I am a writer. I am the daughter of a writer.

It is a powerful set of memories. My mum writing. My mum’s music. My mum buying A4 pads and packs of black Bic biros at the supermarket. My mum’s writing taking up boxes at a time.

There is a lot to be said of American confidence in talent. It you run, or play basketball or football at high school, then you’re an athlete. If you go to University and major in physics, you’re a scientist. You do a thing, you are the thing (within the boundaries of training and qualifications, of course).

I am a writer*. I write poems. I have done for a long time. The blue notebook in the photo is the one that has been with me since 1995 (on page three, I have written a tennis result that I would have read in the newspaper while on summer holiday in France where I bought the notebook. I have just looked up the tennis result, and it is Andre Agassi’s third round result in the Canadian Open 1995). I remember buying the notebook; my cousin, J, bought one at the same time. I bought it because I was writing my random, passionate, teenage thoughts on pieces of A4 paper that were getting tatty. I put my love of stationery and summer holidays in France to greatest impact. I had a notebook.

I kept writing in this book throughout school, through sixth form, and university. I’ve just read through it for the first time in a long time. It has some poetry, interspersed with real life – phone numbers and first email addresses of my school friends once we’d arrived at uni; shopping lists during sixth form, which are still pretty sensible with one notable exception (sunglasses, A4 pad, blank cassettes (I was big into making mix tapes), draw out cash), information on A level exams, the list of my GCSE results that my mum gave me over the phone. It has references to albums I had bought, poetry that I had read, plays and events I had been to in France during various summer holidays (Molière performed on stilts as a perambulatory play; a string quartet in the local church (for which I still have the CD)).

And it has poetry. Some, not bad. I read a poem to my first year room mate at Uni, who kindly said it was really good.

The notebooks I have kept since have pages full of information and notes from museums and art galleries for years and years. The next one chronologically started in 2011, with a trip to Rouen with the same cousin, J. It is mostly a notebook of holidays and journeys to start with: our first trip to Bruges, meeting my friend, Pixie, in Banbury, for the first of our “meeting in the middle” weekends; fast forward a few years and it’s the time I was in Paris and bought French Open tickets and saw Andy Murray play, and I start writing things down in museums.

In the back of the book, some more writing. And the same for each notebook. Sometimes at work, I’ve written a poem or some thoughts down, and the pages have made their way in to the loose leaf folder.

So, why tell you this? It’s because I’ve written up some of the poems, and I’m just going to put them here. They will be over a few posts. I welcome comments.

* The footnote to I am a writer, is that, I am a writer – I am not a published author. See, boundaries between training and qualification!

Footbridge

Footbridge. 

Standing over grey.

Grey water, grey sky.

Grey concrete.

A light heart; a cracking voice.

Moved to tears;

Tears that ache; tears of…

Tears of my soul.

A touching hand; a hopeful voice.

Loved from afar;

Loving him; loving a memory;

Loving a victory over fear.

A fast pace; a melancholy voice.

Grateful.  Hopeful she will win.

Hope for the future; strength from the past.

Hope for her.

A high heart.  A light voice.

There was a strange breeze

There was a strange breeze that night.

A breeze like a sea breeze,

That played gentle, caressing games with her hair.

That cascaded around branches.

That didn’t disturb, but compromised.

Her mood filled the atmosphere that night.

And atmosphere of remembrance,

Of days past fondly long ago,

Of the hopes of yesterday

Of the dreams she has now laid to rest.

Restless but calm, she took in the sounds

That she needed to hear.

The sounds that stripped her down.

The sounds that made her be.

The sounds that explained (her) far more than she could.

That night had a breeze, which embraced,

And endured,

And inspired.

That night had a breeze,

And took a girl,

And made sure she fell the right way.