There’s a strange sort of limbo after you’ve submitted your thesis. I know the message will soon come that my Viva date needs setting, but it seems a long way away; and then I realise it’s nearly four weeks since I handed my work into MMU and I see how that ten-twelve week period between submission and assessment is disappearing fast. Just yesterday I picked up an e-receipt from MMU for the submitted work, and notification that it had been processed through Turnitin, the programme that checks for plagiarism. My beautiful thesis is living its own life out there in the big world, while I lose myself in the mundane world of the spring clean. And in poetry.
Spring cleaning is just the therapy I needed after four years of brain-work. This week I’ve finished cleaning the kitchen — nearly choked myself spraying the oven with Mr. Muscle oven cleaner — and started on the bedroom. On Wednesday we took a carload of crockery, glasses, cooking pots and utensils to the charity shop in Uppermill. And I mean a carload: the boot and back seat were full. Yesterday I pruned my wardrobe and filled black bags with clothes I don’t wear any more. That will all go to the charity shop this week. Charity shops are recycling of the best kind. I’ve made lots of brilliant buys at charity shops; my favourite purchase was from a charity shop in Ilkley, a brand new — still with the original labels attached — Seasalt waterproof coat. It would have cost £140 from Seasalt, I bought it for just under £40. So I take stuff to charity shops whenever I can. I’ll be reloading my car on Tuesday, the next time I need to go into Uppermill.
Thankfully, the hole left in my life by the submission of the thesis has made a space that poetry can help to fill. This week I’ve been doing some planning of workshops and readings that Hilary and I have coming up over the next couple of weeks. Here are some of the events, it would be good to see you there.
On Tuesday June 11thHilary Robinson, Linda Goulden and I are reading at Writers in the Bath —at the Bath Hotel in Sheffield, 7.30 p.m. Here’s a link to the Writers in the Bath Facebook page: https://www.facebook.com/events/2690454774302429/This event includes an open-mic session, so why not come along and give it a go. On Saturday June 22ndHilary and I are running a poetry workshop for Didsbury Arts Festival…
https://www.didsburyartsfestival.org/what-s-on/76-my-family-and-other-curiosities
…and on Monday June 24thwe will be reading from our joint pamphlet, Some Mothers Do…, along with other poems, also at Didsbury:
This event includes an open-mic session as well. We’re also running a workshop for Langley Writers at the Demesne Community Centre, Middleton on Thursday 20thJune, 2.15-4.15 p.m.
So the next couple of weeks are going to be busy and full of poetry, the best kind of weeks. There’s been a fair amount of poetry this week too. On Tuesday Hilary and I met up with Natalie Burdett at the Molino Lounge in Oldham to share and workshop some poems. On Tuesday morning I spent a couple of hours typing up some poems from our recent Line Break in Coniston so that I’d have something new to take. I took along four poems, we all did, and it was a good night: food, coffee and poetry. And friends. All my favourite things in one evening event!
Yesterday I gave time to submissions: it needs one day a week to be methodical about it. I submitted about a dozen poems to various journals/anthologies. I haven’t been very efficient at submitting while I was doing the PhD: time is a big issue, and most of my time was taken up with completing the PhD work. I still have this weird guilt when I find myself doing other stuff, as if I should be dedicating every second to PhD. That’s how it was. So now it’s good to have time to pay my poems the respect I think they deserve and try them out for publication. But why, I wonder, can’t submissions be standardised? Each small press has its own submission guidelines, and they all vary slightly. If the process was the same for all submissions it would be so much simpler for the writer. For instance, some want all poems in a single Word document, some want separate documents for each poem; some want Times New Roman specifically, others are happy with any plain font size 12; some specify three, or five poems max, some don’t specify. One even went on word count. Some require a short author biog, some not. It would be so much easier if all submissions followed the same guidelines, but you risk annoying the editors if you ignore the guidelines, as I know from doing admin for the Poets&Players competition every year. Finally, I heard this week that one of my poems, ‘Alternative Mother #6: Pope Joan’ was accepted for publication in the online journal, Riggwelter, for their October edition, so that’s a good start for the submissions I sent out from Coniston. Let’s hope this continues.
Enough. Here’s a poem. This is one I wrote following our morning visit to Leighton Moss bird reserve. When we arrived and showed our RSPB membership cards to get in, the woman in the shop advised us to look out for the aerial ballet of the marsh harriers, listen for the chiff chaff of the chiff chaff, the song of Cetti’s warbler. We sat on a bench and looked to the sky and listened for the warbling of rare birds. Nothing. But we did see lots of blackbirds, geese, black-capped gulls, and I had this thought that if birds were humans they’d have to put their name down on a waiting list for a pitch at Leighton Moss, whereas the birds just turn up and move in, no waiting list, no profit involved. So I had this idea for a poem. There was a notice by the bench that told us a bit more about the aerial ballet of the marsh harriers, how the male feeds the female in mid-air while she is tasked with incubating the eggs. This sounds like a real act of devotion to the mother of his chicks; but the notice said the male might well be feeding more than one female, a raptor love-cheat. We moved from the bench to one of the hides and watched water birds on the lake, including some very proud-looking greylag geese. When we got back to Coniston I drafted this poem over a pint of Old Peculiar in the spring sunshine.
a greylag goose flying low over the water
The Greylag Geese move up the waiting list for a home at Leighton Moss
We did everything they asked—arrived
early, tired but determined before
the best plots were taken. They asked
what can you bring to conservation?
Eggs, lots of them. We come from a long heritage
of layers. We promised whatever it takes:
gaudy socks, fluffball chicks,
a low flying display over the water, like Lancasters
searching for dams. Are you affable, they asked.
As affable as the next goose, if we’re not dissed.
They gave us a pitch on this pontoon
in the Lake by the hide. It was fine
until the ASBO neighbours moved in:
cormorants brooding like old monks,
bitterns firing their canon at dawn.
And don’t get me started on the grebes.
The grebes can keep it up all night, dancing,
partying, shagging, building nests.
I thought at least the marsh harriers
showed some class with their aerial ballet —
but word on the lake is he’s got a bit on the side.
I’ve requested a nest swap to Burnham Marshes.
Rachel Davies
May 2019
racheld1607 