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CAUGHT IN THE NET 165 -  POETRY  BY ELIZABETH DAVIES

Series Editor - Jim Bennett for The Poetry Kit - www.poetrykit.org
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Submissions for this series of Featured poets is open, please see instruction in afterword at the foot of this mail.
 

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Think instead of sudden bright

sun on dark trunks,

the warm smell of rot

and Hyacinths in the shops.

Watch a young cat step

gingerly through brown leaves

 

                 from Anticipation by Elizabeth Davies

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CONTENTS

1 - BIOGRAPHY
2 – POETRY
 

 

 

Ghost of the Middlesex Hospital

Sewing Power

Haiku Son

New England House

Television Signal

Anticipation

Overgrown Heart

Coldrum Stones

Delivery Instructions

Inheritance patterns 

 

3 - PUBLISHING HISTORY

4 - AFTERWORD
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1 – BIOGRAPHY:  Elizabeth Davies

 

Elizabeth Davies is an academic public health doctor at King’s College London. She first published ‘tales’ from her medical training in medical journals in 1999 and started writing poetry during a visit to Boston in 2004. She has read at Sydenham Arts Festival and South Bank Poetry events, and presented on the role of poetry in Medicine at conferences. She has contributed to PN Review and recently published poems in Ithacalit, Synesthesia Literary Journal and South Bank Poetry Anthology 2017.
 

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2 - POETRY 

 

Ghost of the Middlesex Hospital

 

I can walk down Riding House Street

through the hoardings around

this gaping sacred place to find

the board outside The Bland Sutton

Lecture Theatre where students gather

for the final posting of the marks.

 

I can go up to Psychiatry for a round

of anorexic tales and down to the 

garden to revise for a prize I will not win.

I can buy a League of Friends’ notebook 

and record the history of a teenager with cancer

to background chatter of the canteen staff.

 

I can climb the green-tiled staircase

past airy landings where one-legged men 

wheel together in chairs to pass their time.

I can push the polished ward handle

to visit a woman who has smoked too much

but is dying for her August copy of Vogue.

 

I can walk down the stairs in my short white coat

flouncing my skirt, too junior yet to know

what’s in the lungs of young gay men.

I can leave by the front entrance where patients

still wait on green leather chairs for transport,

to the soft rubber thud of revolving doors.

 

I can sit in a Cleveland Street café

before a crane lifts the CT scanner out,

searching for some prediction of this end.

I can curse and infect with quiet efficiency 

these new flats stacked for luxury lying,

over the precious last lights of others’ lives.

 

  

Sewing power

 

My grandmother’s sewing machine hung upside down

beneath two ancient pots of violets,

locked in a cupboard like a black and gold bat.

Some adult magic opened up its wings

and a treadle fired the bobbin’s hum.

Shavings from three decades of flight through

curtains and dresses and damask cloths

remained, caught in the ragbag below.

When I was eight it seemed the focus of this thrift,

had been so I could rewind strange threads on reels,

sort through odd buttons and elastic,

and plunge my hands again, deep into

the soft slivers of poplin, lint and lawn,

smelling the coloured shreds of my mother’s youth.

 

  

Haiku son

 

Pain suddenly dissolves,

stomach deflates, releasing

the child’s first cry of rage.

 

Dawn birds filter through

the soft cracks of the curtains

bringing in the sound of light.

 

Drops of water in the winter

cherry blossom catch my eye

and splinter into blue light.

 

A tall man separates from the crowd

and, as he moves to greet me,

I recognise my son.

 

 

New England House

 

Under the large-leafed trees,

past the pudding stone

and gothic prosperity of Pill Hill,

up onto the beige porch and

its honeycomb of shutters,

there is a sense of coming home

through the screen door,

into this New England House.

 

The grandfather clock beside the landing

window strikes early sending

sunlight across the post on the table into

a shaded living room of books and rugs.

A pantry holds the china safe, 

and brown back stairs curve up to

polished corridors that clatter between

heavy doors of patchwork bedrooms.

 

In the garden clumps of mosquitoes quiver,

and jays screech as if to emphasise the calm

distinguished air of doctors, men of letters,

and one hundred years of women’s care.

And in the back white kitchen, 

that once required a household of help,

Joan still cooks her guests a meal from scratch

while listening to their tales.

     

 

Television signal

I have an early memory

of dinosaurs that weren’t

at Alexandra Palace where

my dad had driven by mistake.

We stared twenty miles

across London from one television

mast to another trying to make them out.

My son had a charmed childhood,

living in Sydenham near the other mast.

His dad took him by pushchair,

so he saw real dinosaurs every week. 

 

 

Overgrown heart

 

The curved edges of the lawn

have grown into the borders,

where dried columbine trails

over couch grass and dandelions.

 

The privet balls have unclipped,

the greenhouse is full of rot,

descendants of those childhood weeds

you paid us by the bucket are rife.

 

Last week my mother watched you

creep like an old man up the path.

The bathroom window always

gave the best view of the garden,

and from there I see your dying heart.

 

 

Anticipation

 

Some people seem determined

to be disappointed by February

finding proof in grey skies,

dank air and rain. Again.

Think instead of sudden bright

sun on dark trunks,

the warm smell of rot

and Hyacinths in the shops.

Watch a young cat step

gingerly through brown leaves

on a wet lawn, past rose sticks 

and run between warmth and cold, 

knowing nothing of his first Spring.

Pity only the birds left

in the park after dusk.

 

Coldrum Stones

 

We trek down the sweeping hill

through a woodland tunnel

and reach the Pilgrim’s Way,

where waves blow through

wheat like water in a dish.

 

The Neolithic spirit remains still

making my son pose with a stick,

while behind him women

in long skirts sway and hum,

communing with their gods.

 

 

Delivery instructions

 

Took me some time to find the gates,

and that lane needs tarmac

and those trees cutting back.

You can’t bring the van down.

Beats me why they ask for delivery,

should carry the load down themselves.

 

Mind you the garden once you get through

the gate in the hedge is nice and secluded.

Roses could do with me dad’s trimming.

Needs a bit of work, daisies in the lawn,

grass in the paving, but pleasant in a way.

 

Lucky their house is detached, looks roomy.

Lots of books, bit stingy on the carpets though.

The lady was the polite kind,

trying to make you feel at home.

Told her she could charge for deckchairs

in the afternoon if she wanted.

 

Inheritance patterns

 

Dust on my fingertips from the bottom drawer

reminds me of my grandparents’ desk,

full of things that might be useful.

Pens from forgotten hotels,

sellotape with reduced stick,

un-washable ink, the wrong size staples,

and always too many rubber bands.

 

 

 3 - PUBLISHING HISTORY

 

Sewing Power Ithacalit  http://ithacalit.com/elizabeth-davies.html

Haiku Son https://issuu.com/synesthesialitjournal/docs/synlitjour_vol4.1 p27

Ghost of the Middlesex Hospital South Bank Poetry: London Poems Anthology 2017 p48

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4 - Afterword

Email Poetry Kit - info@poetrykit.org    - if you would like to tell us what you think. 

We are looking for other poets to feature in this series, and are open to submissions.  Please send one poem and a short bio to - info@poetrykit.org

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