Jam tomorrow or jammy dodger?

I searched in the Thesaurus and found few synonyms of interest for the word 'retired'. I googled and found a lot of worthy organisations, charities and suggestions of illness, care, depression and so on. In the year of my official retirement, i.e. when I got my state pension, On Poetry has been published and it's doing a little of what I'd hoped for - it's entertaining some fellow poets and dispensing thoughts I've wanted to share. And as I read the paper free over breakfast thanks to Press Reader I am beginning to realise more women are starting to support one another again. 

I've never been to the Venice Biennale but was delighted to read that artistic director Cecilia Alemani had given over more space to women this year, to the extent that women artists outnumber men. Angela Rayner has been supported for highlighting misogyny in politics and in On Poetry I hope I'm helping balance the scales in UK poetry, where the canon has been, throughout most of my life, white and male. 

Many women have analysed why. I'm less interested in analysis nowadays (although I still recommend Tillie Olsen's Silences) more in change. So in On Poetry, 18 of the 21 poems featured for close reading are by women, one by a non-binary writer and two by men. My approach has been autobiographical and my last words were written in a rush of frustration with the lies of jam tomorrow. Alice says, 'It's terribly confusing..." although I disagree - jam tomorrow is a pretty simple yarn we should see though but we can't hear ourselves think. 

While the sun lasts, I'm up at the allotment, planting. As for retired, my laptop thesaurus provides these synonyms: retired people, pensioners, old-age pensioners, OAPs, senior citizens, old people, the elderly; North American seniors, retirees; rare retirers, pensionaries. The associations these synonyms lug with them are another proof of the 'jam tomorrow' deception. Jammy dodger, anyone? 

Poet gardeners

Banners in the exhibition
celebrating the writing of 
Jamaica Kincaid 

My recent escape to Utrecht followed several intense weeks. I neglected the allotment and put in my first early potatoes only hours before I left on Eurostar. Potatoes, flower seeds and bulbs were my priority. 

So when Giya and I were looking for things to do it was obvious I'd want to see the exhibition at the Centraal Museum, The Botanical Revolution, On the Necessity of Art and Gardening. And when we wandered around, how delighted I was to see a tribute to Jamaica Kincaid. 

In my own way, over the two or more years I've been finalising On Poetry for The Poetry Business, I've also attempted to prove the links between writing and gardening. 

Kincaid's been quoted as saying, "Gardening is like writing, I suppose; you don't really know what you are doing, but you don't really want to know."

In the week I was away and before I left, friends were telling me how their pre-ordered copies of On Poetry had arrived. I only saw mine last night when I got back. It was bigger than I expected, but it's two books in one. The poet gardeners inside include Olive Senior, Janet Sutherland, Sarah Maguire and Wang Xiaoni, but of course there are many, many more. 

And where better to daydream about gardening than in The Netherlands, whose old masters knew a thing or two about plants and pollinators. 

Creation stories

Slow Dancer magazine
was edited by John Harvey,
the novelist and poet, 
who also produced my first
pamphlet Black Slingbacks

The old poetry magazines scattered around my house have been in hiding in lockdown for fear of the Amnesty donations bag. But as I dusted them off I realised they've earned their right to stay. They tell my story as a poet alongside that of many others. 

When I started sending work to magazines I relished the company I found myself in. I read new work, my horizons grew. In April, the Poetry Business is bringing out a book I've written on some of the poets that influenced me and work I've done in turn, helping others write. It's On Poetry: Reading and Writing Poems. 

In a nice circularity, the PB produces The North, one of the first magazines I was accepted by. I was an honorary northerner in magazines produced far from Surrey:  The North, The Wide Skirt, The Echo Room, and I was in the company of poets who have continued to create work that influences how we perceive the world. 

The first magazine
 to publish poems
I've written

Some of these small magazines and presses are long gone, others like The Poetry Business, Stand, Poetry London and The Rialto, are still giving new writers their first chances in print, providing an essential vote of confidence in the word on the page, their writer/editors deep in the business of supporting others. 

Outposts was one of the first small magazines I bought in 1976 - its cover features Brian Patten, Andrew Motion and Elizabeth Bartlett. Carol Rumens wrote about Bartlett in 2008 "she remained a noncombatant  in the prize-grabbing poetry culture that developed in the 1980s." Bartlett worked in the health service and she lived not far from Brighton most of her life. Her name on the cover stands out for several reasons, but for me, now, as proof of the importance of keeping going. 

The older woman (again)

Cornelis Ketel,
portrait of woman
aged 56

Shall we talk about age, then? Its challenges (incontinence, unreadable text, mumblers),  the advantages of retirement, why some of us are ashamed of the time we've spent on the planet instead of owning the idea of accumulated experience. 

Is the noun, elders, a way forward, instead of the adjective, elderly? And when an organisation represents itself with a wall of faces in an amorphous age range of late 20s to late 40s, is it time gently to point out the demographics of the northern hemisphere? 

Sojourner Truth

In the spirit of my 'words for women', versions 1 and 2, I have browsed the historical thesaurus to find words for old. There were the obvious, but I was struck by 'wintered', 'ripe', 'far', 'crusted', 'badgerly'. I liked the collective noun, an 'ancientry', and wondered about the lives contained in the word for old age, 'anecdotage'. 

Generally, an old woman is not well served by the English language but there was something in the word, 'pantywaist' from the historic thesaurus that I found beautifully clownlike and reminded me of Goya. I'd love to know how other languages treat the old. 

Year of the goat (or sheep)

Born in a year of the goat (or sheep), I've looked after them off and on since I was 21 when I spent a summer on a Breton farm belonging to a travelling circus. Later that summer, in a valley near the Gorges du Tarn, I helped usher them into a barn as a storm drummed its way towards us. In spring 2019 I looked after a house in Mallorca with a resident flock of sheep and packs of goats. The sheep were gentle and skittish, the goats wild and fast. I am a wood goat. We like peace. 

Sheepcote valley, just up the hill from me, is a grazing spot for Sussex sheep. They add deep country dreams to this urban fringe, so often parked-on, set alight, dumped on and rutted by tyres. They clear brambles and invite conversation as they turn their heads to the path. Then they turn up in mosaics, on cards, badges, venerated for their stoicism, their place in the hills. 

Ferry and dog

 

The dog is on a ferry to France, I think, and if this isn't true, I have always associated it with a holiday in Normandy with mum and the children.

I'd booked us into a rambling old mansion outside Le Havre, where I had long conversations about Maupassant and there were calves in a barn. 

On a day out we got lost among the refineries but on another, found St Joseph's Church with its stained glass by Marguerite Huré. It is sometimes described as a kaleidescope. I still remember the light. 

My brother was killed in an accident earlier that summer. In a corner of the attic, where we slept, was a pencil message from a man who hid there during WW2, and survived. 

Perhaps it's that and the stained glass coloured light which have attached themselves to this dog above my head, looking into the distance, which I have my back to. 

The shed

 

The garden shed backing onto the cemetery is just about up but may not have another summer in it. I'll do my best. I'm attached to the graffiti inside, from when the kids were young, for the view through the window, its old CD, model lion, the sun and a lamp for later. 

News from the allotment, two nights running sheds have been attacked. The first night windows were smashed, a strimmer and screwdriver were reported missing, so all a bit petty, the second night people cut a hole in the fence, found lead and copper in a couple of sheds, smashed windows and broke doors. 

It reminded me of the wholesale theft of copper on Madeira Drive a few years ago, and I wonder if it's more proof of far poorer times, the rising value of copper, the Brexit effect........it reminded me of the organised theft of plums allotment-wide last summer, driven I suspect by gentrified Brighton and restaurants boasting foraged food. How desperate do we need to be for change?