History of this House
Š 2015 expresseum poetics press www.expresseumpoetics.org.uk
Authors retain sole copyright of their individual poems.
The poems in this pamphlet were created from a poetry workshop at Newarke Houses Museum. This was part of the Three Houses Dreamed series of poetry workshops facilitated by Mark Goodwin in 2014. Three Houses Dreamed was a Writing East Midlands’ Write Here Residency.
Funded by: Writing East Midlands, Museum Development East Midlands & expresseum poetics
Dreams of Yesteryear Sitting here, waiting, watching The evening light enfolds me. Cold, no embers burning The coal box stands empty now. Only the monotonous tick Of the clock on the mantelpiece Breaks the silence As I dream of yesteryear In a house once so full of laughter And the shrieks and screams of children: Stone steps, cobwebs, a candle for light, In the cellar we played, Hid behind the oak barrels. The bright beam of the evening light Beckons me beyond the great window frame To a wedding day so long ago Friends and family on the lawn Merrymaking on a warm summer's day. But where is she now? Not in the photographs Which capture only moments Of days filled with happiness, But in my heart Where her spirit abides. No more Bonds, no more Heyricks, I alone, the sole inheritor.
Angela Bailey
attic wall of swords and a halberd
hope of a space resonant of Miss Havisham
but a boxed Tilley pressure paraffin iron made in Hendon. A Goblin Tea’s-Made Goblin vacuum cleaner a pink chemist’s pot of unc:sulph delicious !
a companion piece to Man Ray’s cadeau one wooden mangle roller heavy duty stapled random sizes automaton nicolodeon Chopin nocturne for the wood worm unlidded a two quart jar green tinged embossed as poisonous no place for apparitions or Rochester’s mad wife
John Kitchen
Attic Concealed and concealing Revealed and revealing every cautious step the years is swiftly backwards peeling Carpet cleaners catch time’s vacuum Housemaids Housekeepers Bootboys Valets Scullery maids ladies maids All long since shed their tears imprisoned by genteel facades tickless clocks turn their faces away as we stand we too think back the years and the house behind the glass decays
Sheila Sharpe
book priest holes false panels Jacobean oak room as sham a bulge of fat paper figuring reconfiguring secrets black bound a book strapped captured words seditious phrases that must not escape D N A of ghosts make up the narratives
John Kitchen
Old Streets? Old streets were never this perfect Ill shod shoes never trod as easily never swift slid over foot jarring cobbles a hardware shop has four white teapots and six pastel-shaded chamber pots but pristine baskets and gleamingly galvanised pails betray its ambience the only honest remembrance of those “good old days� is a pawnbrokers where discarded pristine white gloves lie erstwhile applauders of accordion forever silenced
Sheila Sharpe
Newarke Fragments 1. Dulled Sevastopol cannons slumber among wide-open red and orange marigolds. 2. Oppressive wood: panels, cradle, high-chair without restraints at the Bible end of the table. Here, Heyricks became Herricks. Admire the portrait of a young girl, discover it’s a young boy then notice the dog in the corner. 3. Inside the back room of Skeffington House looking at the outside of the past where two men lean, an implicit swagger as they frame the central arched doorway. Yards to their right, neither in nor out of the floor-to-ceiling sash windows, two women sit, between them a small child. Side-lined, marginalised, on the edge. 4. Attic shelves of history – labelled and stacked. Behind the racks, a row of grandfather clocks. A dolls’ house frozen in time behind glass, another boarded up against squatters.
Karen Powell
The Dying House I feel sorry for this house Do not touch Private Do not enter Creating history upon history But not its history Not what happened here Urban traffic pervaded my mind yet I could not stop the pull Of the eyes Of the house Willing me to explore to really look Beyond the convenience packaged history Of displays, voices and the written word I feel sorry for this house Empty of the objects it loved Objects and people that made the history of this house Now full of a jumble of mismatched history Its grief felt in dark corners and locked rooms I feel sorry for this house Well the poets are in tonight Poetic pickings from what ? Will they feel the pull of the soul of this house as it dies Yet cries out For people to feel To see to really see What this house Was before the Day it went away
Kay Snowdon
Skeffington’s Daughter This house doesn’t forget death, death that sneaked under gates, round doors, dragged through dust, dungeon-dark, stair-high, run ragged as gutter rats, singing its songs, strange songs of the ghetto, of another age, seeking truth, reason. Reasons? None. A shout the harness tension No! shut in red fog fade out gone
Sally Jack
Note: The Scavenger’s Daughter (or Skevington’s Daughter) was an instrument of torture devised during the reign of Henry VIII. Its inventor was Sir Leonard Skeffington, half-brother of Sir Thomas Skeffington who built Skeffington House around 1583. The Scavenger’s Daughter was an A-framed metal rack to which the head, hands and legs were strapped, swinging the head down and forcing the knees up into a sitting position to compress the body - the opposite effect to the rack.
The Black Jack is empty the black jack is empty of all but the anger i spat when they came with their bibles and rant trying with fancy words to persuade me to listen but there was no substance all, merely endless cant they sat with their eyes upcast and watchful but wary their lips downturned their fingers piously entwined, but still in the muscles of brow and cheek and their upcast eyes the hypocrisy burned rich in pseudo mightiness wielding a power that i, of poor stature could neither defy nor deny the black jack was emptied ‘ere my anger was vented the black jack was emptied and the drinker then was I
Sheila Sharpe
Boy Of the Herrick Family He toys with thin ribbon, teasing long nosed hound of indeterminate breed slight furring of upper lip speaking eloquently of the man he might once have become his gaze inscrutable, he watches the years draw the claustrophobic city’s cloak still closer
Sheila Sharpe
Initials R.W. Circa 1500 who was this Roger Wyggeston? Was he a Gentleman – a Knight? whose gleaming glass panels exude such lullingly lemon light?
Sheila Sharpe
The swans on the stairs Swans in petrified parry of wings upward fly from wrought iron rail Gilded in nought save appearance Beaks gaping bodies and half raised wings twisting as if threatened and threatening antagonised and antagonising The staircase transformed into treacherous territory Bordered by black bristling reed from which Cob strikes and Pen writes a haunting nightmare of pure pale terror
Sheila Sharpe
This Staircase This staircase Once saw....... Entrances Departures Christenings Comings of age Nuptial celebrations Beginnings and Burials The rounding out of lives Stairtreads trampled By boots shoes sandals slippers socks Whispering of christening robes, bridal gowns frock coats, and endless widows in long black frocks
Sheila Sharpe
Cannon The 17th Leicestershire Regiment of Foot captured these cannons at Sevastopol do not climb upon them or they may fire an imagination that will blow away this contradictory mansion
Sheila Sharpe
museum beyond the distorting glass plain city darkening golden rod sun dial fade siren intrusions as World War 1 plays out behind the draper’s shop round the corner Kampala Jacobean oak Daniel Lambert stopped clocks hide up in the attic time re arranged
John Kitchen
Contradictions thieves beware! - an invisible deterrent has been applied please do not climb on the cannons although blinds are coy eyelids for ever watchful windows and the dreamed of and dreaming separate and shielding facade is secure and sleeping behind the beast studded door a single light still deters gravel flinches beneath furtive feet metal s’s cling to stone above our heads warning sshhssshhh.. leaves that will never decay encircle the lamp standards our guide orders step up - come into the garden but now a gateway fronting pocked stone wall bars the way to nowhere come into the garden - again comes the order come into the garden - dutifully we obey but now we are truly confined arching branches bear down upon us gravel bites back birds sing dirges traffic hums sinister psalms decades tread beneath our fumbling feet guide locks the gate behind us a short-stemmed ‘y’ of beaten grass entices but I will not - I dare not - trespass further
Sheila Sharpe
garden an overlook of pale warm stone pitted holed gently weathered medieval to serious composters breeze block bunkers for pruned tidied controlled layered heat & new soil cut down castaway artemesia still silver a savage scent gets past my snot drip summer cold
John Kitchen
Order and Chaos The outside world seeps through gun loops squeezes between black bars of Quenby Gates into the garden – lines of orange and purple radiate from the sundial. Betrayal lies in wait beyond unruly jasmine buddleia healing scars of centuries ficus carica reaches towards the Judas tree nineteenth century racecourse posts mark the distance to decaying apples.
Karen Powell
Autumn Proud Rupert’s Gate, crumbling now, still guards the empty castle in the Old Town. Ivy skirts the North Wall, past spilled fruit guts, sick-sweet, fermenting where they fell. I watch a spider string strands of silver wire on bent arms of lemon balm, gone to seed, and strain to catch a round of children’s chatter; two of them, I think, laughing, oblivious and out of reach.
Sally Jack
Come into the garden....? Come into the garden the trees are conspiring in whispers step carefully although gravel will crunch Up there in the Judas tree the shade of the royalist spy will not hear you pass him by the medlar’s juice will not spill and betray your sandaled feet but - careful now - and ....... please lock the gate behind you
Sheila Sharpe
Medlar Late August, Early September my time my fruit of wood and old cook’s knowhow. Who’ll do the bletting these days ? Who’ll make the curds, the cheeses, the leathers ? “What’s that ?” they ask, these city dwellers. Already my fruit’s turned brown, too far gone it’ll rot and drop drop and rot drop ….
John Kitchen
The Judas Amid twisted limbs of branches My mind’s eye sees another limb Booted as a Black Jack Foot twitching imperceptibly I feel his stare Hear his sharp intake of breath But his presence I will not betray No matter what cause may be inherited or inherent There in the Judas Tree
Sheila Sharpe