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Allotment<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n I just have to see those rigs,<\/p>\n those bed-spread patches,<\/p>\n to see my mother sewing<\/p>\n fragments of grown-out-of clothes,<\/p>\n to make a summer skirt.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n She laid the colours like plants,<\/p>\n like rows of summer blossom,<\/p>\n the cup of tulips, the tuck of roses,<\/p>\n the corduroy of new turned rigs,<\/p>\n I wore a garden in the sun.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n While outside, my father<\/p>\n lined up wigwams for beans,<\/p>\n telling us wide-eyed children<\/p>\n they were magic, would grow<\/p>\n to the sky, where giants<\/p>\n <\/p>\n might sing to a magic harp.<\/p>\n One by one, we lost belief<\/p>\n until there was only<\/p>\n the little red flowers,<\/p>\n the curling tendrils, the<\/p>\n <\/p>\n fattening pods. Breathe in<\/p>\n and hide in the leafy tent,<\/p>\n runs a thumb down the seam,<\/p>\n pop the pods, catch the beans,<\/p>\n now that was <\/em>magic.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n Vivien Jones<\/strong>‘ \u00a0first poetry collection – About Time, Too<\/em> – was published by Indigo Dreams Publishing in September 2010. In that year she also won the Poetry London Prize. She has completed a second short fiction collection on a theme of women amongst warriors – White Poppies<\/em> (2012) –\u00a0 with the aid of a Creative Scotland Writer\u2019s Bursary and has adapted two of the stories for theatre performance in 2013. In February 2014 her first e-book – Malta Child<\/em> – was published – memoirs of four childhood years in Malta in the late 1950s. Her second poetry collection – Short of Breath<\/em> – was published in November 2014 by Cultured Llama Press.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Allotment I just have to see those rigs, those bed-spread patches, to see my mother sewing fragments of grown-out-of clothes, to make a summer skirt. She laid the colours like plants, like rows of summer blossom, the cup of tulips, the tuck of roses, the corduroy of new turned […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"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":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9022","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9022","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\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9022"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9022\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9024,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9022\/revisions\/9024"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9022"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9022"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9022"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}