We didn\u2019t know we were poor<\/strong><\/p>\nSometimes we went hungry.
\nMother made dandelion salad
\nand stingy-nettle soup. Potatoes
\nand carrots in water with salt.
\nMother had been on the train again
\nto visit farmer Ruttenberger. Left our
\nlast silver flatware with his wife.
\nBrought back a big sack of rye.
\nCan see her still, her too large dress,
\nher apron, the coffee machine
\nbetween her thighs, milling.<\/p>\n
My scary aunt with the deep voice
\nand a wart on her chin would send us
\ninto the woods: \u2018Don\u2019t you go eating
\nthe blueberries now. Bring them home,
\nyou hear? I need them for jam making.\u2019<\/p>\n
There was a place near the brook
\nwhere the world smelled of woodruff
\nand ceps, where bluebells announced
\nour indelicate approach.<\/p>\n
Getting back empty-handed, round-eyed
\nand honest-to-god we hadn\u2019t found even one,
\nmy aunt wiped blue-purple stains
\nfrom our guilty faces.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Voters’ comments included:<\/p>\n
A true talent. One of a kind. I love all of her work.<\/em><\/p>\nI was immediately transported to another place and time yet the story is totally relatable and the style is engaging<\/em><\/p>\nIt reflects the innocence of childhood and the careless years we all had back then, not understanding what was really going on around us. And not caring either. That’s what being a child is all about.<\/em><\/p>\nThe simplicity of the story. The touching ending. The thought-provoking title.<\/em><\/p>\nThe genuine emotion in this poem resonates with the reader.<\/em><\/p>\nSimplistic yet hauntingly beautiful with pathos!<\/em><\/p>\nRose has led a rich and full life, and her poetry reveals the happiness, as well as the sadness, of success and failure.<\/em><\/p>\nShe is a very talented writer that makes you feel every word she writes. Her poems stay in your mind and should. Love it.<\/em><\/p>\nI can visualize every scene so clearly it’s like I’ve been there.<\/em><\/p>\nit’s the one that most resonated with me, from nettle soup to blueberry stains, she took me with her to another time and place<\/em><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
Selected comments on the rest of the shortlist:<\/p>\n
Jo Dingle, ‘Dawn’<\/p>\n
Beautifully controlled metaphor running throughout the poem to create a really strong image, and a lovely use of “pink” as a verb.<\/em><\/p>\nJohn Greening, ‘Seven Steps’<\/p>\n
Beautifully paced lines. Compelling story telling. Great sensory phrasing.<\/em><\/p>\nGeoff Mills, ‘Manners’<\/p>\n
Superbly witty flash fiction with some great lines. “Einstein\u2019s eyebrows rose up like a pair of ambushed seagulls.” – perfection<\/em><\/p>\nColin Pink, ‘New Perch’<\/p>\n
Simple and exquisite, like an Edmund de Waal vase, both small and as expansive as the universe. A gorgeous poem full of tenderness and vision<\/em><\/p>\nHideko Sueoka, ‘Cherry Blossoms’<\/p>\n
The way she describes the beauty of spring and cherry blossoms through the change in the character’s mind caught my heart. I empathized with the feeling the character felt when facing the grace of spring.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Huge congratulations to Rose Mary Boehm whose poem ‘We didn\u2019t know we were poor’ emerged as IST’s ‘Pick of the Month’ for June 2016, beating the runner up by a single vote. Rose is the author of Tangents (published in the UK in 2011). She has also been widely published in the United States and […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[135],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11482","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-2016-poetry-picks"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11482","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11482"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11482\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":23672,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11482\/revisions\/23672"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11482"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11482"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11482"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}