BuiltWithNOF

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Poems

Poems

    Christmas in Kerala,  16-26 Dec. 2004

    The Banks of the Pamba

    First a cockerel     then
    a prayer wavers high over the rippling,
    no ordinance more vocal. Then the Anglican
    canticle and the muezzins. A golden oriel, catlike,
    weela-weeos. Two cormorants fly
    from a palm. Women are scrubbing silver pans,
    slap-slapping fabric. Egrets flap
    like draped washing. Everything a layer over
    everything.

    Girls shake out their wavy hair, real as weed
    from the Arabian Sea.
    A water buffalo swoons to its eyes
    in jungled water hyacinth.
    A fisherman loiters with bow and arrow,
    another baits his line, casts it
    to gleaming scales and scattered bones
    in the great eardrum of the river.

    Snake Boat

    I have seen the boat built of anjili
    at Champakulam Chundan.
    131 feet bear more than a hundred rowers,
    four steermen and eleven drummers
    to anticipate the race.

    Snake boat bagged many trophies
    in Kerala, the board is lettered
    with an intricate pattern
    of curling text.

    I've watched lizard
    nd water snake-
    diamond markings, nostrils tipped
    above the skim,

    never quite realising
    life might depend on air-gulped
    spasms or what depletion
    means.

    I've walked paddy fields, past umbrellas,
    brushed up dust.
    heard drums drumming
    a race against time.

    Celebrating

    3 a.m. a dog barks. Fireworks splutter.
    A frog click-clicking finds its purpose. Once again
    the drums. Voices echo
    moonlight. An auto-rickshaw's horn.
    In a galaxy of cadence someone
    sings Silent Night.

    In Periyar rutted & cratered roadways cross
    woods where tigers chum with deer.
    Ganesh the elephant    disembodied      
    sways silent among
    flying squirrels, black monkeys, wild boar
    and poinsettya - the Christmas star.

    Tourists

    slouch, lumpen,
    while the upright man fingers
    the edge of his lungi
    in perpetual anticipation
    of looping it double over his shins

    calves uncluttered,
    swift water all around,
    or swaying skirts of courtesy
    the way a kingfisher might swoop
    and show its hidden face.

    Kochi

    Silver still prinks the bouganvillea; a clear-eyed sky.
    Fat crows that should be faint with the heat
    see-saw on frames of Chinese nets.
    Whatever rises  
                                 lights in drops
    and down into the dark.

    All the fishes sprang up, they must have known
    Earth has only to shift its slumber
    to twitch a patch of tectonic skin.
    The moon is bloated. The ocean
    swathing earth is snake,
    a shrine in which I first imagined death.

    The globe wobbles on its axis.
    The late sun squashes the sea which suddenly explodes
    beyond the little wall. 
    Green is for gods 
    but
         fear drums on my ear.

     

    Birthday Letters, 1994-98

    Dear Auntie,

    April brings the usual sun rain sun
    and your first grandchild one

    whole year. The photo shows her smile
    Sanjay says it is similar

    to his. He doesn't know
    I'm writing. Speaks with his brothers, though 

    he feels the weight of your silence.
    My gain is your offence -

    first boy & family pet broke all the rules
    by marrying outside the caste. Your grief fills

    me with sorrow and Sanjay's happiness is hard won
    I will look after your son.


    Dear Auntie,

    Another April! Here is Sangeetha on her bottom.
    We'd like to visit you in Colombo

    then you can see her for real.
    Because of my troubled labour, she'll squeal

    at the animals and doesn't walk.
    Often we have to take her in our arms, talk

    gently. A beautiful girl, people say.
    She's doing so well. These are little cares of the day.

    As for us, we move from one
    minute to the next in surprise & expectation.
     

    Dear Auntie,

    Sangeetha is four and pushing the pram.
         Vali, eighteen months, came out a little tiger.

    Not  all big sister's orders get obeyed!
    I am well. Sanjay is frayed   

    because you have turned your back on him.
    I'd like you to accept that things dance on the rim

    of our lives over which we have little control.
    To your grandchildren, your voice is a hole

    in a stocking. Life will be over much too fast.
    Can we unlock the past?

     

    Publications

Magazines in which I’ve  published some 100  poems 1999 include :

Acumen, Agenda, Ambit, Critical Quarterly, Coffee House, Envoi, Equinox, Frogmore, Interpreter's House, Iota, Links, Magma, New Welsh Review, The North, Orbis, Outposts, Poetry Nottingham, Poetry Review, Stand, The Shop, Seam, Smith's Knoll, Stand, Staple, The Times, The Wolf, Wordplay.

 

Competitions

Three highly commendeds at competitions are from The Plough, Amnesty and York 2004.

 

Public Reading

In 2002 I read at the Poetry Festival at Wells-next-the-Sea.

 

Pamphletimage0[1]

First pamphlet Swimming Lessons  (Cidesterna, 2002/5,
£6.95, ISBN 1 899604 27 8)
is a sequence of poems in the voices of a mother and her daughter, charting their relationship through adolescence, anorexia and her death of cancer at the age of 42. 'The poems are spare, quiet and unsentimenatal, with a restless, rigorous honesty about them.'

Eleven of the poems provided the basis for a  play twice broadcast on Radio 4, in September 2005 and 2006.

The Pamphlet is available from the author or Hawthorn Press, 11-12  Websters Yard, Syderstone, Norfolk PE31 8SJ.

 

Anthologies

Light Unlocked, Christmas Card Poems, Enitharmon, 2005

 Soundswrite Anthology, Soundswrite Press, 2005

 

Reviews

  • by UA Fanthorpe
    Sally Festing’s another feet-off-the-ground writer, magical and visionary; she confuses perspectives brilliantly and entertainingly  .' )
  • Marilyn Hacker of Magma 32
    'It’s impossible to name all the memorable works, but ‘Concerning Some Pictures’ by Tony Curtis, ‘The Autopsy’ by James Sutherland-Smith, Sally Festing’s ‘The Banks of the Pamba’, are just a few.' the Ploughshares website
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