I'm reading The Forage House by Tess Taylor, a collection recommended to me by Miriam Nash the tutor on one of the Poetry School online courses I took last term, Miriam thought I would like the quilting and sewing references ... so far I've come across one poem called Crazy Quilt and just love the line 'how her body stores her making'.
I'm making my way through the poems from the beginning (almost) and the work Taylor asks of her titles is impressive. These are plain titles that lead you into the poem so that the poem itself can be just a little obscure. Big Granny is explained in more detail halfway through the poem, but the reader has to work out who 'they' are ... and for me one mystery in a poem is sufficient so that title is needed.
Page 21 has a found poem that preserves a special type of communication, 1914 is the date in the epigraph ... how good to see poetry as keeper of the important but slight, something that could be forgotten but here for us in this poem, it has been shaped into a small memoir.
These days between Christmas and New Year have a unique flavour for me - a much needed gap that provides a certain space not found at other times. I've used a little of that space today to think about poems that preserve some slow ways of doing things ... slow shopping, slow heating, slow cooking ... ideas for writing, or just ideas, sufficient to be noted in my journal and maybe rest there for a while.
And slow heating requires logs that need to be moved, a very good way of slow heating that I'm about to experience!
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