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CAUGHT IN THE NET 165 - POETRY BY ELIZABETH DAVIES
Series Editor - Jim Bennett for The Poetry Kit -
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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.
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
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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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