Poem: The shadows thrown by millstone grit

Landscape or topographical poetry isn’t popular, or, at least, far too many people have told me they ‘don’t like landscape poetry’.  

I wonder what they mean. Are they saying the writings of John Clare, William Wordsworth, and, from the valley next to this, Ted Hughes, are of no worth? Probably not. I think they must fear sentimentality, but also, I suspect, they have no idea that the landscape is an active partner in the writing process.

Throughout my life I have been attentive to place. I’ve lived in many different parts of Britain: Bath, where I was born; Peterborough; Richmond; Uxbridge; Harrogate; Sheffield, Manchester, and now, here in the South Pennines. Always on the edge of a town, and almost always near a canal.

I can pull a poem out of each of these places - even Peterborough, which I left when I was only four years old - for the place that I inhabit is an extension of me. I’m attentive to where I live. I project my thoughts and memories onto the landscape and in turn it projects its concerns on to me. And something comes out of that exchange.

The shadows thrown by millstone grit

From where I’m sitting I can see the hills.

The sun’s shining and tomorrow

the clocks will go forward.

Something catches my eye;

a hiker climbing up to Blackstone Edge,

the jizz of him young and fit.

I don’t know where memories come from,

only that they turn up unexpectedly,

and demand to be let in.

Why today, when the sun’s shining

on moor and millstone grit, should I recall

a cousin dead these fifty years?

I cannot see his face, but his hair’s still fair,

and his hands still slender,

his nails bitten to the quick.

I was eleven, he eighteen.

Between us, there existed a polite affection.

He took his own life.

No-one told me why, or how, or thought

even that I might grieve, my being still a child,

and he a cousin I saw only twice a year.

But I did grieve.

I still do.

© Sheila Wild