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CAUGHT IN THE NET 116 - POETRY BY
DOROTHY BAIRD
Series Editor - Jim Bennett for The Poetry Kit -
www.poetrykit.org
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|
It has taken
root with the
fierceness of the determined, and prepares
to flourish in you as the apple
tree and the plum tree flourish in
your garden from; Fruiting by Dorothy Baird |
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CONTENTS
1 - BIOGRAPHY
2 - POETRY
Revisiting No. 33
Dawn at Benares
Growing Up
It Never Stops
The Shape of a Mother
Fruiting
Wearing My Mother's Pearls
Poetwoman
Wondering about God
Easter
3 - PUBLISHING HISTORY
4 - AFTERWORD
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1 – BIOGRAPHY: Dorothy Baird
Dorothy's poetry has been widely published in magazines and anthologies. Her first collection, 'Leaving the Nest' was published by Two Ravens Press and she is currently working on a second collection. Her poem/play for three voices 'Timepieces' was performed as part of TraVerses in the Traverse Theatre Edinburgh. She has tutored creative writing groups and workshops in the community, and in mental health settings, for over twenty years now and is the founder and tutor of the Young Edinburgh Writers, established in 2009, whose installation, A Room with Our View, blended poetry and bedroom furnishings and was displayed in the Edinburgh's Central Library for six weeks this year. She has three children and is also a Human Givens psychotherapist.
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2 - POETRY
Revisiting
No. 33
Her home was up a clutter of stairs,
a twist of darkness, where the tap tap
of her stick tipped your spine.
Black skirts. Black shawl.
Fingers like heather roots.
The wind lists now at the glass,
unpicks the paint, scatters cherry blossom
from the trees folk used to say
should have been rowans,
and there’s nothing there to show
the shiver of air
that hung around her door
– those clenched-heart dares
to ring her bell and run away.
It was said she never ate, it was said
she ate the dust, it was said
she smothered children,
it was said she knew the small talk
of the moon – so many words
chased us along the street
till we’d hurtle in a heap
behind a hedge
and believe
and not believe each other.
Dawn at Benares
Darkness. A drumming of women
slapping and whacking
dirt from clothes. Knee-deep
in the Ganges, suds floating
on the black water like flowers.
There is no sign. No movement
of the earth that asks for change
but change is written on the river
and somehow the almost-light
floats in: that grey-blue time we give
no name as if we favour the gloaming dusk,
the twilight, the crepuscule,
when all promises are rescinded
and we are comfortable in regret
and not this eastern moment
when the sun begins to rise
over the smudged line above the scrub
in its veils of gauze
and we fall away
like smoke, like water, like thought
into this slow power of movement.
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Growing Up
My daughter poses in front of the mirror
with nothing on. She leans, arms stretched
above her head, trying on faces, and I wake
from months of blindness: this preening girl
has wintered in the darkness of her clothes
the curve of hips, the swell of breasts.
She’s pouting now, lips in league
with her sultry gaze. She sways, provocative
as a lap-dancer, her feet just missing
the plastic figures she was playing with
half an hour before.
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It Never
Stops
The antennae
that once woke me
to catch a
hiccup
before it
revved to screams
now scan the
quality of night
to read
who's out, who's in.
And 'out'
means stravaiging
in pubs and
clubs, daundering
on streets
with chittery bumps
they don't
feel, lurching for
taxis,
friends' floors, the last bus,
while I'm
the missions' sergeant
in my
wakeful nightie,
alert for
keys, creaking
stairs, the
sloosh of taps,
counting
them home.
The Shape of a Mother
The shape of a mother
shifts in all the years she learns in,
testing the sharpness of her heart
against tomorrow when her children leave.
She hides the truth in her bones.
On wintry days they ache
when she sees in her mind’s eye
her home empty as the blue tit’s nest
she found, its neat circle of hair,
twigs and a pink scrap of paper
from who knows where, cold
now. But what can she do
but go on doing the small things
she’s so good at, lining her nest
with pieces of days, moving her joints,
remembering summer?
_
Fruiting
In the warm
earth
of your body
something is
stirring
though it is
not spring
but late
summer.
It has taken
root
with the
fierceness of the determined,
and prepares
to flourish in you
as the apple
tree and the plum tree
flourish in
your garden
and I wonder
how this
fruiting started
how it
decided or how it simply happens
that this
new growth buds, blooms
readies
itself to fall
Wearing My Mother's Pearls
Even after a year, they smell of her
as if hording in their moons
molecules of perfume, essence of her
transcribed into light and locked
in the blue velvet box, so that
when I open it, finger the lustrous string,
she's here again, and something large
and almost tangible fills me:
Is it loss,
that sharp truth of never again?
Or a sense of connection, as if
the scent materialises her staunch
spirit and straight spine, as if
she's approving me looking nice for once,
pearls warm against my neck,
their first touch of air since her fingers
stumbled with the clasp, undressing
after dinner in that last hotel.
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Poetwoman
after Pie Corbett
Poetwoman carries her poems
in the pocket of her pinny.
She stirs one in the pot of soup,
slips one in between the cheese
of her children's sandwiches,
hangs one out to dry beside the socks.
She stitches poems in the bones of leaves
so they open in the hedgerows in the spring,
slides one in the purse of the tired woman
at the checkout, scatters them
like daisies in the park, folds them
in the biscuits in the old people's home,
tucks one under a swan's wide wing.
At sun-down, she shakes her pinny
over the cat's dark fur, so unfinished poems
fall into its warmth. When the cat
pads out into the night, her lines
brush against bushes, attach themselves
like burrs, to be read by moonlight.
Wondering about God
Of course she wonders: she's alive, isn't she?
And science hasn't yet explained the spark
that even in a test-tube
ignites a fledgling consciousness.
And she's heard the forest's full of pine-cones
each shaped to the same mathematical formula.
But TV plunders her with pictures of space -
its million million suns - and reason
is a task master for disbelief.
So she swithers. Some days she's a skelf of a shell
sucked out by a random, infinite sea:
others, she's stopped by an autumn leaf
its precision, its beauty, its place.
Easter
The garden understands Easter
better than I do. It does not
pause to question stones
rolling from caves.
It only holds its breath through chill mornings
when haar blurs the sun, knowing
how winds blow into the heart of trees
and whisper blossom, how branches
sense the steady rise of sap, how tulips
cup their secrets in clasped hands
ready to redeem them in warm air,
how the huge wheel
creaks against the flow of days
shifting us towards
the only proof we need.
3. Publishing History of Poems:
Revisiting No 33 Smoke, The Winding Road (Hawthorn Press) Leaving the Nest
Dawn at Benares New Writing Scotland, Leaving the Nest (Two Ravens Press)
Growing Up Images of Women (Arrowhead Press), Leaving the Nest (TRP)
It Never Stops BBC Radio 4, Ruth Padel, Poetry Workshop
The Shape of a Mother Leaving the Nest, (Two Ravens Press)
Fruiting The North
Wearing My Mother's Pearls Commended in Ware Open Poetry Competition 2011
Poetwoman Acumen
Wondering About God Runner Up in Second Light Poetry Competition 2011
Easter Acumen
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4 - Afterword
Email Poetry Kit -
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to tell us what you think.
We are looking for other poets to feature in
this series, and are open to submissions. Please send one poem and a short
bio to - info@poetrykit.org
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