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1973
Posted: 08 May 2006
Word Count: 94
Summary: inspired by the 1973 power cuts
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Around us and inside
the lamp burns in
my three years.
The corners grey grey
and the book is bright,
slaghts blotched light.
My others huggle me
(reading for bedtime)
while daddy rattles the
black cherry line from London.
We three smudge in, til
electric shoves out
our winter of content.
Twenty years
and we are three again.
Under grey grey sky
between funeral
and the birthday he never.
Hedgerows glow;
thin trees slaght purple.
Mum hooks us,
smudging her space.
It feels too late
too soon for us.
There will be no homecoming.
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 Mickey at 18:58 on 09 May 2006
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Dear Nina,
I'm afraid I don't have the poetic expertise to explain why .... but I just love it. It is absolutely brilliant - 'huggled' and 'smudged' I just LOVE it!
MIKE
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 Tina at 06:51 on 13 May 2006
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Nine - sorry to be late here but I love this too - the use of language in your 'huggle'and 'smudge' like a faded picture - and the rattling train - a very child like image. I particulalry like the last three lines and the echo of the first verse - very interesting stuff thanks
Tina
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 James Graham at 14:26 on 16 May 2006
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Hello Nina. I like this very much. It's full of surprises...which is something I often say about a good poem, sometimes without explaining properly what I mean. For example, 'the lamp burns in/ my three years' - a new line brings something we don't expect, yet on reflection we feel it's perfectly right and appropriate. Not only that, but we feel there's underlying meaning, an unstated meaning we can open up for ourselves as readers. For me that's one of the secrets of a good poetic line.
Other 'surprises' (which work in different ways) include 'black cherry line'; 'electric shoves out/ our winter of content'; 'between funeral/ and the birthday he never' (like someone breaking off when speaking, but the meaning is understood); those words commented on already - 'huggle' and 'smudge'; and 'It feels too late/ too soon for us' - as well as having that quality of surprise plus rightness, these lines ring very true to me: how often we feel that a death, or some other major event, has happened both too late and too soon.
There's a delicate balance between the two halves of the poem, with echoes and little reappearances of ideas. Yet the two halves aren't made to fit a strict pattern. But this is a poem about real life, and life doesn't follow strict patterns; there are only echoes.
'Slaght' is a word I don't know. Obviously not a typo because you use it twice. Is it dialect?
James.
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NinaLara at 15:53 on 16 May 2006
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Hello James -
I hope you had a good holiday! I'm really pleased you liked this ... I feel that I took a number of risks in this which I didn't know whether would be successful for the reader or not. Slaght (or sla'ht) is dialect - definitely common in Barnsley and probably in much of South and West Yorkshire. It means 'to dash' as in dashes of rain on a window. 'Coming on to slaght' means coming on to rain ... so it is a verb with a very blotchy splotchy smudgy feel.
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James Graham at 18:40 on 16 May 2006
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Hello Nina. Thanks for the explanation. I think that's the only thing in the poem that didn't come across to me; the rest is very clear. Probably most readers wouldn't know this word, but that's no reason not to use it. If you publish the poem you can just add a footnote. Not long ago I published a poem on an American website, adding footnote definitions for two Scottish dialect words: skirlies (seabirds) and tom-noddies (puffins). The American editor was perfectly happy with that.
James.
<Added>
And yes, thank you, I did have a nice break. Four days in the Perthshire highlands, the sun shone almost all the time, temperature in the twenties. Rain every day since getting home. Dead lucky.
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