Wednesday

My article about Edith Sitwell appeared in Poetry News: http://www.poetrysociety.org.uk/content/publications/poetrynews/pn2011/

And Coastival is approaching (http://www.coastival.com/). Some of Edith's most famous poems - Façade - are my least favourite, though they were innovative for their time and surely the fore-runner of today's rap.

My tribute comes in this poem:

Childhood 1
Old Sir Faulk,
unintentionally,
misplaced his wife.
Mollie and Gladys,
little shadows in mourning weeds,
wept their loss at high tea,
- even the chittering song birds knew to chitter no more.
Lady Faulk, lost, gone, for now and for ever.

I imagined my own mother so disposed of
and asked, persistently.
But why, why, why did they cry?