Blackbirds Poetry Society Anthology Issue 1, Lent 2021 by cambridgeblackbirds

Blackbirds Poetry Society Issue 1 Lent 2021

Foreword As we say in poetry: read Twilight, write about birds. And although we have a few avian appearances, the references to sparkly skin is considerably low, poets. Pick it up. But truly, this anthology means a lot to me, and not just because it’s the first one, or that, as with many others who shiver when someone says ‘poetry is for you’, I live and breathe for its gentleness and viciousness, but also for the sheer quality of all of the work people have written. There is no set theme to this anthology which means it is up to the reader to discern the quiet way the poems play off each other, something unique to an uncategorised series, words or sounds that thread between poems an unplanned and special encounter. Thank you, everyone who has participated in the making of this.

Artwork: Zoe Smith Editors: Katherine Wrench and Olga Okhotinskaya

‘In the morning, the whole world had a strange new smell. It was the smell of the aftermath, a green smell, a smell of shredded leaves and oozing resin, of crashed wood and splashed sap, a tart smell, which bore some relation to the smell of bitten apples. It was the smell of death and destruction and it smelled fresh and lively and hopeful.’ A.S. Byatt, Possession: A Romance

Marzia Zhou

甲⾸⾦四

Maddi Jackson

Bat Hour

Sarah Adegbite

The Art of World-Making

Sophie Carlin

Yew

Isabella Todini

I woke up before you

Alex Clark

‘Love’ Poem

Jemimah Abigail Hawkes

Nietzsche’s pathway

Anna Wilmoth

Lost

Tanya Brown

Meditations #13

Katherine Wrench

Untitled

Megan Hickes

Airways

Estera Ulrich-Oltean

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow

Anna Chandler de Waal

my cloud

Emily Naden

The Country Road

Trinity Gough

Pumpkin Soup

Oona Lagercrantz

Day 365

Anon

The Absurd and Lyrical Tale of Bertram Swan (esquire)

Dominique Pila

Little death

Christian Yeo

Requiem for Innocence

Grace Copeland

Train

William Hu

Pan’s Labyrinth

Rishi Sharma

Untitled

Francesca Weekes

My Parents (and Myself)

甲首金四 Marzia Zhou, Peterhouse Part I: Bridge of Let Be

In the Chinese underworld, Meng Po waits at the end of the bridge, boiling broth for those crossing over. The broth is made with water from the river of forgetfulness, which takes away all memory, preparing them for their next life.

Confessions of the dead, Ming dynasty He has always known what lies on the way. Over the river of forgetfulness the bridge that they named let be, and oh how else? The pavilion where dead souls, for the last time, glance back like the leaf of a tree wishes to fall close to its root. In his next life, he would like to be blessed with old age, to sit in the sun, to let children snatch honeyed dates from his open palms under the soft shade of poplars like those that once made him itch as a boy to get to where the wind can sift through his fingers, it is joy and shame and joy. He knows that he was all embroiled in a red dust, without which he will finally find the place with quietude like those tones of nightly gongs from the temple across the water – To be of the hot labour that seized his body, of all that soured his mouth, that nestled in his hands, that drifted his feet, that soothed his nights, of all sighs unburdened.

Bat Hour Maddi Jackson, Jesus Indigo expanse taut and heavy on the horizon – The air is charged and sparks bright-sharp And pregnant clouds that swell with thunder billow on the violet sea. Quick punctuate with shadow flash, childish play at finger snap all Helter-skelter and cartwheels – English really does not do them justice – These are hollow bones and dry leaves, Leather thin leather skin feather fling bug-munching sky-spin, Borne upon the night-time light, a kind of leaf light let-me-go flight, reckless and unbound – Caterwauling of the silent kind, a thousand milliseconds in the eye, An afterimage silhouette in the sky negative of wan moonlight, truly a sight To behold, but not to hold, flit through your fingers just the brush of almostand-gone

The Art of World-Making Sarah Adegbite, St John’s “Numerous universes might have been botched and bungled throughout an eternity, ere this system was struck out, much labour lost, many fruitless trials made, and a slow but continual improvement carried out during infinite ages in the art of world making.” - David Hume, Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion (1779) There is froth at your lips, ocean waves churning. As you speak between the gaps I leave upon a burning tongue. It is not easy, what you do: to capture pain in the knife of every poem is recipe for a migraine. Nobody ever tells you that thoughts have fists until you end up with a black eye, like a moon shadowed. Three years of writer’s block is enough to leave even the best of us mute. We have no experience in the art of world-making: 3

how to form a universe creatio ex nihilo – and fill it with things that question why?

Yew Sophie Carlin, Peterhouse Porphyria, dear, go grab me a coffee, And let me wrap my life around your neck In a python squeeze, Until that eczema kiss Wilts and browns in the sun. This is your Paris, This is £3 supermarket petrol station flowers, This is that sapping tickle in my lungs that I can’t shake. This is yearning for Monday When I can dissolve behind the water cooler, And let my bones melt into that fusty carpet Where he can’t find me. The ground was there and then it wasn’t, And I feel like I am dissolving As he grabs that flaking skin again, And uses it to wrap his soul in broken cells, To hide his bruising lily petal heart. But the smell is still suffocating, Even though it stains his lungs too, And I see him slide between the dark cracks of the pew, Walk on the scraggly grass underneath the yews, He squeezes my head until My brain turns to goo. You eat, I’ll watch. 5

The silence is dark, devotional, Cloying with that pot pourri stench of his mother’s bathroom And yet I am still running. Running the tap until my fingers turn blue, Until I can wash off the smell of yew. I check on your mother on Sundays, And eat her disgusting cheese fondue. We go back there sometimes. That spot of sea and rock where lilies grew, And I lie down in those rotten, mushy leaves, To rest beside you, In the sweat of the dew.

I woke up before you Isabella Todini, Homerton And that morning the sky flushed A deep purpled blue, Before the sticky sunrise, Heavy and rich With the soft, sweet heat of December light. The stars had begun to disappear But their oozey haze remained, Glassy eyes peering faintly from the horizon. Inside, I was electric. Each one of my molecules Buzzed and bumped against yours. I think you noticed because you wandered, Eyes cast hours or weeks beyond me Through the room and out the window, Fixed on the indigo indifference Of this intermediate time of day. You lay back, Let the shadows painted By the goopy unleavened sun Mark your body into a skyline, Edges and corners and manmade-right-angles Now picnic hills and softer slopes. The absence in the room Itched at my throat, prickling Like the sting of the snow on the slick ground outside. I counted each snowflake that melted, Then each breath I took, Then sucked in all the air I could 7

And counted how long before I gasped. The inconvenience of the sound Shifted the clouds like ink in milk That twists and twirls. I watched the plum sky turn gray.

‘Love’ Poem Alex Clark, Robinson If we had the world and time for we Then lady, would you sleep with me? For time for you gained and the world I have met But my parents haven’t actually left the house yet, So let us go then, you and I, To parties lit by the dimming sky And share with me the sweetest treat That us two lovers oft do meet; Of friends, of love, of passion like fire, But mostly of getting drunk on real cheap cider? And as we dance the night away, Like the moon to the sun as it blazes the day To you with my heart I do bear To try to get in your underwear. But yet for this mission, I still feel for you A love as deep as the ocean is blue, A love as far as Timbuktu, A love as true as the two ears that have you. But how to speak my feelings raw Without using such shitty metaphors? For feelings down are yet but words And why constrict myself to verbs Of smashing, mashing, twisting passion Which is a little too blunt for what I'm askin’ For this plain verse is not oft subtle So for my case I will rebuttle With if french is truly the language of love Then pour vous, mon chat je voudrais une dove Pour chanter nos amour pour tout qui allons, Et aider moi… etre… coucher vous un croissant? 9

So maybe the language will not bend To my needs, to reach my end But still for you, my love, I'll try To describe your majestic size But not that you're fat, I meant your figure Maybe “majestic” wasn't the best word here, So once again, my muse, I'll start To describe your wonder from my heart: Your eyes, not like diamonds shine, But glow instead with warmth to mine, For diamonds are but cold and harsh Much unlike you - and you've got a great arse, Or is that supposed to go later on? Oh well, it rhymes, so I'll finish, “anon”: For this attempt I feel profane So from future verse I will abstain, But to finish off this poem I came up with I will end with a final rhyming couplet: Though whilst we yet can make the sun run, I'd rather have fun with your bum. Done.

Nietzsche’s pathway Jemimah Abigail Hawkes, Girton pregnant chrysalides salt crystals wood-bones fully dried and mineshafts within stones are we quiet you sea weathered and wrinkled black grey tumult fresh with froth and flirting herbs and moss nature waits watching rotored bumblebee lift off and stir you sea and distant grass does that make supermen we stand correct cacti touching sky and rolling from the hills

Lost Anna Wilmoth, Downing You have been lost to dry dust of old water, That, grey, sits in puddles brown-clouding with mud. I poke you with toes of brown boots I have weathered, But, distant, you float into clouds, further off. My fingers stretch out, brushing just your thin edges, I stare through wet eyes as you slowl y

d i s so l v e.

CW - sexual violence

Meditations #13 Tanya Brown, Fitzwilliam The stars sang out of place, last night, And the bells were humming, with the coming of Countless breaths, weaving themselves in and out Of someone else’s earthly desires Do you not know what I mean when I say that, I sit here, on this mattress amidst rusted chunks of stars Abandoned by heaven to join the celestial dead? No? Then I will describe it to you I wait for sleep to overtake me, and place me in A chamber where gods caress my cheeks, and, maybe even, Rape me whilst I retreat in my epiphanic sleep? Incubated in a cove of thoughts and images I have made In my head, whilst the day goes on without me, I pick at the scabs of the universe, the demons of my dreams, Whilst scarry stars entreat me to a deeper sleep -

Teeth falling out of my mouth, Like petals from a rose, Or devils getting plucked from the sky They fall and make gravestones at my feet, For something which I did not know had fallen, Which had died in the world when I was not aware of it. And I wake to the sudden rise of day, Penetrating the glass skin of the window pane, And casting pale, drunken light onto musty bedroom walls, And I am sure I have risen in the right world, With all its patterns and regularities, 13

Except shards of dreams lodged in the backbone of memory Pierce me like frozen rays of light -

I feel myself bleeding somewhere Unable to tell what I brought with me the night before, And plunge into a simmering pool of day, Wary of weeds that threaten to silence me.

Untitled Katherine Wrench, Peterhouse birdcall’s airy fortress rises along tree roots and whorling buttresses. a lone egg drops and smashes upon the floor. it’s humid and now egg whites stain the broken bicycle, which slowly rots, giving itself into hedgerows where it has been abandoned as childhood’s fading carrion. the shell is alone still. no brothers bend to bring their dead home. fallen, fallen. he stirs the ants and their tireless pilgrimage. barely a day has passed, and the sun has done its job. 15

the egg gains in colour. its pall born within it. its birth at once. church clock wanes, the birds leave. first words, first words i have wasted them by not knowing how to speak. a child sticks his finger into the yolk. my losses are fever-dreams. the ants run up his sleeve.

Airways Megan Hickes, Jesus It turns out, what’s happening In the mouth, along the way, After more and more Reflection on the back of the Throat of our own species, over The months, after just A few years, things Flex inward, and, whatever Happens, it’s what’s happening in the mouth: The slack-jawed gaping, all Arches and angles become Opposite, and over the Crooked lot, during one Of the world’s cavities, The flabby tissues become loose Only for the sake of breathing.

Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Tomorrow Estera Ulrich-Oltean, Newnham Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow Walking, sleeping, eating, sorrow Working, rhythms, going through the motions, Sand through a glass we seek to borrow Endless drudgery scrapes us hollow. Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow Monotonies lengthen day after day And some day soon we know we’ll pay For the hours we stole from the rest of our lives To get that task done any way And pray we’d never rue the day. Someone pressed pause on all of our lives But the clock kept ticking We strive to be the person who strives But there’s something missing We want to be the person who thrives But we’re not admitting That we are loathe to sacrifice our daily deaths Fading from the Earth one cell at a time Because they’re familiar, comfortable, well-known breaths Though we’ve lost the reason, lost the... Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow And tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow Until tomorrow and tomorrow Fades away

And we are left with our last Today

my cloud Anna Chandler de Waal, Trinity Hall I caught a cloud and trapped it in a white silk pouch kept it crying at my breast. cried with it, once. it died on the third daysank like a stone in water stole across the skin. a sodden heart by the fifth day. all the way through, soaked to the bone. on the tenth day I could see the sky through my handthe shadow of the vein. on the eleventh day my voice went. on the twelfth day I walked right out of the house right out of the city out to the edge of the world. lay down in the river and went to sleep. didn’t dream.

The Country Road Emily Naden, Peterhouse I have witnessed the workings of Nature, The beauty of the world around, In the time that I’ve been gifted, To be lost in the sight and sound. The bright bloom of flowers, Pollen floating in the air, A varied orchestra of insects and calves under their mother’s care. How time always slowed, Along that country road. Avoiding the delicate shoots, As they first opened their eyes, Then marvelling at their stature, As they soon stretched towards the skies. Crisp crunching underfoot, The ground running out of tears, Light glinting off the parched lakes, During the months when the sun appears. How time always slowed, Along that country road An ocean of luscious green, Covering the vast expanse of hills, Heat prickling on my skin, As sweat on my forehead spills. 21

But this vibrance is not to last, For Winter must have its turn, All that was taken for granted, The mighty cold did spurn. How time always slowed, Along that country road Cotton clawing and scratching, Wrapped up in a tight cocoon, Stark branches of writhing snakes, The wind singing a hateful tune. Drowning in muddy pools, Falling in chasms of leaves, Life has left the fields, All sound snatched by thieves. How time always slowed, Along that country road Icicles as fingers, Shivering and shaking, But still I trundled on, For no rules was this breaking. Bare, barren and black, Where has the sun been stowed? Disguised by the frozen frolics? Or beneath the stream that once flowed? How time always slowed, Along that country road 22

The land gradually thawed, Familiar faces returned, The sheep cried their welcomes, Hardship was finally adjourned. The road ahead now seems clearer, Trees line the golden path, Darkness is slowly receding, We have overcome its wrath. How time always slowed, When every day I strode Along my country road.

Pumpkin soup Trinity Gough, Jesus The pumpkin sits, alone at last Cooling wax, burned out, Carving completed, purpose passed But this too, we must doubt. The stalk caves in, sage green, and then Its face begins to droop. Pumpkin's life has reached its end, It's time for pumpkin soup!

CN - illness

Day 356 Oona Lagercrantz, Fitzwilliam I thought it was a sigh or two of life not of death so it never crossed my mind that I wouldn’t make it through. And only much later on did I come to stop and wonder why I was empty, I was choking on air long gone. So it was studied, it was seen but no one told me why the numbers were too high and low on the screen of the machine. Insufficient, it was written down right hard accepting that it was me, of them all who’d been struck, who’d been bitten. It’s easy to cry over all that wasn’t over all that could have been different, have been I. Am still miles from where I was but I know I’ll come back, oh I swear to God 25

I will.

The Absurd and Lyrical Tale of Bertram Swan (esquire) anon, Peterhouse Sitting by the water, I think I must have caught a sight of a creature, swimming up to say, ‘adieu’ before I went away. ‘Sir!’, said he, the Swan, I mean, ‘Could I trespass upon your care?’ ‘A little grass, to help night pass; the riverbed is bare.’ This request I’d not ignore – I’d ne’er heard a swan converse before! ‘My dear man’, said I unto the beast, ‘I wish, for you, I had a richer feast…’ So I picked as many blades as I was able, ‘Here’s some grass enough to fill your table.’ ‘Sir!’, said he, ‘how kind you are!’ ‘I’m so glad to find you hear me.’ ‘Why yes’, said I, ‘I shan’t deny, I perceive your voice quite clearly!’ As he nibbled on grass, To help the time pass, We chatted; our spirits quite festive. And then this gentleman swan, While taking out a tall glass – 26

Some grain and some wine was suggested! ‘Wine!’, I cried, ‘wine indeed!’ ‘The avian suggests some wine!’ In all my years I’ve never known, a bird to sample from the vine! But it’s not as strange as we tend to think, His uncle, Joseph Swan (the tenth), Wouldn’t dare impose a march’s length, Upon his men, without a drink. ‘A march?’ ‘Of course!’ ‘To where?’ ‘To the North!, for the cause of exploration!’ ‘Lord Joseph Swan, great swimmer he was, Mapped out every nook of the nation!’ From Groats to the End, Lord Joseph would fend, Off the peacocks and devilish owls, To make sure the way for the Paddleboatmen, Was quite clear for their sailing around. With water hence calm, from the Tyne to the Dee, From under did rise Her Majesty’s Navy! And so, with our lineage, and the Crown’s full belief, Swans continue their service – Consultants-in-Chief! ‘We watch o’er the rivers, quite as far as they run, And we toast to our hero, Lord Joseph the Swan! And so us swans tend, when we dine with a friend, 27

To have wine to (quite modestly) sip on.’ And thus we did dine, all while afloat, On delectable wine, and porridge oats. ‘Til ‘pon his wing, Bertram Swan raised in toast: ‘To Uncle Joseph!.. As tremendous a creature as any nephew could boast.’ When midnight came, I made to leave, My newfound tame companion. And I attest, that no happier dinner-guest, Than I, that eve, one could ever conceive.

Little death Dominique Pila, Fitzwilliam She cries till her tears turn to threads and touch the ground, till hungry spiders weave them into webs then web-cities to catch flies, the girl with flies tangled in her hair is missing you, and she blooms dark flowers on her neck, has to insist they are not love-bites or any other disease, or even wounds but when they bloom she says, it means a man held her still in his dreams.

Requiem for Innocence Christian Yeo, Magdalene Foreign voices crumple together like clothes strewn in one corner. Metropole mess folds into itself, triumphalist tests thread on thread. (A ketupat,1 I would have said.) My creole crumble unearths repositories of colonial residue. We learn new languages in old concepts, barter a cacophony of stereotypes unfurling in delight. In Sevenwolves, the staff greet every Brit that walks in. Mockery whispers dislocation into the age-old question– Where are you from from? A decolonial aesthesis:2 ah ma3 calls her fish knife girl. Scales fall from the eyes: John and Martha inhale in dichotomies, exhale in taxonomies, choose new English 1

A type of dumpling (a part of Malay/Indonesian cuisine) formed from interwoven palm leaves. 2 From “Decolonial Aesthesis: From Singapore, To Cambridge, To Duke University” by Michelle K, a letter written to herself as part of a seminar on Decolonial Aesthetics. Her letter at one point referenced her discomfort in acclimatising to the arcane physical and linguistic vocabularies of Oxbridge, particularly the usage of a fish knife. 3 ‘Grandmother’ in colloquial Mandarin.

names when the phonetic Anglo-American tongue will not lilt around the names their mothers sang into being. My friend from Singapore tells me, the way to dignity is to swallow indignity: this is a tune written before our time. My hearts of darkness, my things that don’t fall apart, my loves: how will I tell my children, with weight, that unlike reptiles, we cannot shed our skin? In the end, the problem is not histories that get essentialised, continents that get brutalised, letters not really about fish knives. It is smooth tarmac subducted under cobblestoned streets, yellow fever buried under enameled white sheets, it is essays passing for poetry, relief like floodlights in a stadium when someone calls out: come here lah,4 and I think, yes, this is home, and yes, I’ve missed you so much leh.5 This must be what Thumboo wrote for: the small town in big city skin, writing poems in the ink of freedom. 4

A frequently used part of ‘Singlish’, a postcolonial creole that serves as lingua franca in Singapore. 5 As above.

Train Grace Copeland, Jesus Useless machine, Old, A blur of warnings, Twenty-two, Looked twenty-nine. He became sleep, Mind and body Learned everything of darkness. Pushing twenty-five, He grew. His laterite feet began to count Each step he took (One, two, three) Through jagged darkness and The warm stones, (Nineteen, twenty, twenty-one). The sky hovered Rock high above air And the glutinous smell of rain on the rose Floated Up to each swimming cloud. Suddenly, he knew where he was going. Her body was his school, Her skin the first lesson A poem about the road to the gate: Instructions that informed him To wake from underwater 33

To a man’s voice, Impossibly young His; Drawing lines in the dense air, Driving down the clear road To another world Through a starless smudge of rain.

PAN’S LABYRINTH (Original Title: El Laberinto Del Fauno) William Hu, Peterhouse When I was twelve, I watched a film I shouldn’t have, slipped it through the gaps between the fingers on my eyes. It was a fairytale - there was milk, and there was blood. And there was a man whose body was mossy stone, whose hair was sodden branches, who lied and frightened and commanded, and guided a girl to heaven. I drip-fed myself on his mythology. [Syrinx, I] Hark! / Hear the goat man come. / Let not his lustful eyes fall on your face, For he will desire you / And he will fill Your footsteps with his tongue, / A god, / Become a slave to your touch. I’d always had dreams where I was running away, and I’d wake up steamed in my sheets, soft and red and ready to eat. Then I trained myself to stay asleep. To let myself be caught. The monster would be warm and his hands would be hard, so steady and sure as he reshaped my body. [Syrinx, II] Hide yourself, sweet nymph. / Surrender To the wind. / Become nothing / And he Will not have you. / If you leave but a rib By the serpent river, he will claim What Adam lost, / And make you an instrument To the charms of his mouth. The fantasy approached. I broke my breath into daggered rations, and gripped my palms until they were moons, pale and quiet in the night. Left my closet 35

door open for him to come into my room. I writhed underneath him like a worm on a hook. God. Saviour. Goat man. He left in the morning like all shadows do. [Pitys, I] Walk now, through the forest, as your sisters did Before you. / Dance so that your feet do not grow roots, / And hold your tears, lest you water the branches Ready to burst from your cheeks. / Sleep not in the softness Of fallen leaves, / Heed not the waning Echo of Pan’s song. / The crusted treebarks of Wasted nymphs listen / Alone among the woods. Then I’m in a library, a girl is growing dust beside me and the lights are drowned in mothwing and the windows are mottled like dogeared pages and old Plutarch drones a tired line: The Great God Pan is dead. He is the only god who dies. Then I’m at home watching a rerun film, the joke has gotten old and the director says: This is a faun. This is a faun. Who is Pan?

Untitled Rishi Sharma, Peterhouse sometimes i like to go and listen alone among the woods. maybe here i can begin the work of knowing – i caress my face, and look at those coiling vines which suffocate the peach trees, gaze at the rose-coloured sky in the midmorning – and sit in a moored canoe on the silent river, its path shrouded in blue fog. it’s astonishing, really – every evening, the woods are drenched in blood and unhappiness by the sun, but the peaches are so big and full and heavy on the boughs; the young trees so pink with blossom, so whole. i envy their stillness, their lush pinkness, their laden arms – they hurt me. maybe, if i sit still enough, i’ll be turned into a beautiful peach tree, like them. that’s all i want. or maybe, this time, i’ll gently push the old canoe and enter the mist, the mist – hanging like a soft curtain.

My Parents (and Myself) Francesca Weekes, Girton It took from each one of us so much time – the painting – and you, already vastly aged, joked that I was wasting you in your prime. I couldn’t tell you how carefully I’d staged those childish tulips, the books, had you still yourselves until you tugged at your hair – silvered a little – in a pantomime of despair, and I between you, pale-haired, inscrutable, Unable, as you crossed and uncrossed your skittish legs, or tapped your toes, to say, “Yes, that’s it, you’re doing well.” And so I put you aside awhile, lost, until just after tea one spring-like day, Dad bent over his paper, you watching me carefully, when I found I could make it work, us three.

Afterword The curation and creation of this anthology has been an absolute privilege – It’s not often you get the chance to create your own poetry society, and it’s less often the chance to anthologise some of the best young work from that group of vivacious poets you now can call friends. This is the start of many, Blackbirds. Many thanks to all who have contributed, and in particular to Olga Okhotinskaya, Rishi Sharma, Maddi Jackson and Zoe Smith. (and Beth Chapman.) -KW

‘Will the hive survive, will the gladiolas Succeed in banking their fires To enter another year? What will they taste of, the Christmas roses? The bees are flying. They taste the spring.’ Sylvia Plath, Wintering