Poetry

Little of my poetry has been published, and on the whole I write few poems, though poetry was my route into creative writing and I find it immensely valuable to workshop poems written by others as well as my own work. In a poem, every word counts and must be chosen with care. It's difficult to do that with a 100,000 word novel.

However, I have recently created a unique, hand-made book of poems and illustrations entitled The Other Vikings. My research into Vikings showed me that Viking women often go unmentioned, and this prompted me to think about them and the lives they might have led.

The Other Vikings is a concertina art book that can be opened out and stood up on a table. To see it properly you need to walk round it. If you would like to display this book at an exhibition or a conference, please contact me. The poems are also available in a pamphlet of the same name.

£5.99 - buy here

ISBN 978-0-9543627-3-7

Here are two of the poems. Peacock was inspired by the fact that the skeleton of a peacock was found in a woman’s grave, and I loved the idea of an exotic bird being brought into a Viking household from - presumably - some trading or raiding expedition to the east.

Peacock

When father brought him home we thought he'd die.
He lay in dirty straw, hardly moving.
Hoping he'd turn out to be a rooster or a goose
we put him with a hen and her chicks.

But gradually he changed.
Before long colours settled on him like rainbows.
Feathers appeared in layers longer than my arm, my leg,
longer even than me, ending in fishtails full of radiant eyes.
His head and neck shone blue and deep
as a still fjord on a perfect day.

While he pecked corn from my palm, I learned to love
his delicate crest, his eyes, his lengthening train.
A single coarse cry would bring me running
from the far side of the farm.

One day, while gathering eggs in the yard, I saw him
up on the turf roof. He was quivering in his scallop-shaped
cape of brilliance, rustling his tail feathers like leaves.

Shimmering and shivering, making light of the weight
of his display, he turned slowly to reveal stems set out
in a fan like the pale veins of some vast leaf.

Later, when I asked my father where he'd found him,
he couldn't remember.

In Journey I‘ve tried to portray how a woman might have felt when setting out from home to a new place in the hope of a better life.

Journey

At first the men shouted and swore all day. The children
howled. Those women from Lund kept retching
yet again and calling on some god or other to save them.

And then there was the livestock. Pigs. Sheep. Stallions
that kicked the side of the ship so hard it seemed
they’d stove it in. Cockerels. Geese. And those goats!

At night, as I searched for familiar stars amongst the sounds
of quiet crying, I wondered whether I should have come.
But this morning someone sighted land, and now
they’re cheering and urging the men to make for it.

Might this be where we build farms and bring up children?
Where we bury each other?