National Poetry Day 2004: Food
11 November 2004
A Poem from a FARMA
Monica Hayworth was inspired by John Hegley's blogging - see below. (Monica is a farmer in Tarporley, Cheshire. She and the family run EDDISBURY FRUIT FARM where you will find the most wonderful apples and fruit.)
Pick your own apples
On Cheshire’s finest soils, our apples do grow
Discovery, Katy, Grenadier, all standing in a row
James Grieve with Ingrid Marie next to George Cave
Bramley and Cox Orange Pippin, all but save
Our Cheshire Goldens which in time had to go.
Chivers Delight, Royal Gala and lovely Sunset,
Kidds Orange, Ashmead Kernel and Egremont Russet
Howgate Wonder, Crispin. Jonagored and Jonagold
We no longer have the pound but in kilos to be sold
In weights that we no longer understand, but yet
With names like St.Edmunds and Worcester Pearmain
Gala, Saturn, Red Devil only a few but to name
Spartan with flesh snowy white
Lord Lambourne and Foxes Delight
And the Peasgood Nonsuch for the future did gain
Twenty six different varieties of apples are grown
Come to the country from out of the town
Some apples are eaters and some are cookers
Some are ugly and some are good lookers
Get them ready picked or come pick your own
Regards Monica the Apple Lady
15 October 2004
Trust in Woodland
'It's a charity to protect ancient woodIand', he said.
'Do you think there might be causes more urgent?', he was asked.
'Like what?', he answered.
'Like needy children', he was told.
'Children aren't as beautiful as trees', he explained,
'And they don't live as long either'.
Although I do not share this very strong viewpoint,
I do like trees.
I believe a tree to be
the wisest life-form known to me:
the outstretched limbs
that seem to say
we welcome you to earth, today.
It's no surprise they're hugged by folk,
the birch, the larch, the beech, the oak,
the others.
I like trees.
Whenever I see a street with lots of trees in
I'm glad.
Trees say truth to me.
Trees say peace to me.
Some of them are a bit fat for goalposts,
But you shouldn't be playing football in the street anyway.
Visit to Shute Fruit Farm, Devon, And beyond
A day of mud clod and cloud cover.
Still, I’m taken round the crops. These are pick your own pastures, but it’s not the produce which most catches my eye. It is the poems placed at the end of the crop-rows. Speaking in prose, I express my approval at seeing verse in these places. It makes Wordsworth more.
In the sunflower area, crowds of unpicked flowers have lost their petals, but have been allowed to remain. I ask for why? Farmer Lori is glad to explain: this land is home to rare bird-life; the remnant sunflower seeds help to satisfy their feeding needs. It is pure good will, to the old bill.
We adjourn to a cosy community hall in Bishopsteignton, where further celebrations are under way. A small Poet Tree sits with the names of poets all a-dangle. Folk are invited to give a home here to choice voices past and of the moment.
The event has been titled Pumpkins and Poems. I am invited to assist with the public slicing of a large traditional orangey pumpkin. I ask Lori if she would do the honours of poking out the face. Once done, I take a corkscrew, place two holes at the sides of the head, then spread my spectacles across its vacant eyes.
The afternoon is plush with words and squashes. Inspired by the poet tree, I invite local folk to have a flutter creating a LEAF acrostic. The results are fantastic:
Landing on planet pumpkin
Exploring orange eye-holes
Anticipating fruity pursuits
Finding a candle lit roof.
Last limping Llama
Eating elephants ears
Ants all around
Fast food fun.
Littering like
Eggshells in
Amber
Firelight
Little
Elves
And
Fairies
Leprosy
Endangers
Another
Finger
Lapland
Exists
And
Father (Christmas does too!)
08 October 2004
A beautiful day. Sue and I walk to East Coker Primary School at 9am, past the church and its paddock where about 20 Dorset Horned sheep graze, penned in by a 6” high wall then a narrow leat running with West Wells stream water. It wouldn’t keep our Beulah Specklefaced in for one minute, but these are fat lowland sheep, oblong, with a leg at each corner like deeply upholstered piano stools. A beautiful tulip tree in the paddock was split by strong winds just before I arrived. In two days the sheep have eaten every leaf from the huge fallen part of the tree.
At the school I am given a class of 9/10 year olds. I haven’t been into a primary school for a year or two, and can’t remember what I used to do. As soon as I see them the old magic returned. I love this age group. We have a wonderful hour together, all their hands in the air at every invitation. I suggest that memories of a summer picnic would be our contribution to the Poetry feast. I act as secretary, they call out their contributions. Here is the result:
The Picnic
A warm day. A pebbly beach.
The sea drifting quietly.
Children build castles near the rock pools.
The sun glistens on the sea,
on a giggle of gulls in the shimmering sky.
We come out of the sea and our mouths water.
Nestling into the pebbles, we wait.
Mum lays a red and white tablecloth among us.
We’re greedy as seagulls swooping for food.
Chocolate spread sandwiches. Strawberry jam.
Terrific tuna. Crispy bacon.
Slices pf pizza and sausage rolls.
Ice-cold orange juice. Luscious lemonade.
Tongue-tingly trifle. Raspberry yoghourt.
Mouthwatering strawberries. Gorgeous grapes.
A bag of pumpkin seed. Chopped carrot and cucumber.
Fruit cake. Chocolate cake, cheese and jam tart.
At the end of the day when the sun goes down,
all into the basket.
The tide comes in, polishing the pebbles.
It swallows the beach
and washes our footprints away.
East Coker Primary School pupils with Gillian Clarke
Then we and the whole school assemble in the hall, and Flavia Leng, author of a memoir of her mother, Daphne du Maurier, announces the winners of the poetry competition. Each receive a framed certificate and a poetry book. It’s a great occasion.
We walk back together. Flavia lives in a long low stone house hiding in a walled garden close to the church, and built in the 1980s. She has two slender dogs like the initials in illuminated manuscripts. They are as elegant as she is. This place is full of the most surprising people.
Lunch, solo, at the Helyar Arms in my blogging interval. I sip a glass of dry white wine while I wait, copying out the new primary school poem, reading the list of good food awards won by Ian McKerracher and his young chef, observing and listening. Clearly this is the place to come with friends for a rather special lunch, or a drink if you’re local. It’s spacious, spaces leading into spaces, but cosy, and nobody seems to be smoking. It is completely fug-free. My father was wont to say to my mother – an imaginative cook – ‘this apple tart (or whatever) is a poem!’ And indeed, lunch is a sonnet. It is small, balanced, delicious and memorable, a fillet of salmon with a fine parmesan crust rhyming with fennel sauce, roast cherry tomatoes, some red, some yellow. I’m glad of the little, home made roll so that I can mop up every bit of the sauce without resorting to licking the plate.
Tonight they’re announcing the East Coker poetry competition winners, and I’m
reading some of my poems. They’re a conscientious audience. At least four people wanted my book, Making the Beds for the Dead, in advance, so that they can get more out of it tonight. Jean, the farmer from Dartmoor, said the long sequence on Foot and Mouth made her very sad, but she’s glad I wrote it.
Then talk, of poetry and other things, in the good company of my and poetry’s new friends, over another of the chef’s fine dinners.
There might be a PS, but in case there’s no time, a Happy National Poetry Day to all, especially to Sue and Ian McKerracher, and the revellers in the Helyars Arms.
Gillian Clarke
07 October 2004
a couple of poems from Westfield Community School, Yeovil, year 11, from workshop yesterday. More to come!
Gillian
Candlelight
Big table dark with candles
Six chairs around the table
Deep blue plates with roast chicken
And a deep voice breaks and the music plays.
She opens the bottle
The smell of roast chicken and gravy
The wind blows outside
Candles flicker.
A knock at the door
Friends are here to stay
The wind blows
Dinners getting cold.
The glasses are full
Dinner ready
It starts to snow outside
The clock is slowing down.
Becky, Year 11
Westfield Community School
Blackberry Picking
A tree that's grown bent for years
The cows that graze in the sun
The huge blackberry bushes with big ripe berries
The sound of bees and grasshoppers.
He holds my hand,
Leads me towards it.
The sun still shines down
My mouth starts to water,
I can taste it already.
We take one each and bite into it,
The sweet juicy taste instantly releases,
It takes over me.
I take another,
Then a handful.
We sit down and fall into a new world,
The deliciousness overrides us.
We lay for hours until th sun slowly sets.
Charlotte, Year 11
Westfield Community School
06 October 2004
Wednesday, October 6th. Midnight again
Last night, another hitch. A fourth opinion needed on one 0f the primary school piles. I read all the poems, and chose a winner. Too tired after that to blog, so this is a later catching-up.
Helen the English teacher, now at home with two small children, drives me to Westfield High School, Yeovil, for two poetry workshops and a Q&A session with year 11. Lovely to be at school again. Helen felt a pang of nostalgia. Lots of good images, those little glimpses of students’ lives you get from poems.
One of the highlights is the packed lunch. While others open Tupperware, we unwrap little cheese boards set with fine cheeses, a slice of rough pate, a little home made loaf, a tiny pot of tomato spread and apple. Beautiful! Prepared by Ian McKerracher himself, proprietor of the Helyar Arms.
Home to East Coker, and a visit to Jean with Sue McKerracher. Jean wants to meet me. She lives in a lovely stone cottage opposite the pub. Her garden is full of pretty hens, the earth jewelled with windfall apples. She farmed on Dartmoor, and her heart is there. Put out of business by rising rents after the death of her husband. What a curse tenancy is. She knows someone I know in Wales. I’m as often reminded of the links between Wales and Somerset – Gwlad yr Haf, the summer country – as of the differences.
No time to blog before a lovely candlelit dinner at home with Ian and Sue, and too mellow to blog after. Midnight. I fall asleep at the iBook!
05 October 2004
October 5th 20048.34
Midnight, and so much to record. the East Coker adventure beginning. Poet-in-Residence at a much-awarded gourmet pub, the Helyar Arms. A poet’s life is indeed hard.
Up at 6am, and on the 8.34 out of Carmarthen. The ‘heron-priested shore’ of the Tywi estuary haunted by fishermen, lugworm collectors, sea birds. The train gives a little shout as it leans into the curve at the edge of the sea. Onwards through the stations of South Wales with glimpses of the sea all the way till we dive under the Severn to Bristol. Into Temple Meads on time. I lug my bags, weighed with books and laptop, onto the train to Yeovil, looking forward to joining the judges for lunch at the Helyar Arms, East Coker. They are judging the East Coker Poetry Competition. The subject is Food, the Poetry Society’s theme for National Poetry day this year. There’s an adult category, and three for the children at the village school. The Helyar Arms is a prize-winning, gourmet pub in a village whose name sings poetry to all who know T.S.Eliot’s ‘Four Quartets’.
We chug out of Bradford-on-Avon. I relish each station name and the sunlit, rain-washed lanes and the flooded fields with sky in them. Westbury. The train coughs and dies. It tries to rise, they prod and poke it and tell us nothing. All sound stops. A long silence.
Mobile rings. At the Helyar Arms the judges are deadlocked. Can I help? Phone in hand, file of poems underarm, I’m heaving luggage off the train upon tannoy instructions. I phone with my reconsidered opinion. 45 minutes later a restive crowd is harassing the pleasant but impotent staff. The taxi firm with which they have an ‘arrangement’ is doing the school run, and has no available cars right now. There is no contingency plan to permit stranded passengers to use the taxis waiting in the rank. Four of us can stand about no longer. Sharing the £50 taxi fare, we set off together. Rita, Will, Emily and I. We are all very cross and exchange names and phone numbers. Two and a half hours late! I blame and shame and name Wessex trains for their taxis which did not come, for their lack of contingency plans for stranded passengers, for poor train maintenance, and for giving their local staff no power to provide assistance. Wessex trains suck!
I am consoled by a warm welcome and brief discussion which breaks the deadlock in the competition. Then a walk round the village with Helen Backhouse, English teacher and ‘incomer’. We visit St Michael’s church where T.S.Eliot’s ashes are interred, briefly visit a local farmer who has recently sold his dairy herd because there is no money in milk. He has lived his whole 80 years on the farm. The farms here are in the village alongside the houses, not out in the countryside surrounded by their fields. This seems very strange to me. The village is pretty and well manicured. Substantial stone houses, mostly thatched, built for his workers by the the lord of the manor. Ths is an old feudal estate. Completely different from the poorer, but more independent spirit of survival I’m used to. No talk of giving up farming in Talgarreg, Ceredigion.
A glass of wine and a perfect grilled brill in the bar before a great evening of poetry entertainment called Knights of Passion, good poems, Shakespeare to Wendy Cope, chosen and read by John Darling and John Burgess, two East Coker citizens. All the women had roses. Old-timers and incomers, there seems connection here, a willingness to join in, and whether or not they’ve ever been to a poetry reading before they enjoyed it heartily, even joining in the chorus of Burns ‘My love is like a red red rose’.
30 September 2004
Farma visit: 22/09/2004 by John Hegley
I come off the loco, I’m welcomed by Rita
and Gareth, her husband, who drives from the station
they talk about FARMA: the organisation:
a wealth of assistance
in bridging the distance
in between grower and eater
I’m told by Rita.
We visit an organic farm and its farm-store, a valuable asset for contact and selling the crops,
I’m told how the carrots keep fresher when they keep a hold on their tops.
Carrots with tops on,
Fir-apple potatoes,
Fingers of fennel
And onions in strings.
Beans run up bamboo-poles,
Big free-range pumpkins,
These are a few of my favourite vegetables.
I spoke about doing
Poetry and potatoetry
Workshops. Workshops
writing and printing.
Wordshapes.
I was took on a tour of the farm by Ian, the boss.
He forked up a beetroot and knocked off the mud
He sliced it in two and I said it would do
For ready-made printing, instead of a spud.
His knife went to work on my poetry perk,
Then my notepad got kissed with an organic cross.
I leave the farm with bags, button hole and pockets
full of goodness.
I want to know what organic inspectors
expect the inspected to do
Ian explains that you show them your dockets.
Rita says farming involved lots of paper work,
I say, “And poetry too”.
Gareth takes a photo of me, lying in a field of pumpkins.
Being on the farm, going around watching Ian pulling up his spuds, carrots and beetroots, I was consistently amazed at the density of yield from the soil. One of the qualities of poetry can be such a density of yield, from the language. Continuing the comparison into cookery, the words are perhaps individual ingredients concocted and crafted to a deeply sustaining nosh.
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