I am like a proud Aunt.
I have been on a nine month journey with Liz Lefroy – and she has now given birth to her third poetry pamphlet
It is called Mending the Ordinary
It is the shape of a small photo album
Gillian Clarke and Philip Gross comment :
‘From the delicious first poem, ‘In The Queue In The Waitrose Café, I Meet My Love’ this is a little book of songs: a love-song to an 85 year old stranger, to sons, at the school concert, or shopping; poems to places, remembered childhood, a mortally ill mother, and all in the easy voice of a natural poet.’ Gillian Clarke
(National Poet of Wales, playwright, editor, translator from Welsh, founder and president of Ty Newydd the national writers’ centre of Wales. A lecturer and tutor – her poems are studied at GSCE and A’level throughout Britain. Gillian Clarke was awarded the Queen’s Gold Medal for Poetry in 2010; and made a member of the Gorsedd of Bards in 2011. For more information about her go to www.gillianclarke.co.uk)
‘Nothing is ordinary in these poems, in the sense of unremarkable.
They deal with moments that come in the order of our lives, with people growing, leaving, passing or being remembered.
But the effect of the poems is to lift them slightly out of time, into a perspective that is tender and
quizzical, alert for more.’ Philip Gross
(Philip Gross writes poetry, novels for young people, science fiction, haiku, opera libretti, plays, radio short stories and poem-documentaries and is a creative writing teacher at all levels. His poetry collection THE WATER TABLE won the T S Eliot prize in 2009. For a full list of his achievements look at his website www.philipgross.co.uk )
Liz Lefroy won the 2011 Roy Fisher Prize for new work in poetry, resulting in the publication of her first pamphlet, Pretending the Weather. This was followed in 2012 by her sequence, The Gathering. Both were published by Long Face Press.
Liz Lefroy will be reading from Mending the Ordinary at the Severn Theatre, Shrewsbury on November 10th 2014 – with Carol Ann Duffy and Gillian Clarke !!
and here’s the first poem of the pamphlet……
In The Queue In The Waitrose Café, I Meet My Love
The man next to me in the queue is gorgeous.
It starts with him telling me I’ve dropped my pen
and I pick it up, though it’s not mine.
I’m almost sure he knew that anyway
so we talk about pens and dropping things.
I ask for a cappuccino and we’re on to poetry.
While the milk is frothed, he says for him
it’s about what sounds like daffodils.
I tell him about my rhyming dictionary.
He says, So, you’re a clever girl then!
I smile, say, No, then, Yes, to chocolate.
We laugh as I hand over a five pound note.
If I were fifty years younger I’d fall in love with you.
He says this as I hold out my hand for change.
All this in minutes, and I already love him.
He’s eighty-five, but I won’t believe it.
He looks at me from the corner of his eye,
gives a nod of knowing, asks for two cups of tea,
hooks his stick over his arm to pay.
I say, Lovely to meet you, walk to a table
past a woman who is smaller than him
creased into a chair and wearing pink socks.
I look up at them from time to time.
I see their silence. It’s been a long time.
It’s just been a long, long time.
Please share my news – I’m shouting from the rooftops – Proud Aunt Admires !!!!!
Comments are closed.