Hop Picking
Dickens sees bodies wet in the hedges,
hop dust is believed to cure consumption.
Eden Phillpotts, writing in 1916,
starts with sunshine and deft fingered girls.
By the 1930s and Orwell it’s blood
all over the fingers and chaff in the throat.
But for Eileen one January morning, hops
nailed to the ceiling brittle as dust,
in the home where she now lives?
Her school at one end of Canterbury
was bombed. I didn’t know
it had a chapel.
They were let out early
for hop picking. Wincheap.
I’ve got smoke-stained alleys
and the carpet shop. Like a holiday
she says, she could go there
now and see it all again.
Carolyn Oulton (www.carolynoulton.co.uk) is Professor of Victorian Literature and Director of the International Centre for Victorian Women Writers at Canterbury Christ Church University. Her most recent collection Accidental Fruit is published by Worple Press.