Poetry and Creative Writing for All

Amanda Richards

	Amanda Richards won our Top 5 Poems of the Month Online Competition - January 2006

I was taught to read by my grandfather, who read aloud to me so many times that I learned the words to the Dr Seuss book "A Fly Went By" and started to follow these words in the text. This experience has stayed with me all my life and led to my passion for words and verse. I’ve been writing poetry since I was a young child, but have only recently found the confidence to let other people see my work. This means that it’s extremely gratifying to have my writing acknowledged as poet of the month.

I work as a Health and Safety Advisor, having trained as a mechanical engineer. This means I am often quite isolated from others who appreciate poetry in the way that I do. For much of my life it feels like a hidden secret and I would love to be able to explain to everyone around me the pleasure I have at discovering secret meanings and emotions in a book of poetry. There isn’t much room for the romantic poet in the world of risk assessment and accident investigation!

My home is in Coventry where I live with my three children and partner. I am very fond and proud of my City; I love the vibrant, multi-cultural elements and the strength of its people. They travelled to Coventry form all over the world in search of work, in the days when industry was booming. My own parents came to the city from Yorkshire and Wales, whilst my partner, Vince, is Irish. Through Vince, I have spent some time in Ireland and have completely fallen in love with Connemara, which feels like most beautiful place on earth to me.

The influences of my family and friends and the places where we spend time are frequently expressed in my work. I am also involved in the trade union movement and find that my poetry often becomes a vehicle to express my politics. I seem to be driven to write, whether I want to or not; sometimes waking in the early hours of the morning and having to get up in a cold house to capture some words which have formed in my head, before I forget them. A single line scribbled down in the middle of the night often forms the basis of a whole poem which is built around it.

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Her floury hands are mottled with faded cinnamon freckles
and her sleeves are pushed up tight,
rolled onto the plump muscles of her old arms,
constricting the sagging, loosened flesh.
Her cross-over apron is washed with spring print,
as she works, with concentration, above soft chins.

Her wedding ring is carefully placed on the window ledge,
in the kitchen winter half-light,
as those firm skilled fingers
plunge into the dough,
which has been mixed by judgement;
without scales.

And suspended above the stove
is the blackened bakestone,
hissing and smoking with fat
and waiting for circles of that curranty dough,
which she turns and flips,
so that they firm and brown;
delicious and melting with nutmeg.

And that flat, black slab of iron is
hooked above the flame,
old and alive;with a lifetime of hardship and travels 
from home.

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He leans across the bright, green baize to take his pressure-shot,
the balls shine up like the coloured heads of hairless, old men.
His hands slip on the smooth wood-grain of his cue.
He squints and folds his forehead against the idea of failure,
hard-focussing to forget the hot gaze of the spot-light.
His future resting on the luck lie of this table.

In the interview room, she sits down at the table,
faces the firing-squad panel and waits to be shot.
The sun teases through the window, her earrings catch the light.
Her future depends on these suited and successful men.
She wears new, red lipstick, a charm to ward off failure;
she’s learned to wear a short skirt and to smile and flirt on cue.

The rain splashes her tights as she waits in the bus queue,
her shopping should, by now, be the dinner on his table.
She tries to balance roles. He criticises her constant failure.
If it weren’t for the children she’d leave him like a shot.
Nearby the pub’s easy warmth is filled up with careless men,
the neon door-sign flickers; she looks up to see the light.

She wants a cigarette, but she hasn’t got a light,
her nerves are tapping like Morse code as she listens for her cue
to collect him. The room is filled with hungry men,
pawing at a stripper, who beer-dances on a table.
A singer, a dreamer; a club-scene big-shot;
she watches and understands public and naked failure.

Token woman set up for solitary failure,
she sits in the office, exposed under the glare of the strip-light.
Head low over her desk, giving every task her best shot;
watching the success of others, as she waits at the back of the queue.
Resentful of the patronising crumbs thrown from their greedy table;
conspicuous team colours in a football-crowd of men.

She walks into a bar, smoky-hot with ego and full of men,
her presence freezes dead their chat; straight-line, heart-failure.
She shocks them with her drink, sits down at a lonely table,
waiting patiently for her turn; isolated in a pool of red light.
Their angry glances tell her to leave again, to take her cue.
Some one spits an insult across at her, an angry cheap-shot.

She steps into the light, the taunting menace of men;
Feels them willing her failure, waiting for her to mis-cue.
She leans across the table.
Every shot’s a pressure shot.

Fragmented pieces, rock and stone,
deposits of a turning tide.
Imported, ground and cast to mould
the pebble-dashing concrete blocks.

They flocked like filings to a pole,
migrating by magnetic field,
and built this town by hand and deed;
industrious and rich with steel.

But factories were dispossessed,
and phoenix wings were dulled with ash.
As time eroded honest dreams,
the shining gates were turned to rust.

This is a town of worn-down heels,
which tread on clots of spat-out gum,
and people cry in shabby voice
across the cold, grey slabs of streets.

But washed beneath the beating rain,
a source of strength and pride intact;
defiant chips of rock and grit
still wrapped around this urban heart.

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He Told Me I Made Music

On summer days we went to the park to see the peacocks.
Grandad held my hand to cross the roads
and lifted me up to the drinking fountain,
which was too high.

He built me a bench, from old bricks and a plank,
in the garden,
where we sat and talked,
Grandad and I.

The toilet outside was white-washed;
dark and damp.
Spiders scurried to dusty webs in dirty corners.
Grandad breached the gap to safety with the beam of his torch,
shielded me from the dark menace of the sky.

On winter nights in the creaky wooden bed,
when ceiling-shadows danced,
I lay under cold cotton and camberwick
and listened to old-man snores.

My lullaby.
On afternoons which were dark with rain,
we sat in a room which smelled of old books and wax,
I bashed monstrous tunes on his love-worn piano
and he told me I made music.

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Tribute

You sprinkled spice across the concrete slabs of this Midlands town,
scuffed the toes of your shoes against the confining edges of its precincts.
Dancing, wild, with dangerous abandon,
down through our streets,
testing their limits.

A flash of butterfly wings past a cat’s velvet jaw,
fascinating in your display.
Shining, but never rising,
a phoenix with a tangled claw;
your talons caught in twists of barbed wire.

You searched in the playground,
a lonely boy seeking out a friend.
Courting chance, as if it were your lover tendering a kiss,
reaching out for the hand which pulled you down toward your end,
because its palm offered promise in exchange for your trust.

You flung your arms wide in offering, as you balanced on the edge,
and waltzed with me along the bridge across the railway track,
I danced with you for as long as I dared,
but I turned back.
I wasn’t even looking when the needle hit your flesh.

Death will not diminish your spirit,
and I can never more pretend to be small, because I was grown in your great presence.
I was changed when the wash of your passing lapped against my shore,
and I will be forever marked by the touch of your friendship.

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Submission Guidelines: Poems of no more than 30 lines in length each will be considered.