A video poem collaboration with the super-talented, Claire Trevien.
Words – Heidi James
Visuals, production – Claire Trevien
Tag Archives: Poetry
A Poem…
For My Son, Walking Home from School Alone for the First Time. 18th June 2014
Today the boy will walk home alone
Here begins the shock of dissolving
The mother glue
The boy whose body I protected
Nourished
Defended from suggestions to
Remove
Held fast despite dire predictions
Then born, waxed like an apple
Squalling and strong
For 11 years the instinct
Gut pure and keen-bladed
Parrying snarks and criticisms
Of too boisterous, too clinging, too big, too small
That sticky hand, those sharp little teeth, curls and sturdy feet
Is almost as tall as me
Has moods, his own tastes and opinions
Is kind and thoughtful
Loyal
And has decided he’d like to walk home alone
Today begins the slow shock of dissolving
The mother glue
Reduced to enquiring about quantities of food ingested, sleep clocked, happiness enjoyed
Momentous though no bells ring
Only an ache and the skin crawl dread of knives, bad men, the stampede of traffic
Sudden loss.
Apples…
Still harvesting the apples in our back garden reminded me of this….
Scrumping
Climbing autumn fences
Barbed and berried
Looking out for the farmer
And the cool snout
Of his shotgun. Spitting pellets of old metal that catch a goodun
In your slow arse
Creep over to the trees
The orchard a neat system of lines
Regimental one by one
We pick as many as we can carry, thick-skinned apples
Hammocked in our jumpers
Inside out bellies
Running the mile back to the estate,
Past the infant school, the offie, the corner shop
The gavvers in their car,
Dad in the pub
Over the train tracks, electric braces
Rigid current all the way to France
You live in the Garden of England
They tell us
Dickens the Romans Thomas a Becket William the Conquerer Anne Boleyn Churchill Darwin
All that history, them books
We keep running.
Poem maker gift…
A little poem gift for you guys… a poem maker x
Just print, cut out and fold following the instructions (borrowed from Wikipedia) and collaborate with me in making poems, allowing the different combinations to produce many poems.
- Turn the paper word side down. The four corners of the square are folded into the center, forming a shape known in origami terminology as a blintz base or cushion fold.[6] The resulting smaller square is turned over, and the four corners are folded in a second time.
- All four corners are folded up so that the points meet in the middle, and the player works their fingers into the pockets of paper in each of the four corners.
Heidi James 