We take one last lingering look back to 2016 with our final ‘picks’ for the year. Both Christmas poems, they affected us in very different ways. You chose Elisabeth Sennitt Clough’s painfully resonant ‘The Homewrecker and His Pun’ as our December 2016 Pick of the Month and, from a fine shortlist, it is a very worthy winner and is one of IS&T’s entries for the 2017 Forward Prizes for Poetry Best Single Poem Award.
Elisabeth was born in Ely and now lives in Norfolk with her husband and three children. Her pamphlet Glass was a winner in the Paper Swans inaugural pamphlet competition and her debut collection, Sightings (Pindrop Press) was launched in Brussels on the 15th January. Her poems have appeared in The Rialto, Mslexia, Magma, Stand, I,S&T, and The Cannons’ Mouth. www.elisabethsennittclough.co.uk
She has asked that her £10 ‘prize’ be donated to the NSPCC.
The Homewrecker and His Pun
She has high hopes for her white sauce
this Christmas. The roux glistens
from the wash and slap of milk,
as she lightens it a ladle at a time.
Her veins grow taut on her forearm
as she beats the buttery yellow mixture.
Droplets hit her skin and form small crusts
among archipelagos of freckles.
She’s positioned her radio by the stove
and between songs, the cartoon
her daughter’s watching in the living room
competes with the early morning announcer:
on the first Christmas Day, the angels
promised peace and good will on Earth.
She downs another sherry, her hand
less steady on the wooden spoon.
Her husband comes in, flushed from his walk,
a sprig of mistletoe tucked in his cap.
Though his affair happened last Christmas,
her eyes stiffen: you whore of a man.
He blames the drink for shifting her
into the sickness of every woman
he wants to leave behind. She doesn’t make it
to dinner and their child is left to wonder why
when she’s seen the béchamel burnt to flakes
in the pan, her father tells her don’t go
in the bathroom because your mother’s been
at the sauce and hurled it all over the floor.
Voters comments included:
Level of detail. And keeping us waiting for the pun, pointing up the desperation.
[her] style is magical and gets me travelling every time I read her poems.
I like [it] for its lyricism and its emotional punch. The poem flows beautifully too…
Deft and painful, beautifully worded.
…a gloriously detailed depiction of domestic emotional turmoil at Christmastime.
oh yes I remember it well typical christmas…
I love its strength – the steady transition from control to loss thereof, and marbled with sexual innuendo. That’s a lot to juggle all the way through.
However, in addition to our December Pick we also wanted to have an Honorary one for the whole year. When Scottish poet and musician John Mackie died on 23rd December 2016, his poem ‘The 25th’ had already been chosen for IS&T ‘s ’12 Days Of Christmas’ series and was, appropriately, posted on Christmas Day. His support of the feature was total; his was the first ‘Like’ that our first ’12 Days Of…’ post on the 22nd received on Facebook.
IS&T editor Helen Ivory had already put ‘The 25th’ forward as one of her choices for December’s Pick of the Month shortlist. In light of all this, then, we felt it would be right to honour John separately and have donated £10, the usual ‘prize’ for our monthly Picks, to one of the charities he supported, Erskine: Caring for Veterans.
Our condolences go out to his family and friends and, in his memory, we reprint his poem below:
The 25th
How the hell
do they do that
year after year
on the morning of
this Decemberfest purloined
from Mithra;
timed to perfection
best bib and tucker
yellow beaks gleaming
posing for presents
promising nirvana
if I feed them now
tip tapping my conscience
and memory of you?
it’s a bit of a struggle
I am still in Jajouka
seeing off the goat boy
with the screaming of pipes
or lost in the Latin
some other God mumbled
to justify incense
and the rose window at Chartres
but hey here you are
at my feast for one and his cat
even though it’s been years
since I laid you a place,
how do you do that,
turn up
without smelling as bad
as you did
when we burned you
at Buckie on medical advice?
the children are scattered
London, Bonn, Rome
they remember you differently
as careless of them
as though your cancer was wilful –
was it so hun? I know that it forced me
to a series of metaphors
still point, rock, tower of strength
I never wanted, am trying still to melt them
as much as I loved you please go away
and take your Christmas blackbirds
with you
John Mackie lived in Aberdeenshire. He had been published in a range of media since the 1960s and you can find his more recent work in Scotia Extremis, Poetry Scotland, The Poets’ Republic, Clear Poetry and Spotify.