What others are saying about Jean Gill's poetry
'Jean Gill’s spiky humour makes you feel as if she’s caught you on barbed wire and yet makes you smile about it' - Mike Sharpe, Haverfordwest Journalist
Jean Gill brings off the rare feat of looking life squarely in the eye without descending into dreary cynicism. She tackles a wide range of subjects including adultery, divorce, motherhood and anorexia – HS Milford Haven Journalist
'...the humour frequently has the effect of pointing up the stark reality with which she writes.' - Ted Griffin, Pause Magazine
'An excellent collection – I enjoyed the sharpness and insight, the word-play… strong, fresh, vivid poems' - Robert Nisbet, author
A delicious book full of the unexpected. Highly emotive contents. Writing Magazine
Moving and varied – Dorothy Tutin
With Double Blade
Jean Gill
Copyright Jean Gill 2011
Smashwords Edition
First published by the National Poetry Foundation 1988
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for my mother and for John
Acknowledgements
Poems published in Outposts, Poetry Nottingham, Pause
Special thanks to Johnathon Clifford, the National Poetry Foundation, for his mentoring, editing and personal encouragement
Contents
To Secretary Sandra’s Golf-Ball
Watching Old People
Men?
Nothing Personal
The Aran Jumper
Spring Prayer
Pandora’s Box
Integrity
Birthday Present for My Father
Never Forget Your Welsh
Trivial Pursuits?
Re.Generation
Equality
‘Last Lesson’ – but worse
Commissioned Work for Mr Pudner
Defective System
Poet Dreams
Tunisian Compromise
For Members of F.A.
Study in Grey
Defined by Loss
Farmers Shoot First
Arthur’s Plea
Note from Guinevere to Lancelot
Lancelot Insane
To Bluebeard from the Woman who Does for Him
After the Mexican Earthquake, 1985
Merry-Go-Round
Which Club Are You In?
Duet
A Night at the Theatre
The Three Wise Monkeys
A Bad Day Technologically Speaking
The Lady and the Minstrel
YXX?
Young Love
Not Just Married
Leave in Silence
Liberal English for GCSE
TO SECRETARY SANDRA’S GOLF-BALL
Your type has set the image of
The School’s official missives,
dictating rigorous policies and
deleting all expletives,
but after Form One’s verses,
even worse, their tasteless jokes -
I’m sure your cogs can cope
with all my poetry evokes.
WATCHING OLD PEOPLE
There must be easier pastimes
than this slow Chinese drip
into contempt by strip-light,
gauging women’s ages by rings
on necks, round eyes, on fingers -
pale dragons hoarding gaudy
compensation for decline.
Inside each toughened epiderm
is its baby, toes bath-wrinkled
blinking yellow eyes at a strange world.
Only death peels skin-layers back
to egg shell fragility, till
some quintessence shines through.
Then you see kinder ways to watch.
MEN?
My little boy, who’s only three,
says he’s a man and don’t need me;
all my life, these big, strong men
have not needed me, again and again.
NOTHING PERSONAL
Worm-like, you burrow blindly
into any accommodating hole,
earthed in the blood-beat.
Then, rejecting the cooled heart
of your temporary refuge, you
shrivel, puckering in the light.
Less than worm, self-insufficient,
yet too easily detached,
translating into words only
‘Thank you, hole, for being available.’
THE ARAN JUMPER
He left when I’d just set the pattern;
I didn’t think he meant it,
called, ‘Wait till the end of the row’
and heard the door close, quietly.
Strange. I’m not superstitious but
I always knit the pearl rows quicker
just in case. And that’s when he left.
Like missing cracks in pavements which
I suppose is easier in size threes.
Tens his were. Are. Stretching across