Welcome to 3rd London Poetry Festival 2007
Welcome to
Tricia Peak's Page
Poet in Residence @ 3rd London Poetry Festival 2007: August 10, 11, 12, 13
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I NEVER
SEE THE TIDE COME IN
I never see the tide come in.
I have seen the sun moving
Across my page,
And the moon edging past
The winter branches of the apple tree.
But I never see the tide come in.
I never see the
water rise.
Sometimes we ride above the quay,
And I see the city lights
Across the water.
Sometimes we are at sea
On mud meadows
Where the seagulls browse.
But I never see the water rise.
I never see the
mud flats grow.
I have sat and built forts.
My children too, marooned to wait
While waves win back the beach,
Ballgames played on hard-packed sand,
Until the sea drives us to the rocks.
But I never see the mud flats grow.
I never see the
tide go out.
I see the curlews stalking on the mud,
The screech of herring gulls.
My children dig for rag worms.
Seaweed rots and smells.
A small yacht tilts and lies along the sand.
But I never see the tide go out.
What Tricia Wrote About Her Writing
I
was born under wide Australian skies, at the poetically named Moss Vale.
Sky, clouds and lights have always been a major source of poetic inspiration
for me. My fairly isolated but peaceful suburban childhood included a house
full of music and books – when I wasn’t up a tree. I lived intensely in
this narrow world, revelling in the garden birds, the little details of
life, the beauty of sunsets over the Blue Mountains visible from our house.
The biggest gift of my childhood was learning to mine the riches of my own
mind and of everyday trivia, a perpetual feast for a budding poet.
Educationally,
I went to Penrith High School, a parochial coeducational state school,
followed by Sydney University and an arts degree with a major in English.
Unfortunately tertiary level creative writing wasn’t an option in those
days. Or maybe it can’t be taught!
I
first started to write poetry when I was 10. My private life revolved round
writing to penfriends and contributing to the ABC’s “Children’s
Hour” radio programme. At 17, I not only discovered Sex, but the few
people to whom I showed my poetry sneered at me. “Oh yes, adolescent
poetry! You’ll burn out and stop writing when you grow up!” They mocked
the Freudian images they knew I didn’t understand. I was made to feel naïve
and stupid. It seemed I needed to experience life before I could qualify as
a poet! I was so dashed by these words, that it was twenty years before I
came back to writing poetry again and even longer before I once again
started to share my poems. The odd thing, however, was that, in my own head,
in my lowest moments, my perception of myself as a poet was that defining
something which made me special and raised me out of the doldrums. I still
wrote, just not much poetry, apart from making up songs and verses for my
toddler children.
My
adult poetry life blossomed back into life in 1987, when I moved, with my
husband and two children, onto a sailing boat. By now, I knew I was more
qualified to write about the noise, nerves and happiness of life, Subsequent
travels, often in Third World countries, turned me into a true global child.
Somehow or other I ended up in Key West, separated but with both kids to
support. There followed an interesting array of jobs
including taxi driving. I
came out of the closet with my poetry, getting involved with the Key West
Poetry Guild and a supportive network of fellow writers. Above all, I wrote.
Poetry, fantasy fiction and travel writing.
Back in England, a struggling freelance writer, I’m working on a
cross-channel ferry.
PILGRIM ON THE ROAD TO SANTIAGO
They're just there!
We rarely use them to bear
Us long miles like the people of yesteryear.
We just peer at our extremities from time to time,
And fit them with trendy and expensive geer.
They steer us towards bus stops
Or parked cars, they peck accelerators
For hours on end, always ready to perform.
They're just there.
I could write about the
arm-opening breath-releasing space,
The lungsful of dust scents and resin, cow muck and lavendar.
I could write of an Irachi fountain running red with wine not water.
Baked barrel tiles loud above the ochre-smudged three-foot thick walls,
Fields of sunflowers all facing East at dawn,
And evening sun rays illuminating apostles in a neck-cricking fastness of
a church.
But I write about feet.
They're just there.
At most we towel them dry and powder them,
Force them into shoes and forget them.
We don't let them carry us far,
We avoid the rain which will wet them,
Anything which will make us regret them,
We bemoan blisters, veruccas, corns,
The things which get them in a state.
Complain if they make us late.
There are donkeys and cockerels
and textured stubble fields dry with autumn,
And the plains of Spain where rain isn't falling.
Often I'm stalked by amorous flies and spy finches on teasel heads.
Blue chickory flowers, storks on church towers, burning-off fields like
houses on fire,
Behold the polished stones of Roman roads with carefully-packed enduring
surfaces.
But it's the interface between the the road and my legs which matters
most.
And so I write about feet.
Walking on the long road to
Santiago.
They're just there, like hair on young men,
Though old men are aware of what they've lost.
Muscles, tendons, the parts which bear
My suffering body let me know they're there.
And so I write of feet.
The night in the day
It was dark and bewildering,
this grey sky of rain,
Like the simplicity of something primitive.
Then it became a layered sheet of water colours
That has begun to move, and become a changing turmoil:
A water-colour painting that has deceived its creator,
And wrung from these late autumn days
The tears of vengeance that were once the artist's medium.
You would think it was a premature night time
That had seeped from the pits of winter
And spread and boiled and changed into something formelss.
It was the night in the day, the day's night,
Which changes into mauve and purple and indigo,
And which settles starless into the waste expanses of the real night.
TAXI ENCOUNTER
He was big.
He was fat.
He was bald.
A man accustomed to getting his own way.
He'd refused the van dispatched
to pick him up. Too high, he said,
though at the end of the ride
he would ascend a long flight of steps.
So I was sent,
in my pink Chevy Lumina,
unsuspecting that this old lunk of a man
would command me,
Take my stick!
Take my bag!
Wind the window down!
What did you do with my bag?
as if I'd stolen it or left it behind.
I wished I had.
His legs were swollen,
what I could see of his ankles and feet
like overcooked purple chickens.
He moved painfully,
slowly,
and I,
scraping for pennies on this slow day,
was torn between irritation at being treated
like a mangy dog and pity for his infirmity,
knowing in my gut that this was going to be
a not-much-remuneration-and-lots-of-patience type run.
Guilt flickered: the ills of humanity cannot be price-tagged.
As we rode, I tried to make
conversation,
knowing most old people are pleased to talk,
pleased if you're friendly.
He pretended to be deaf.
We arrived at his destination,
a large private hotel.
I went to open his door.
Sure enough, a five-minute fumble,
and he didn't have enough money,
only eight dollars for a ten dollar ride.
Then he asked if he could lever
himself
on my arm to extract his pulpy body.
Something in me shuttered closed:
how disgusting he was
and I didn't want
him to touch me,
how this man would be
capable of sueing if he fell, how
taxi drivers shouldn't have to do this,
he needed a nurse.
I said, mildly enough,
I'm not social services you know.
You're a bitch,
he spat at me.
Never come here again!
Then I knew who he was,
one of the richest men in town,
knew by reputation that when younger
he'd preyed on women, knew that
had I been a man
this would have happened differently
I'm going to call your
supervisor
and tell them never to send you here again.
There was I
holding his stick and bag
offering them mutely, beseechingly,
knowing he had no right to abuse me,
knowing underpaid I had the moral upper hand.
Come and get your money.
He gestured up the steps.
I wanted to curse him,
whack him round the head
with his stick.
Never mind the money.
Just never mind.
A taxi driver bursting into tears,
relieved to drive away.
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SKYLIGHT
GOD
I see people walking through skylight clouds.
I am a God, superimposing the layers of existence,
Not including myself, the lofty watcher in the sky.
My hair blows
and the engines pulse,
That serious heavy ferry thrust
Through Channel water rushings.
Oh, the pushing,
pulling, pulsing of the tides:
From nine floors up, the devastating waves
are trivial, almost to be mocked, discarded
not like the
same waves from the cockpit
of a twenty-two foot boat, labouring through
confused seas, fighting implacable giants.
From nine floors
up France passes in a dream,
The Blanc Nez beach hammered radiant silver,
The sky luminescent gold pulsing copper
I'm blinded by
the light, the sky, the sun,
Dazzled by the daylight deity, the delight
of it all, exhilarated by the freedom of air.
A single seagull
hangs above the smokestack,
A single seagull, wings motionless
in some ecstatic ferry-fashioned thermal
Oh, that I too
could ride the wind
Or could be a dolphin in the bow wave
Or a God, Aeolus, driving the breeze,
Being a voyeur,
unseen, unsuspected,
Watching people walking through skylight clouds.
Superimposing the layers of existence.
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