence. It is a surrender." I would suggest writing a poem involves a submission of self in just this way. The poet will eventually disappear and a poem will appear as a gift in return.

November 5th, Highbury Fields by Michael Cipris

"Do you know why this night is bonfire night?"

Shoes and strut too smart for this hectically

Leafy pavement though not for the street itself,

In frock-coats, work's

Financial profundities have ironed their voices

To this, have given their English

A cold, lucid skill. I'd guess

Maybe German, or Belgian,

Or Luxembourg. Their city

Enamel, its rooms and its faces


Set the mousetrap and flee

Like a coward, fearing blindness,

The scene of champagne

White fire, the geyser

Of green turning red fuming

Into a mist of burnt

Ice air.

No Dogs, No Football, No Cricket -

Agreed, obeyed: the whites

Would char, the feet would tangle and the dogs

Would suicide themselves

On the flames. A fire

Without a crowd is like a house

Without a child. Singing

Without dictionary words,

To the possible burning

Through of a dog, they wave

Their ammo across Highbury Fields,

Crowds of children with glow in the dark

Bones in their hands, threatening

To pray to the night.

Joggers persist; tennis persists;

The wind has something to say,

Has its way for a few righteous moments,

Calls a stop to the dancing and glitter

And reminds us to shiver. The fireworks

Scream and glitter in its wounded beard.

This poem reveals itself slowly. The fireworks here are the pyrotechnics in the language, the concision of phrases and expressions. The focus seems to be not on the world beyond the poem but on the operation of the poem itself. The speaker is submerged in the turns of phrase, which are wrung quite tight. I enjoyed the playfulness here, and the inclusion of the people in the street - but the reader is kept at a distance from the place and people in the poem, there's a feeling of ambivalence about the suggestions of violence, which creates a slightly sinister register when discerned from the ambiguity of the expression.

Narborough Road by Benjamin Clarke

There are cracks in the pave stones on Narborough Road,

Paper Maché of wet leaves mix with crisp packets

And sound the footfalls of hunched men thinking

Of their steps and of their mother's backs,

You are educated as you step past the worn spines

Of red brick terraces, shop fronts and side gates,

The just legible wafts of cuisine and flurries of accents

Mark the mysterious volumes with worldly minds,

I peel off the skin of my satsumas

And let them weather down with the sidewalk detritus;

A dazzling display of fruity colours, spent food husks

And condoms, while the jewelled mannequins watch us

In a sublime distracted nonchalance.

A stocky Indian woman leaving the library,

Chances her steps through the stalling traffic in an orange sari,

Engine groans sink into the general din (of evening prayers,

rain and radios) as into a stale old armchair, about which children hassle,

As its long legs stretch out in a submissive repose.

This is a vivid recreation of a moment in time - or it appears to be. I like the emphasis on details: "worn spines of redbrick terraces, shop fronts and side gates". The poem continues this approach but still shuffles along the surface in places: "a dazzling display of fruity colours, spent food husks" do their work, but I'd welcome a more concrete engagement with the road. There are "wafts" of cuisine and "flurries" of accents but these suggest more than one to me rather than entering into the specificity of the moment. This we do meet, embodied in the "stocky Indian woman" and the great line that follows - it seems the whole poem is here to tell me this idea, the principle of "chance", of the individual emerging from the mass then returning back into the "general din".

The Tack Shed by Johanna Emeney

I am drawn to the tack shed on Sunnyside Road,

where once a happy dead mouse

blurted out of the molasses bottle like a bad joke.

and landed soft on the mound of bran,

its punchline tail, the last sticky string of the pour.

The hard dust floor, the rusty corrugated walls,

the grey smell of old straw all draw me -

and the corner where the blacksmith used to throw

sawn off hoof ends for the dog -

she'd gnaw on those tough, rubber, woody remnants,

then bury them for never.

I read the known Braille nails on the wall -

they punctuate the dark comfortably -

starkly unadorned now, but still with the nameplates

of all the good ghost ponies above, whose

luck is safely stowed in the upturned U of rusty shoes.

I trace them in rough waves; finger lingeringly

those choice relics of back in the day

when the world was all laughter and ponies.

Bearing the previous poem in mind, it is interesting to move on to a poem in a rural environment. A similar subject in some ways: a first person speaker in the sensual and dark environment of the tack shed, known in detail to the speaker like Braille, which leads the speaker back to the purpose of the poem - the suggestion of good times passed and replaced with traces and the muscle memory of the past. The individual again emerges from the place, learning something of the nature of their identity by relating to a familiar environment.

Queens Wood by Pat Farrington

Metal monsters honking, bow-windowed houses

squatting on the ground, turn your back, take off

the brick overcoat of the city, wind down

the lane, breathe easy, you're in ancient woods.

Wildwood that was now tamed and cut but still,

spirits swoosh a dark trail on indented paths

of mouldy leaves, winding into the distance

where buried bodies lie piled from the Plague.

Gold coins on those hornbeams, copper pennies

strung along beeches, hanging suspended,

polished by November sun, they sit waiting

for their fate, grabbed and snatched by robber winds.

Flyaway leaves fall damp against your face

inside an Impressionist painting that moves,

twigs breaking under rat-like feet, you almost miss

a streak of white, electric blue and glossy black.

This poem moves deeper into the environment. We follow the poet out of the great "brick overcoat" of the city, after which the poem fluctuates between striking individual perceptions and socially mediated experiences. It seems to me that the final line ("you almost miss a streak of white, electric blue and glossy black") demonstrates the difficulty of writing and seeing the world without cultural allusion and the concentration required to see it in full.

Through the narrow gate of flies by William Francis

Through the narrow gate of flies

To a field behind the trees behind the house

A few square yards of history

A little bit of D-Day on our land

Mortar holes are sunken bowls and broken saucers, now

(like bunkers on the tricky seventeenth)

Drains have tamed the stinking mud

And cows close-crop the grass down by the stream

Thinking of the way things might have been

For our soldier fathers younger than our sons

I hunker down on sodden shoes to take a drink

Cupped hands carry iron to my lips

Earth and stone that linger on the tongue

A parchment leaf floats west with urgent news

For no reason I can name I choose to whistle

A rough sound, spittle-chinned and salty-fingered

A signal from a man to fellow men

No echo comes, no mystery - no fear

I still can't grasp what happened here

But maybe that's enough

There is a clear, crisp rhythm here and clarity to the diction that is echoed in the use of alliterative and assonantal phrases. I like very much how it progresses at a fast pace without losing focus, instead bringing more thoughts and senses into the field of perception. I also like the speaker's engagement in the landscape, both physically ("I hunker down on sodden shoes to take a drink") and emotionally ("a signal from a man to fellow men"). That the self has submitted itself to place here is suggested in the deliberate use of space in the lines. A moving poem.

The Hunger by Gillian Laker

Mists make menace and interior

of our winter fields

I stand between the seasons

and listen for its malevolence

To the heave and suck of clay

three parts water

ready to shrug like a snake slipping satin

one smooth ripple filling the valley floor

For all our shifting, surface swarming

our compulsion to colour and scrawl

we leave the merest smear

of consequence

Beneath our borders

and the bloom of battle

the earth remains as it always has

- fecund without favour

and hungry for us all

A direct and strong-voiced poem. I like the compactness of the expression but would also have welcomed more detailed articulation of the themes and reference to the place, as well as the reflective thoughts of the speaker who is present in the space but still "thinking" and maintaining a distance.

East Street Market by Sarah McCarthy

The morning's low thunder of stalls

Dragged into perfect pitch.

Arm-loads of fruits, casually piled

In the market mantra,

"Pound a bowl" "Pound a bowl"

Soft Ps and hard Os.

Home-sick sweet, sweet potatoes

World weary yams.

Hints of lives, un-tasted.

Fat, ripe fingers around the dark green

Avocados that will blacken through winter.

Outside the butcher's: Dead and comic,

Stacks of cows hooves, for boiling,

And boiling and boiling.

Flash! Panels of African cloth,

Warm and bright - next Sunday's best.

Bubbles of reggae and gospel,

Burst as you pass.

A thin smell of fish and

Something like burnt candy-floss.

Along the track, over-fed pushchairs

Race the shopping cart zimmers

To the "darlings" and "loves".

"A thin smell of fish" is a great description, but again here I'd have enjoyed a more intense entry into the place in language. The repetitions in the poem ("boiling, and boiling and boiling") make me wonder if there is more that could be gathered from this scene. I can see and sense a part of it but would welcome more of the vibrancy of "thin", an inventiveness of language to capture the business of the scene.

Your bare silver birch by Kath McCay

In the park, your bare silver birch. My locked spine, mouth at an angle,

pain in my gum. The bed without you. My face white without makeup.

The playground empty.

Six in our unit, one down. Me parading as a child, a sixer

in the Brownies. Six Day War, and you in England then.

The Six Counties, where I lived.

A girl on a pink bike laughs, and the park ripples.

I worry at the inside of my tooth with my tongue,

willing my gum to pink up , like our son who didn't cry

after birth: Apgar score 3/10. That nothing else will be lost.

Your tree is not dead, only storing up energy for the winter.

Like me, with my hat on. Underneath, still things going on.

Robins covering a grave. The mouse the cat tossed in the air.

Twigs, lightbulbs.

I love the ending of this poem, the juxtaposition of the idea of death or loss embedded in the list of creatures and objects. The final short line has poignancy, as does the understated tone of a poem which is at heart an elegy. The place allows the speaker to find an embodiment for the grief, linking it with the body: the experience of pain in the gum and the suggestion of feeling is sewn into the moment, inescapable.

The Nature of Things by Rachel Phillips


On a rotten wood step outside my little girl room

painted with one-winged dragonflies and ladybugs,

I watch (over teal-brushed fir trees

and spider-webbed power-lines) a brown owl

sweeping for rabbit.


In this manner, I memorise the burnished sky,

the sallow lake, whiskered tips of wheat, once high-

(arced eastward)

the weight of wind

sleeping on a field.


Miles away and years,

I hear whip-poor-wills

in the deep throated thicket,

chirping frogs, oiled-black crickets-


and remember the owl.

The structure here creates a sense of time passing and was how I imagined this exercise might create a poem, though I wonder at editing a 20-minute writing session down into a line! The effect is oblique, yet interestingly so - there's a delicacy to the diction and placing of lines. The form suggests to me a fragility of experience - it has to be "remembered" and "memorised" - so that capturing it is fraught with problems as time alters our access to the details of experience. "Oiled-black crickets" is vivid, but some of the expression creates the effect of being consciously found and lessens its credibility for me as a description of place.

Range by Katelyn Sack

In the room in the belly of the house where grains break across walls

like sand hurtling under waves, and the smell of sweet tobacco

mingles with the painted air of bullets,

I am powdering a baby. Off-duty nanny

incensed, old ballerina blindered senseless, I have swaddled myself

from myself with: one hat, two eyeglasses, two earplugs and a headset.

My new dance is this pitter-patter

of little shell casings, bells in the background

of a fine, leaden mist. Time bleeds

while I breathe, tilting to catch the right wind in my stall,

lifting my arms higher as if frozen percolating from fifth to third,

aligning my right foot farther back in fourth parallel

before holding my lungs midair and lunging,

deadly still, into the tiny jeté of finger

and the heart that follows through.

This is an atmospheric poem but a cryptic one. I wondered at the variety of metaphor and tried to pull them together into a cohesive reading. I found myself deciding on the "reality" of the bullets - is this meant to be credible or is it allegorical? And if the latter, how does the speaker "dance" in this environment? Although I enjoyed the ending, I found it hard to see or know much about the place in the poem.

The Patio by Anindita Sengupta

This is the space of distilled things.

Sunlight filters through the jagged

red edges of leaves and a Carnatic raga

in the house across the street

is pleasanter for being remote

and beyond my control. Still further,

the faint sounds of delighted shouts

over something surprisingly found.

White-headed Anthurium poke among

the green. Pure and spatulate, each

tentatively nodding flower holed

with little flecks of emptiness

where body should have shone.

The snails have been at it again.

Oil lamps in bright pink, gold and

green, now extinguished, are calm

as a row of Kathakali dancers at rest,

their masks off, hands still.

The night's festivities are over,

they seem to say, and it is time

to seek the darknesses.

I gulp the cool, clear rustle of air.

Its sharpness on my tongue is the

memory of unripe berries, peppermint,

orgasm. I curl my toes into moist soil

hear the earth cake between them.

I will walk to the store this way

barefoot, earth-smudged, sated.

A lovely sensual response to a suburban environment. The last stanza is very convincing. I like the memory of "unripe berries, peppermint, and orgasm", the link between our sensual daily experiences and the intensity of sexual experience. As in several of the other poems, cultural references ("kathakali dancers") offer a guide to experience, a mediator between consciousness and the unspoken, mind and body. There is the suggestion that the language is also making this link for the poet, that this may be its magical purpose.

5th November from 4000 km high by Karen Stanley

the sea is cobalt. Baile Atha Cliath,

Douglas, Oslo and Reykjavic

are all anchored in lands which peak

up from the planet's dark, wet coat.

From here I fear it most - its vast

drowned valleys gape, waiting

to swallow me down and drown me.

At 200 km, beige Liverpool

is still a merged smear

of the Mersey with the Wirral.

Here, the isthmus still kisses

its sister; here it has not split away.

I could stay here, staring at home

from space. The sea is a green lace

of lichen lapping at the sands.

I only get vertigo further in.

At 13 km high, I am flying over

fields of Frankby, Irby, Thingwall

sinking slowly lower, to home.

I'm just forty something meters up

and tip the vertical. All's not flat

on the horizontal plane: the hills

rise up across the waves, in Wales.

There are tyre tracks in damp sand.

The sea now is a jewelled emerald

ribbon between me and Rhewl.

The pretty homes, the swimming pools

flattened into a mosaic I skim across.

I am giant over Lilliput; a pterodactyl

stretching old wings in a space age.

And here is here; is now - the PC off.

Opening the door I smell brine

and brimstone. Rockets blow their blue

and green and vermillion glow

and sparks up high. 4000 km into the sky.

I have a very personal response to this poem, as I know the landscape intimately: I grew up on the Wirral. It is a bird's eye take on the idea of going outdoors to write and I think the changes in perspective are vividly imagined. I often dream of flights like this above the places that I live. I was convinced as I read and the detail increased as the speaker of the poem nears the earth. "Tthere are tyre tracks in damp sand" is a wonderful line and I love the magic of the ending: another change of perspective, to being back home and looking up, following the rockets back above the landscape. An imaginative and ambitious poem.