{"id":9421,"date":"2015-10-12T08:00:43","date_gmt":"2015-10-12T08:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ink.verticalplus.co.uk\/archive\/?p=9421"},"modified":"2015-10-03T11:01:11","modified_gmt":"2015-10-03T11:01:11","slug":"to-celebrate-light-for-national-poetry-day-sarah-james-jan-harris-victoria-gatehouse","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/to-celebrate-light-for-national-poetry-day-sarah-james-jan-harris-victoria-gatehouse\/","title":{"rendered":"To Celebrate ‘Light’ for National Poetry Day: Sarah James, Jan Harris, Victoria Gatehouse"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Against Candlelight<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

As marbled wax melts, flickers<\/p>\n

of unknown lives beckon<\/p>\n

from fire\u2019s hypnotic chaining.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Colliers, chandlers and cavemen<\/p>\n

gaze with me: my desk a shock<\/p>\n

of print-outs, letters and confusions.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

I try to rope these family scraps<\/p>\n

together, to secure<\/p>\n

the past on which I exist,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

but the string I have twisted<\/p>\n

to makeshift wick<\/p>\n

coils downwards, limply.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

A bread-thief stoned to death,<\/p>\n

the wyuen pine of a ducking-stool,<\/p>\n

Saxon kings\u2019 golden burial mounds\u2026<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Bones beneath the ground;<\/p>\n

memory in black smoke.<\/p>\n

I feed the paper skeleton<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

of my great-great-grandmother\u2019s unwed pain<\/p>\n

to the wick\u2019s relentless flame,<\/p>\n

then pinch out its burn.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Sarah James<\/strong>\u2019s latest collections include \u2018plenty-fish\u2019 (Nine Arches Press) and \u2018The Magnetic Diaries\u2019 (KFS), which was highly commended in the Forward Prizes and staged at The Courtyard, Hereford. Winner of the Overton Poetry Prize 2015, her website is at www.sarah-james.co.uk.<\/a><\/p>\n

Note: \u00a0First published in \u2018plenty-fish\u2019, Nine Arches Press, 2015.<\/em><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

While all is quiet<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

She steals time while others sleep,
\nplucks seconds from the night
\nand cups them in the pale moon of her hands.<\/p>\n

While the house collects its breath
\nshe gathers up the bustle of the day
\nand strains it through a muslin cloth:
\nspent elderflowers,
\nsharp lemon twists,
\npips and woody stalks,
\ndiscarded.<\/p>\n

In the silence she sips her wine
\nand warms the golden liquid on her tongue.
\nIt floods her mouth with light
\ntill morning clamours like a hungry child.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Jan Harris<\/strong> lives in Nottinghamshire.\u00a0 In 2015 her work has been published in Snakeskin, Envoi, Abridged, and Poems for a Liminal Age<\/em>, an anthology in aid of Medecins Sans Frontieres.\u00a0 Two poems were highly commended in the Chipping Sodbury poetry competition, and a tanka appeared in the Northern Health and Social Services Trust\u2019s Colour of Poetry<\/em> exhibition.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Note: While all is quiet<\/em> has previously been published by 14 Magazine<\/em>.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The Moth<\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

This is her time \u2013<\/p>\n

birds dark-stitching telegraph wires,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

the woods blue-shadowed,<\/p>\n

crackling with dusk.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

The moon untethers her,<\/p>\n

she pitches from fence to wall<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

to leaf, would hurl herself<\/p>\n

for miles, such is her faith<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

and you think of how she gorged<\/p>\n

on hawthorn and thyme, spun<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

herself a mantle, hung tight<\/p>\n

inside the blackout<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

of her own skin<\/p>\n

before the breakdown, the forcing<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

of all that remained<\/p>\n

through the veins of her wings,<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

this lit-bulb junkie,<\/p>\n

wrecking herself on your porch light.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Victoria Gatehouse<\/strong> lives in West Yorkshire. Her poems have appeared in magazines and anthologies including Mslexia, Magma<\/em>, The Rialto, Poetry News, The Interpreter\u2019s House, Prole, Furies <\/em>and Her Wings of Glass<\/em>. Competition placements include Ilkley, Mslexia, Poetry News<\/em> Members\u2019 Competition, Prole Laureate and The Interpreter\u2019s House.<\/em> Victoria is working on a debut pamphlet.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

      Against Candlelight   As marbled wax melts, flickers of unknown lives beckon from fire\u2019s hypnotic chaining.   Colliers, chandlers and cavemen gaze with me: my desk a shock of print-outs, letters and confusions.   I try to rope these family scraps together, to secure the past on which I exist,   but […]<\/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-9421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-prose-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9421","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=9421"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":9423,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9421\/revisions\/9423"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/inksweatandtears.co.uk\/archive\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}