House of Slept
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 Calke Abbey. 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
The horns of the first stag killed at Calke Park sprout from the wall towards bloody hunts embroidered by fair hands. Longhorn cattle roam the estate now, spot-stained like fabric fallen on a four-poster bed. A door-hinge, rusted in place, bumps and discolours the wallpaper that has covered it for over a century. Historic dust mixes with visitors’ dead skin cells on slivers of glass.
Pippa Hennessy
Snakes & Ladders Don’t tread On the cracks Or step On the lines These are the rules Long defined Up the stone hill Past python’s lair Gingerly take on Every stair Sword in hand Stomach in knots Invisible shield Held aloft Count every step Under breath Lest beast is wakened From slumber nest Don’t lose face Or you will fall Down the ladder Along the board Stroke the lucky Antlers smooth Cross my heart Hope not to die Let me look him In the eye A fine swift blow Did the deed Python chopped In half Made me reel Price of heroics Leaves a scar The beast is two Much worse by far! Tomorrow night Twice the serpent I must slay Life is so Unjust these days!
Susie Fletcher
The Bird Lobby Outside the rhythm of days a room without change where the pelican will never swallow the clasped fish, where the avocet will never nurture its young, and the eagle, wings spread, pauses on the edge of flight. Outside the rhythm of days a room without change, lined with embalmed moments, blinds drawn down in mourning to mark the fading of a single pulse of time.
Lucretia Luke
Bedchamber State room concentrated in the shine of a door knob what can physics tell us of the reflection of a shadow the shadow of a reflection glass corners and the Harry Worth stretch blinds leak daylight halogen trophies reflect themselves without end for ever and two small spectrums tremble on the floor no real state bed no shining trophies of silver laser projections holograms block the light all will cease
John Kitchen
Trophies Heads of three roe deer you killed and labelled, my first – rites of passage, notched above your bachelor bed. The mattress is a graveyard for lost heads and headless dolls. Your rutting antlers lie, spent beside a vixen’s wired snarl. From the shoreline shelved for private pleasure a rank-and-file cockle shell curls its lip.
Jayne Stanton
Ramble hoses are coiled on a wall in a room (little more than a cupboard) a terracotta head is open to view in a box (coffin?) I climb stairs - look vertiginously down upon chequered cap on a man’s head Fearing the gamekeeper’s return with brace of dead pheasants I count six panes in each of five window frames a single light illuminates another wall yet another grimy wall holds fifteen buckets sundry polished switches illuminate dark rooms night and day come and go ....decades come and go still his stamp is on this house a monopoly is claimed his and only his he drags us into his world until we are caught up in the conversation of estate the dialogue between earth and sky where clouds obscure the wind whispers but inside the house conversation is secretive close-mouthed confidential our lips are sealed
Sheila Sharpe
Eternal Love Captive by the vagaries Of your fluctuating moods I tire from your inconstant world Blowing hot, then cold Bending this way, then that Dappled light eludes my grasp Amorphous clouds exasperate As I chase the wisps of their coat-tails Birds and bees destroy the peace With inane chatter And distracting hum As for beasts who should know better Confounded squirrel abandons For a mere bauble or bagatelle Behold! The errant ways Of gambolling lambs With no respect for anyone Incessant babbling brooks Meander aimlessly Exuberant green shoots Sprout up at will With no regard For place or propriety Contrary blooms Snap shut their petals Bowing heads In false modesty Give me the obedience Of these four walls Where gaudy palettes are denied And life unwinds in muted sombre joy Let me revel in silence broken Only by familiar sounds permitted Floorboard creak And groan of pipe Squeak of hinge And chime of clock O, pretty deer! If only you Were stuffed and mounted As my faithful entourage remains No dewy nose Nor moistened lips Be preserved forever here In perfect parchment beauty with
Nature, you would much fairer be If only you succumbed No pecking order Nor food chain No hierarchy insane Leave unto me your worldly goods Love is ours for eternity!
Susie Fletcher
Taxidermy Love Lift the glass And I won’t leave Peel back my skin Yet I don’t bleed Disembowelled You made me whole Ravens pecked my eyes You helped me see I can’t move But you are paralysed Contained You hold me I am captured Yet you are captive I am resurrected You are broken
Susie Fletcher
Pet Canary When I die don’t stuff me, please Or place me limp-feathered, false-eyed, Gazing blankly from a glassy dome. Eternally exposed. Alone. Rather remember me as once I was. My thin, sweet song that gave you joy, My breast gold-glinting, when wings outstretched I circled round and roundabout your room To rest at last upon your finger And be returned to my gilt cage. You cared for me. So if you loved me, let me go. Remember me but rather take me out To where the sun can warm my back, the breeze riffle my feathers. Then cradle me gently between the roots Of the tree beyond your window where I so yearned to run its leaf-clad boughs. Invisible. Concealed. At home. And then, when those same leaves fall They will become my coverlet at last. When I die don’t stuff me. SET ME FREE!
Fiona Buxton
Wonderland - The scullery maid’s escape I’ve escaped out into the grounds where cowslips spread sunshine and primroses look like little lights twinkling the bluebells twinkle as well they look like little blue eyes trees reach out to me with arms akimbo, and white lilac dreams - like me - of late spring romance - but.....? are those gouges in the bark of that fallen tree the vindictive claw marks of vicious goblins is that a bird, with beak outthrust spellbound upon the leathery trunk attempting escape from the rough bark ceramics in the loamy clearing are the remnants of My Lady’s longing for a formal garden, a summerhouse now they’re just part of her broken dreams? a pale flower rears above marshy scrub it warns my too-soft shoed feet (they are already wet) look! there’s a tunnel could I shrink, slide, like Alice – in a blue dress just like mine! down into another world or should I summon the white rabbit (Cook says I look like a frightened rabbit) threaten him with the pot - order him down into darkness but what would he find? in a nearby clearing leaves sound like voices whispering just audible above the snap of twigs moss covered roots toss aside the mossy brown blanket of earth what sleeps below? the roots that reach up look like short sinewy arms look like dwarves imploring despairing longing for darker deeper caverns my feet crunch conker cases weathered into dusky leather they look like little coffins holding the Master’s aspirations of his own little empire ownership of everything under the sun he really, really tries you know each every acorn leaf each every beechmast decays decays decays weft and warp in the loom of life (Milady’s maid says I’m a bit silly headed With my fanciful sentences “Don’t get above your station my girl” she says each every tree seizes the day squeezes life from loamy woodland floor
a sprinkle of ruby centred whitely pristine petals look like confetti the hawthorn standing out there looks like a bride but the ivy clings is it conspiring with the Master wishing for snow, sand, anything to conceal his dwindling hopes of high estate that shrub over there is globuled with gray grapelike fruit inedibly, indelibly unappetising it looks like the eyeless skulls of small dead birds that the Master shoots they’re mourned by a gray tree – well she looks like a widow in a gray tangle of veil! from the corner of my eyes i see a burst of pink who is there? Are the young Misses in bright morning-gowns hiding amid those mourning firs? a jay dances from bough to bough a lone tree rears up in intimidation reminding me of a crocodile with its leathery skin all petrified like the one that Master brought back from his travels on the Nile inside the house I hear shouts it’s cook - red queen of the kitchens “where’s that girl? Did she really say “off with her head!?” She’s a Devil if ever I knew one Thank the Lord for a glimpse Of that arched window The church my sanctuary ? I’ll hide She’ll never think To come looking for me there
Sheila Sharpe
Pursued Pursued, we must hasten past the rainbowed glass and silver, overlooking echoes of queens and silks and promises. Reflections hover; spectres over pillows boast winnings in three way mirrors. Thoughts are scribbled and hearts race and I wonder - how do they dust the corners? Embroidery, vivid in unashamed reds and golds taunts the sun-killed rug from behind its glass and dead bugs pay tribute to an attack force still living. We turn to silhouettes beneath a thousand eyes, and make our way to broken chairs no longer for the rears of privilege. A holder of some kind – perhaps to keep a flame, destroyed by an iron kiss and passed each day, unnoticed. Do I dare rest my page on the ‘Do Not Touch’ notice to write of peeling walls and crafted doors and nails which tell of masterpieces remembered only by the lighter patch? I sit, among the carcasses of bluebottles to bathe in light; and smell the dark. I want to stay in this neglect yet move, across the mis-matched floor. where someone left the 78 by Parlaphone. What music would they dance to in this dream? So, Mr Crewe, what treasures did you keep locked up in scratched and dented boxes labelled ‘Bar’? I’ll leave you to your secrets.
Now the children hit me in the face, beneath the bulldog-clips that grasp the falling shrouds. A grate, where knuckles blackened, hints of warmth and lullabies. Fiona’s grandfather jumps out at the top of the stairs dressed in butler’s coat but is reluctant to tell his tale. Why do we whisper? Perhaps the echoes cannot be disturbed. The stretched-out tiger has no eyes to see this century cast secrets to the wind, the tourists pulling curtains back with cameras and analysis. ‘Come now, children. Put away the marbles and pick up the tea-set. I’ll finish my needlepoint and take you to your sleep.’ Who are you, in your starched white collar? I cannot know – we must move swiftly. An aching walk through an education, one foot, in front of another. ‘Dinner is served,’ in 1795, re-decorated in blue, crystal glasses wink at china, edged in gold. A dozen chairs for the occasion – but nowhere to sit. In the kitchen, my grandma’s plates fly at me but we go on, past jolly pigs with pottery stares and smell the polished boots in uniform lines. We are as one, this house and I – each, by Time, pursued.
Angela Foxwood
Cupboard – opened
chairs overturned cupboard doors open children’s clothes neatly folded miniature metal soldiers guard bottom shelf from intrusive fingers ....and too much curiosity
Sheila Sharpe
The oak bedroom The 7th Baronet married the maid Nanette and had nine children She was kept hidden away – not proper in those days No wonder there is such chaos Steps to climb into bed No television in those days I hear a visitor say !!! Toy soldiers and their box Clothes and parasols A bowing raven A dashing hare Pelicans Birds of prey Avocets
Steph Taylor
Nanette in the Oak Bedroom
stillness pregnant unborn waiting expectant listening words memories gone endings beginnings? resurrections distillations collections uncertainties nothing is set
House
What was your life? I am feathered words that whistle in the woods Shut away from men’s eyes, what were your thoughts? My whispering is the shape of rustling leaves I tread softly and roundly on carpets of needles Your story is a lattice of broken twigs I listen for the jackdaws that crow the creak of hinges on a swinging door A portrait is all we have, fragile, alabaster-pale My laddered stockings are derelict cobwebs So little recorded My truth decays, loses symmetry
in stone aspirations lie wrapped in thick shawls of nightmares lost forgotten hushed but still there always there in the cobweb Brushes
B r u s h e s soft hard l o n g short F A T will they sweep away the hoarded remnants the last dark dustmites of his dominion? the cobwebs of Crewe’s imagined empire?
thin
Nannette in the Oak Bedroom – Lucretia Luke House and Brushes – Sheila Sharpe Layout – Mark Goodwin
Calkewords Mr J H Crewe Bar Oceanus Procellarum Smisby unstately please do not preserve me shot by Silversword larvae the death watch of Parlophone Hudson’s dry Princess of Worms Welcome, in case of Lord vodka and Miss Crewe’s night moth soap for the Nelson Cigarette weevil bearing a Cabinet case of 1884 furniture watch please fire The Little Prince of Women her day nursery identification of the outlying translucent patches and the horns of the Yes Suh scratched Rhythm stag present woolly silk shoe makers bar Mr Crewe J H
John Kitchen
To a State Silk Bed i You lie, untouchable inside your glass cathedral. They have swept the stardust from your taffeta thighs. They have cleansed your milky skin of indigenous insects. They have temperature-controlled your dreams. They have blinded the light to keep you pretty. ii Your eyelids flicker as you snatch at the shirt tails of escaping dreams. Passion flowers are choking the blue in a thread-counted sky to lock away the light. The phoenix has fallen, its plumage, stitched too close to the Qilin’s fire. Fly, before they clip your wings, stifle your echoes and sell your stories.
Jayne Stanton
A Semblance of Importance Bed says, I don’t like to brag, but … with my blue and white Chinese silk emboldened with phoenix in flight, qilin in flames: I am stateliness, I am fertility, I am prosperity and opulence. I am longevity. Are you, the carpenter asks, or do you cling? You have been out of touch in a coma, Forgotten for centuries in a box. Bed says, I’ve been lifted out of slumber, reassembled. Shine the lights on me, shield me with Plexiglas, I must be preserved at full height, too precious to be held back by ceiling, dust, silverfish, carpet beetle. Memory is over-rated, the carpenter says, a map on which we dwell, while natural existence rots underneath. This is but a dream. Bed wakes to a room of silent brown and mustard chairs clustered for a meeting. ‘They’re not coming back’, one whispers. Bureau and Cot stare at shuttered windows, at mold gaining ground in the corner. Table, desk, rocking horse, commode piled in the center of the room, ready for a bonfire. No ambition.
Charles G Lauder, Jr
The Approach Lime trees slip past the gatekeepers. They steal up the avenue, drink from a deep well of secrets left by the sleepers.
Jayne Stanton
Head of Outlying Stag Killed By Me in Calke Park I lay me down in my young ster’s bed in memory dis membered in sleep in a memory in woods’ early morn mist in between trees – hazy shee ts it is me it is me be twixt it is mememe with my why wide deep brown stare some where in between dead & known a viv id stare liv id as light
caught in a stag’s snort ed breath my bed-linen’s pale mist clings to my bristly neck me I’m a young man with two bone trees sprout ing from my sore fore head some promise of growth given by some lost thirsty god bro ken by a 12 bore’s twines of blue smoke rising through dew glazed oak leaves so so it is
me me me who wets these faint sheets un der the tang led covers of my wild dreams
Mark Goodwin
hoarfrost blanket of cold, swollen river, tumblestones, quiet, quiet me against the drip and squelch, footsteps in dew, me in cold copse leaf crackle fresh breath smoke primal me shotgun macho first impact, flesh-tear, blood-spurt fall hot touch, stroke, feel the pelt, beautiful, more, crave more, recapture the swagger, the power, raise a toast, throat burn flask grog, my shot, my hit, bloodied, boot-on-it pose, on its death-fall, six pointer, venison alpha male, hunter, warrior, stalking, trigger squeezing, blast recoil, echo, echo, dead eye, yes, yes, again and more trophy mount, up wall high, display, achievement respect , brass plaque, pride of place, for posterity, shot by me, by me, see it, see
John Kitchen
Echo Image upon image Time taken away Mirror reflect Mirror Sees only itself Before and after
Mark Hall
The Bedroom Old dolls houses, rusty squeaky bed. Stags horns looking down Old pictures in frames ships from afar Box of old toys Easter egg cases faded Rows of cockle shells Wooden shutters, glimpses of light Light where it bursts through in quivers Mirrors reflect the decay.
Steph Taylor
Dust and dereliction The old man’s hands place this week’s newspapers carefully on a pile reaching towards stalactites of paper hanging from the ceiling. Dust motes eddy across the room. He edges round the bed frame picks up the photo of a bride smiles in remembrance, places it carefully back on its dust free slot on the mantelpiece. Carefully avoiding glazed eyes of long dead birds, tattered seat of broken chair. One last gaze at his stored treasures, he closes the door, sealing the space. Dust motes eddy unseen across the room.
Sheila Lockett
Listing 1. Named in Chinese Whispers, On browned and faded leaves, Words tumbled to the floor, On patterned Persian weaves, Treading wrongs up to the door. 2. Objects gathered, Ordered versions of a past, Un-named, legions line the route, Staring portraits on the stair, Suspended in decaying light, The future not a past. 3. Light creeps under the blind, folded Into pleats of darkness, Seared at its furthest edge, Weeping in the shadow 4. Light followed you, Made a halo from your curls, Crouched, It crept under greying blinds, Bleached, Its memory, bars our prisons. 5. A yellowing light pauses, In the moment between, Light and dark, An ember of endless silence
Mark Hall
Bypass I lost my heart To this great house Ashamed of misdemeanours And a tendency to be eager Still smarting From your leaving It’s stowed away from prying eyes ‘place unknown’ categorised I asked the gamekeeper, Cook and chamber maid Have you seen my heart? Til’ they tired of my refrain Have you checked your pockets? Is it on your sleeve? Have you checked your lists And inventories? I retraced my steps of A hundred years Looked for clues The whys and wheres This is absurd! Said left brain to right brain Take the logical approach You must have stored it under ‘h’! And then Doubt crept in With her theories It could be listed under Organs, pumps or curiosities What about mechanisms, Components or specimens? Oddities, miscellanea, cornucopia Animal, vegetable, mineral Or ‘Other’! You’re not helping, Doubt Asserts right brain Tending towards drama queen You’re both being ridiculous This is all in vain It’s plainly not filed anywhere It’s lost in hell without a spare!
A heated argument ensued I retreated to a darkened room And only when I had lost hope too It dawned on me How deeply I love you Nailed to the wall for all to see I pass my heart every day Unbeknownst to me
Susie Fletcher
Pass
gleaned from Bypass, by Susie Fletcher
heart house misdemeanours eager smarting leaving eyes categorised gamekeeper-maid-heart refrain pockets sleeve lists inventories of years’ clues where’s absurd brain approach ‘h’ in theories under curiosity’s mechanisms specimens’ cornucopia mineral ‘Other’ Doubt brain queen ridiculous vain anywhere spare ensued room when to me you see day me
Mark Goodwin
Watch Darkness hides in corners, Waiting to pounce, Freed by bodies, Whose gaze flashed, Your weakness.
Mark Hall
Waking Through a flicker of eyelids, a cloth nestles in seams of light densely embroidered with a different reality – qilin lit with dancing fire, lions prowling out of petals, a shimmer of women in silk. Trace them with your finger, mark them with rolled peacock feathers until the tendril of a thought grasps at existence, its blind tip nuzzling the mythology of truth, breathing on the glass between being and not. Don’t touch the dreams, don’t unpick the stitches to uncover flames that can’t consume, claws that cannot draw blood, hands that will never hold. Don’t touch the fabric of dreams or it will fall to dust, leaving a bed of dust.
Lucretia Luke
Ascending Slowly climbing the carpetless stone stairs, smooth grained wooden rail guides our steps, past bare cracked plaster, naked bulb. Metal spout of ancient fire hose pointing the way forward. ‘Don’t cross the threshold yet!’ We hover between layers of time.
Sheila Lockett
Invasion The woods are invading the house. Undergrowth is creeping through cracks in window-frames avenues of lime trees are marching through the front door a yew is spreading its shape through the foundations. Sweet chestnuts shade the rooms their leaves linking fingers to repel the rain. The sun is shaping trees from hall to nursery. The woods have entered the house. The roof is a branched canopy doors are elms swinging in the wind floors are pines creaking as we lean on their limbs panels are oaks rooted in the eyes of strangers. The house has turned inside out. Rocks collect in cabinets a fox stinks behind a preservation of glass badgers stripe the light birds perch on shelves. The deer are gathering, stags rut, their antlers inhabit the walls. Everywhere, in every room, sad eyes inspect us.
Lucretia Luke
The Dining Room Story of Dionysus Plaster work Bacchus Gloomy candlelight Hang the hunting clothes by the fire to dry Hot toddy after the hunt Charcoal embers.
Steph Taylor
Light and shade Cowslip clustered hillside leads us towards green scented wood. Hidden birds sing welcome. Arum lilies spear through leaves, lords and ladies leaping. Bark flakes and peals like ancient paint and paper, or shreds in lines like the tattered fabric of seats and screens. The house sits, encircled by hills.
Sheila Lockett