JACKIE WILLS

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February 07, 2006

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A picture from Aldeburgh November 2005.

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Don't commit adultery - a poem of the decade

Bruegel's Christ and the woman taken in adultery - I love its restraint It's a weird list of places, contexts, partners. Once when I read it live a man told me afterwards (proudly) he'd done all but two. I read it to a vicar, bolt upright in the front row. Fortunately I didn't know he was there until afterwards. He'd been dragged along by his wife. I've always liked list poems - Michael Longley's brilliant at them, as is George Mackay Brown. There's some brilliant ones by Fred Voss and a chilling one (A list of requirements for the end of the world) by Neil Rollinson. One of Carol Ann Duffy's most famous list poems is Prayer, using names from the shipping forecast and there's Moniza Alvi's beautiful poem, Indian Cooking that uses a list of spices. Anyway, this poem is included in a Poems of the Decade anthology, published by Faber in October...and apparently ends the book. The poem's a pivot in Commandments - incredulous at people...

The vixen's stare

She sits by my neighbour's front window, sometimes tries to wander into the house and she has a face I want to look into all day, to absorb that moment's contentment. She's about the same size as a young fox that wanders across mum's terrace and when the back door's open nips in to take out the red slippers I keep there. I side with the myths of fox as messenger of the gods. I don't like the anthropomorphic characteristic of cunning. A fox walking down mum's road the other evening with a rabbit hanging out of its mouth was a reminder of truth. It went up to the Tye and waited near one of the many warrens. I could not disparage a fox for that. Humans, on the other hand, put words on the walls of art galleries and ignite fields, forests, mountains and valleys.

Come to buckle and bare thong

In 1400 the word 'nought' meant poverty according to the Historical Thesaurus, a browsing place like charity shops on London Road, a rest for the mind through strange provocations and this time it was my tax return, filed yesterday, that took me there. Years ago the same experience led me to a poem that became the title of my first pamphlet of poetry, Black Slingbacks . I found a taxi receipt from my boyfriend's flat. Those shoes were in his hall. This year, my mood wasn't shock but shame, because I felt it, and understood what the late sociologist Stuart Hall so often pointed out... that there's a moral tone attached to poverty. No, I don't describe myself as poor but my income was truly a pittance and takes me a very long way from what the Joseph Rowntree Foundation calculated I'd need in 2022 for a minimum acceptable standard of living. I have a house. Even with damp, peeling windows, leaky roof, it's critical. And I manage by limiting my scope. ...

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