Loose Muse Winchester: Poetry Anthology

The Loose Muse Winchester anthology was launched last week at the Discovery Centre by organiser and poet, Sue Wrinch.

The cover was from the artwork, Hilliers Arboretum, by Hampshire artist Caroline Hall and is the perfect backdrop to the poems from the 23 poets who appear in the anthology.

To bag a copy of the anthology contact Sue Wrinch through her website or P&G Wells Bookshop, 11 College Street, Winchester, Hants. SO23 9LZ pgwells@btconnect.com

The anthology brings together the voices of some of the poets who play a role in Loose Muse Winchester. It is a collection that celebrates poetry; it may begin and end in Winchester, but it travels through generations and across the globe before it settles back in Hampshire. We are taken to towers in Japan, to roofless ruins on St Kilda and back in time to wave at troop trains, and all the while we hold a token tightly in our palms as if holding on to time itself. Here we find the intimate moments, the untamed landscapes and the complicated, magical and tragic world that surrounds us.

A number of the poets read at the launch and it was fantastic to hear the poems Sue and I had been reading over the last couple of months. Some stunning work is included from:

Helen Whitten, Pat Kelly, Ilse Cornwall-Ross, Amanda Oosthuizen, Lyn Smith, Cassandra Scott, Hilary Hares, Lynda O’Neill, Sue Spiers, Andrena Yeats, Madelaine Smith, Cat Randall, Angela Ward, Bev Hooper, Joan McGavin, Penny Monro, K .J. Barrett, Sally Russell, Patsy Rath, Rebecca Lyon, Susmita Bhattacharya, Wendy Dishman, Louise Taylor.  I don’t have space to put them all up, so here’s just one to give you a bit of a taster.

 

In Birkenhead Park

This is the park, this is the
place, where we walk, you and
I, where feet meet
paws and the light
hangs grey over the
horizon.

Hair in bunches, one ribbon
lost, I run at the swings, and you
leap for my mittens, trailing
on their elastic, until the seagulls
trawling for food on the
football pitch kick off
a better game.

With wheeled feet, I wobble down-
hill, past the rocks we like
to climb, the ones the Victorians dug
out to make our lake, the ones
you are foraging among, looking
for last night’s fish and chip wrappers left
by last night’s teenagers.

The lake path’s a trail for
today, me riding and ringing
my bell, you easy at this speed, dashing
from dog-friend
to dog-friend, into the lake ‒ watching
out for the geese ‒ and back to me, always
back to me.

Dark past the bushes, the moon
clutching at her cloud and the stars
too shy for this night, but you
trotting at my side, your body
between those bushes and
mine.

This is the park, this is the
place, where we walked, you and
I, where feet met
paws and the horizon
grows gold because
we were there.

Louise Taylor