Three poems from books in my TBR pile

I haven’t kept up with the Sealey Challenge but it has prompted me to read more poems from my TO BE READ pile, including this one, ‘Late fig’ by Clare Best from her collection, Beyond the Gate (Worple Press, 2023).

It’s a concrete poem but there’s no concrete here, it’s all fig, a mid-winter gift waiting to be plucked. Enjoy its “very heart of figness.”

The idea of the Sealey Challenge is to read one poetry collection a day in the month of August. I love the ambition of this challenge but it’s too much of a stretch for a slow reader like me to be able to read so prolifically. However, I like more poems popping up through my social media timeline in August, as Sealey Challenge people share what they’re reading. I’ve needed to choose shortish poems from each book so that they can be easily read on Instagram which is where I’ve been sharing them.

Here’s ‘Many Happy Returns’ by Jill Abram from her pamphlet Forgetting My Father (Broken Sleep, 2023).

I chose this one because I’m a sucker for poems about ageing, memories, families, parents, Dads. I also like the fact that Jill has put a mini episode from a family drama – a play script, a story from a life – inside her poetry book. The repetition in the poem’s conversation is echoed in its title ‘Many Happy Returns’. I like being placed straight into this scene and learning something about a family. I love the humour at the end and the poem’s unpretentiousness and unembarrassed tenderness.

Finally, here’s ‘Mosquito Net’ by Isabella Mead from her pamphlet Dear Rwanda (Live Canon, 2023).

This meditative sonnet reminds me of a quote I read by Derek Walcott – “I have never separated the writing of poetry from prayer…”. In ‘Mosquito Net’ the “giving in / echoed in the great unloosening” is a kind of surrender, an act of faith and trust. If fear intrudes, then “best make the latticework infinitesimal” so that the mosquito net itself becomes a prayer (or meditation or act of mindfulness).

I’ve got to know Isy Mead this year because we were both chosen, along with Matt Bryden, as winners in Live Canon’s 2022 pamphlet competition. Isy lived and worked in Rwanda 2010-2012 with the VSO and the poems in Dear Rwanda reflect her experience there. The close attention paid to sensory details in this poem are exquisite – the cow bells, the fragrance of tea fields. And the turn of the sonnet, in the final four lines, is so gentle. The mosquito net will keep you safe and protect you, even from bad dreams. I find huge comfort in this poem.

Postscript (added after I’d originally published this post): One thing that has been very good about the Sealey Challenge (for me) is that it’s encouraged me to dip inside many poetry books and magazines and this has been helpful for my upcoming poetry workshops in Bradford on Avon at The Make Space. I’m so pleased that bookings are coming in – and there are still places available, if you’d like to join us on 5 and 12 September for writing exercises, prompts and feedback.