The PK Featured
Poet - Christina Fletcher
"On the whole, I like sharp, spare writing that rings
true." - Christina Fletcher
Although she has not been writing
for long Christina has made an impression with her work. Her
comments have always been considerate and informed, while her own
writing has shown power and maturity.
Featured
Poet 4 - Christina Fletcher
I was born in Germany in 1947. My mother
was Dutch and my father English. My earliest years were spent in
Germany, Holland and England. I took a degree and postgraduate
degree in Fine Art at Camberwell and then The Slade School of
Art, University College London. I came from a poor background but
my father joined the Diplomatic Service when I was sixteen. This
gave me the opportunity to live in vastly different societies
both from the social and cultural points of view. I married,
divorced (though I worked under my married name until two years
ago) and paid the rent by working full-time for the British
Council. In 1983 I went to India and registered as an occasional
student in the Faculty of Fine Arts, MS University, Baroda. When
I came back to the UK I worked as a freelance guide to overseas
academics and artists on British Council programmes. In 1995 I
started working as a full-time freelance artist, painting
portraits and carving sacred inscriptions and poetry in slate and
stone.
How/when did you start
writing? Was there anything that particularly influenced you?
I started writing seventeen months ago. I'd
been carving one of Moulana Jalaluddin Rumi's poems and had just
worked out how to use the internet. I tapped in 'Poetry' and came
up with PK. My head was full of sacred texts and Rumi. I wrote an
appalling poem and posted it. It's quite likely that I wouldn't
have written anything at all if it hadn't been for the list. I
haven't been able to stop writing since.
Do you have any strong influences
on your writing now?
I'm not consciously aware of any strong
influences on my writing other than the comments I receive from
writers whose work I either admire or respect. I try to apply the
discipline and ruthlessness I know is necessary in painting to
writing but I'm painfully aware that I'm a floundering beginner
with many drafts but few 'finished' poems. I'm fond of Carol Ann
Duffy, Stevie Smith and Osip Mandelstam today, but what I like
depends on my needs at the time. My desert island choice of book
would be the facsimile and transcript of the original drafts of
The Waste Land (with Ezra Pound's annotations). On the whole, I
like sharp, spare writing that rings true.
How do you write? Do you have any
particular method for writing - time of day?
Like a blind person crossing the motorway
waving a white stick. I cross the road whenever I can and often
when I shouldn't.
Why do you write poetry?
Because it's incredibly difficult and
exciting. I feel like a child with a new toy.
The Poems
- Lil was a model when I was at art
school. She'd been an artist herself, apparently a very
good one but she was quite disturbed and couldn't carry
on painting. She could only pose in painful positions. I
heard recently that she'd died. This poem is my memory of
her.
-
- ~~~
- Lil
- ~~~
-
- Not much to show:
- one strong drawing
- 'Lil Screaming'.
-
- Not screaming really:
- keeping her mouth open, rigid
- for an hour at a stretch
- tasting pain to feel alive.
-
- 'Break, Lil.'
-
- Lil naked
- puffing bull-like
- shaking out the stiffness
- warming raw, chewed fingers
- on a mug of sticky-sweet tea.
-
- Lil and Billy in a squat
- feeding fire with cardboard.
-
- 'Best meal I ever had
- was from a bin
- at the back of the Savoy.
- All sorts. I thought it was Christmas.
- Everything all mixed up. Lovely, Lil.
- Wish you'd been with me, girl.'
-
- Lil laughing
- showing her palms to the flames
- coughing up paper smoke.
-
- Everything, all mixed up:
- laughter from a toothless mouth
- smoke through a dirty straw
- firelight on scarred wrists
- Lil screaming.
-
-
-
- I wrote this when I was feeling
incredibly sad about friends who have simply disappeared.
August is the time when journalists take their holidays
and news dries up. I tried to describe an internal and
external withdrawal from reality. Makasib prison is
alongside the road connecting Baghdad to its
international airport.
-
- ~~~~~
- News
- ~~~~~
-
- It was in August that news ceased to
exist. News --
- The News -- no executions in Makasib,
no floods in Mozambique.
- Chechnya : Groznyy is still intact,
people go about their business,
- shop, cook, make love, have sex.
-
- Outside everything is almost silent.
Only
- the dull rap of rain, traffic and the
flight path overhead.
- When Concord roars I look up for a
moment, watch her nose
- penetrate and disappear in dark
clouds.
-
- It's good to snuggle in my Iraqi robe,
to smoke,
- drink coffee, tap at the keyboard and
watch the pixels
- appear on the monitor like excellent
armies of ants.
- I am mesmerised by pixels. They dance
for me.
-
- I am reminded of Zouhair: how we
cooked lunch,
- smoked nargili, brewed red tea, danced
and wept when Fairuz sang
- "Jerusalem in my Heart",
"Hope of my Life": "Amal Hyaati".
- I have no tears now. They make no
difference.
-
-
-
- ________________________________________________________
-
- I think I wrote this after looking in
the mirror one morning.
-
- ~~~~~
- crisis
- ~~~~~
-
- o god
- a crow's foot on my face
- chastisement for years of laughter
- o lancôme reinvented anti-ageing
system
- niosôme + how can I keep a straight
face
- if I crease up reading your label?
-
-
-
- _______________________________________________________________
-
- We always spent the summer in Holland
when I was a child. The Occupation was fresh in
everyone's memory and the Germans weren't exactly popular
but Zandvoort was the nearest seaside resort for many
Germans. I loved Holland and my family but switching
language was a pain in the throat.
-
- ~~~~~~~~~
- gghh-schh
- ~~~~~~~~~
-
- When we were children, staying with my
Oma,
- we travelled in baskets strapped to a
bicycle,
- spokes sparkle-spinning, all the way
to Zandvoort:
- a blonde beach stretching the whole
length of Holland
- where stalls sold raw herring and
bright yellow cucumber.
-
- Whole days spent on a beach of jolly
Germans
- who dug deep fortresses, engineered
castles,
- stripped stark naked, basked in their
deck chairs,
- bit into Bratwurst, guzzled out of
beer steins
- and drove off to camping sites in
Volkswagen Beetles.
-
- Oma had a cardboard horn shaped like a
cornet
- and I would holler hymns into it all
about Jesus:
- how it was my destiny to be a little
sunbeam
- so that I could shine for Him with
pure clear light
- (through the smoke of clipped cigars
which billowed from my Opa).
-
- I still recall the smell of frites
piled with piccalilli,
- the quiver of the jellyfish stranded
on the tideline,
- the taste of golden biscuits baked
with cinnamon and ginger,
- the wheeze of Oma's asthma, the
scratch of sandy bathing suits --
- but most of all the language which
sounds like an affliction...
-
-
-
- ______________________________________________________________
-
- The last two poems were written for my
mother.
-
- ~~~~~
- Soon,
- ~~~~~
-
- we must scatter your ashes.
- We'll do it together, alone
- on that grey coast
- where sea and sky
- paint a flat, dry canvas.
-
- I remember your story about Opa
- walking all night
- to steal field potatoes;
- and Oma: how she taught a goldfish
- to take food from her hand.
-
- Tell me the colour of your dress
- in this faded photo.
- The old aunt in Amsterdam:
- what was her name?
-
- We forget to feed your birds.
- When spring comes
- the blackbird won't nest in our
garden,
- bring fledglings to your kitchen.
-
- Every day there's a new, small death:
- I unfold your letters,
- open the lid you closed,
- add the last grains of your salt
- to stale, tasteless food.
-
- The quilt you stitched is torn
- but I can't repair it:
- my fingers are clumsy,
- my eyes blur.
-
- ~~~~~~~~
- Windfalls
- ~~~~~~~~
-
- I carried you for the first time,
- wrapped in my arms
- as if you were a child.
-
- A horse passed by on First Avenue:
- clip-clop, clip-clop; the swish
- of his long tail. I remembered
-
- clutching cubes of sugar,
- how you'd said, "Just hold your
hand out
- flat and still."
-
- Coming to coastal grass
- we saw crows and gulls cruise
- on pockets of cold, November air.
-
- We scattered you seaward
- thinking you'd fly east, across the
North Sea,
- to Holland, where you were born.
-
- You turned westward,
- brisk and wilful in the breeze,
- back to our home
-
- leaving my father
- in a blur of light
- and ash.
-
- That night I woke at 3am.
- Moonlight bathed my pillow,
- lit the bullace path where once
- we gathered windfalls.
-
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