NEW HOPE INTERNATIONAL REVIEW

This anthology celebrating forty years of the Pennine Poets is a companion volume to Spirit and Emotion by Mabel Ferrett. It is a themed collection and Ken E Smith in his long introduction writes

Here the opportunity is offered to read a section of poems in the way one might read a short-story or novel chapter at one sitting ... my contribution can only be to showcase the poets included here and it is their work which counts. If I can help to lower the general "threshold" of reader's approach to contemporary poetry, that will be a start. But if I can also introduce the reader to a particularly talented group of poets working in Yorkshire over the last four decades and dramatizing for us the form and pressure of our age, then I shall feel I have achieved something worthwhile.

	This is not Top Withins,nor any such literary place,
	but an unnamed farm that raised a stubborn face
	towards sullen land and obstinate fields.

	the train stopped here, a single line,
	outward was push and coming home was pull — so
	miss the train — walk off the edge and fall
	into The Unknown Land that's Lancashire.

	A cough here
	Would shatter the world

	You're still here. I won't
	Make Wordsworth's mistake with the Duddon, spell
	Out prophecies that can't
	Foresee dams. Yet you show
	What lasts: I revert
	To knowing quietness. Brief
	But of all a part
	(As in your swim a little leaf)
	I will no more intrude
	My private grief:

	I am water, tide.

	Leipzig
	ancient city of my loves

	You I can't know
	without pictures and re-buildings

	flakked out
	city streets where thoughts could ease
	ease open pavements

	Can a word
	cover

	the cry
	of a dying child?

`	We are eagles betrayed by our wings,
	we are fish that drown as they breathe
	we are antelopes run to death by our legs
	we are jaws that devour the mouth.

	Pity us, Cannibals,
	Headhunters,
	pity us, for we have coined the world
	only to purchase the world.

	Two weeks ago, in the unexpected warmth
	   of a spring day, the sun shining,
	crocuses bright in the rockery, yellow
	and purple and white combining,
	a cortège passed and, according to custom, to honour
	   the dead, at each house curtains were drawn,
	   and women moved silent and grave at their usual jobs,
	   unprying, behind it all;
	yet glad, when that was done that courtesy asks,
	   to pull back the curtains and call
	   out to each other ... so
	she, jauntily, waved across to say
	   "It wasn't our funeral! No!
	We're still alive. The sun shines for our pleasure."

	I watched nine herons fly from Kinlochmoidart:
	I am not there to know if they return

	Earth centered peace by sea-washed grass among mountains:
	An oil platform now creates a different place

	Grant me your triumph over ice falling among jagged rocks.
	Be where I arrive when I've found the way.
	Teach me to know why, lady of the bright snow,
	You find this darkness holy.

	They hung the long red fox, like a flag, head-down
	Out of the dead tree bent by the moor-squalls,
	To show that the steep hard fields high beyond town,
	   Still fought, from their humped walls.

	Six young magpies, two gulls and a crow
	Kept him company, swinging strung on a line:

	Was it like this then —
	bog-cotton milk maids
	purple and silver grass
	a curlew's continual song
	punctuated by sheep cries?

contribute their tribute to the oldest human theme of poetry, that of 'love and song' ... It is poetry rather than therapy or science which can best encapsulate the joys and pains bound up in that mystery.

	What a night to die
	A summer's night, a lover's night
	The earth sings
	And you die;
	Never to see,
	Oh, never to sense,
	This
	Again.

	...
	There is laughter and song and rejoicing.

	As it is with my foot on the ground I feel the earth alive,
	So it was that night we made love in the garden.
	The lilac was loving, the grasses sweet and tousling.
	We laughed and were happy.
	And every blade, and bird and stone,
	Every tree and all the shadows were attendant.
	And my mother dies tonight.