New Readings by Pimento Poets on 11th September, 2015.

In connection with the recent exhibition 

‘Picture the Poet’ 

And the Summer School Photography event 

held at  Lincoln University

  Pimento Poets will be reading their poems on:  The Magna Carta, Freedom of Speech and Democracy.

  On Friday 11th September, 2015

  (10.30 – 12noon)

     At The Collection and Usher Gallery, Lincoln.

        

Poets reading will include:  Shirley Bell, Vernon Goddard, Susan Flower, Nic Lance, John Malvert, Celia McCulloch, Paul Mein, Gerry Miller, Paul Sutherland, Maureen Sutton,  and Susan Wallace. 

For free tickets please visit our Eventbrite page http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/pimento-poets-tickets-18324328560 or call The Collection on  01522 782040   

Teas and coffees provided  

Free Event.

All welcome.

Skating with Father by Celia McCulloch

Skating with Father


Winter mist against the window glass,
the kitchen smells of oil-stove heat and cedar wax
and we're wearing thick wool socks that scratch
our legs. First we laid the pasty wax, my father and I,

and now his dark, tall figure begins to glide
across the floor. I try to follow but just can't slide
across the sticky goo until I put my feet in his smooth tracks
and then he swirls and loops as skaters do, over and back.

He hums his monotone of Skaters' Waltz. He spells words in wax
for me to guess. He whirls, hands held high, ballerina-style.
I do the same. Then I stand on his size 12 feet and we run across the tiles.
I follow every crazy move till we end up a giggling pile

as my mother comes through the door
stamping snow from her feet.      She frowns and we feel poor
excuses for workers, ashamed somehow. I simply asked you to polish the floor,
she says. Must you always make a game of work!


Copyright   Celia McCulloch

In the Memory and Cognition Room by Celia McCulloch

In the Memory and Cognition Room



Sparks of tinsel light up cobnuts and stub-ends
and Aunt Lizzie, big and dozy in her chair,
a knit/purl night-nurse slumped before the fire,
while you play with her ashtray. Press the button—
Zap—it opens, shows its black-ash heart.
Click. It shuts, and Lizzie almost stirs.
Tree lights dazzle behind their angel-hair.
In the next room, a parabola of laughter
in the yellow light where Uncle’s talking cock-
and-bull (and Father tells him so). The yips
of Scottie circle round the table begging scraps.
Your mother giggles, Granny fills her cup.
You know that you could join their paradise,
but see, for you, for them, it’d break the mood.
They’d ask, “Oh, has no one put the child to bed?”
You see it whole: the theys, the yous, the Is.
Like a squirrel you gather to yourself this nut,
and it feels something like forbidden fruit.


Copyright  Celia McCulloch

Kindergarten of the Heart Celia McCulloch

Kindergarten of the Heart  



What do you call this mint-green winter?

The one fine snow lies thin as lint on the landscape

and roses still bud and bloom—a tender, tentative

wintergreen season, holding autumn and spring 

in equal measure, a dying and a generation.

Our hair echoes by eye the frosted grasses.

Our hearts that long ago found causes not to love

now   struggle   as   an   infant   strains   to   speak.

Shy, we do not touch, walking our trackless hinterland,
tied with some new, invisible cincture…

Dippers bob in the cold stream-water, totally at home.


Copyright   Celia McCulloch