Hello Dear Reader, I hope your week has been one of bounteous beauty as Autumn at last welcomes itself into our lives. I've always wanted to be the type of person who candidly, on-brandedly embodies this season, but alas I think I'm far too capricious of a nature-lover to devote my heart to just one part of the year.
Autumn in itself contains multitudinal delights, however. Not least the promise of Cheltenham's literature festival, an event I was afforded the blessing of attending over the weekend. I experienced four different events during my two-day trip (one day off work *very* well taken there, if I do say so myself, and felt instilled with the inspiration to write over the whole weekend. As one of my favourite red-headed literary idols might have said of the weekend, it provided such great scope for the imagination. I could be found at many points through the weekend bent over a my little fabric-covered writing-book, blurring biro as I scribbled down poems and reflections upon the words and ideas I came across. So, in the spirit of documenting my Cheltenham experience, and adding to this virtual Writer's Scrapbook of musings (thank you Alex for placing that delicious notion into my brain!), I would like to share this short, scrappy, and completely self indulgence collection of poems with you. Pop on a seasonal candle and some Welsh lo-fi for your read, if you'd like. I hope you enjoy these poems- they contain my heart.
All my stars, Char x
1: The Rattly Man
Inspired by local gossip of an elderly man living alone across the road.
The Rattly Man in his Town House
Shakes through fingerless gloves.
Tight purple tips clutching the sides of a chipped coffee cup
grasping for warmth.
His pipe has already been smoked for the evening,
stray tobacco strands decorate the floor, peppered inbetween speckles of stubble.
He uses the mirror downstairs when shaving, lit by the fireplace.
This way he saves on topping up the meter again.
Loose hairs lay floor-bound,
Lightly salted with tears.
After his coffee turns cold with time and age,
all the warmth that ever was sucked out and sucked in, the man drains his mug dry.
He doesn't ever wash it out for company's sake.
He Has No Need For That.
So instead he simply leaves the mug on the sideboard,
marinating into its newest ring of limescale.
The sheer number of circular stains betray the solitude
of such a rattly existence.
- If an old man falls down the stairs in such an empty house,
does he make a sound?
Or do his cries echo ad infinitum
through the grand high-ceilinged corridors of this cavernous home?
---
The man is tired now.
Time for a rest.
But before he ascends the stairs to bed,
he must, as is tradition,
approach the mantlepiece.
There is an old tea-tin hidden behind the photo of a woman he once possibly loved.
He picks up his most precious possession,
shakes,
and is met with the satisfying rattle of metal-on-metal.
He gives one satisfied 'harumph'
as the man confirms his wealth again, like he does each evening.
Safe in this knowledge, the rattly man retires
to the same single bed he's slept in for years.
Children laugh at him, you know,
and the neighbours gossip
or tut
or slather worrying pity
thick and judgement-bound
chewing on unkind words like those caramels that last for hours
if you can control your saliva and sucking.
But he does not hear them,
so he does not care.
As darkness falls,
the man tumbles into his dreams.
Soft snoring rumbles echo into the night,
with nought but a star to see the rattly man.
Who in sleep looks far too young
to breathe such laboured breaths.
2: Four Things Written after I was questioned upon what I want out of my short life. Apparently they did a study once with students from Harvard and Yale (so you know it's a smart study) And found that apparently the thing which sets people apart is whether or not they make a list of life goals in their twenties. I would personally argue that the things setting each human's prospects apart extend much further than lists. Like money, or habitus. But not everyone agrees with Pierre Bourdieu. And it's not like I've got anything to lose here (given all the crap that's going on in the world). So here's my small-ish bucket, Big enough to carry just Four Things: Number One Publish a piece of art (once you're better at writing), because you don't want children, but still wish to create something good. Watch as my child-bearing hips are replaced by story-weaving fingertips. Number Two
Pass the ladder down,
because you've had to climb a decent way already.
And not everyone has your lower body strength and absolutely jacked calf muscles.
Number Three
Be kind to the:
a) Planet
because we owe it, and
b) Rest of the world,
because they macerate baby chicks if they're boys,
and every human has been hurt once.
None deserve maltreatment.
Number Four:
Find a new challenge every few years
because four things cannot stay solid over a lifetime,
And neither can I.
If you are Charlotte reading this in the future,
and cannot name a new challenge now that is different to the year before,
you should recalibrate your thoughts.
Because I refuse to become unadaptable,
Anti-understanding should never be welcome.
Well, those are four things.
Should I feel successful now?
3: Modern-Day Romantic Inspired by Karen Armstrong and her talk on Nature and Sacrality. I observed nature as through a screen: Paper-thin, Papi-thing. Yet now I know something more. Something neutrally, spectacularly sacred. I wondered for so long how to name god, and maybe the answer is: I can't. I shan't. shouldn't won't. Naming would be too powerful. And I have no power here. I'm used to powerlessness, it's my basic state. But this passivity is something new. Because it's bigger than bigotry. This is submerging and all-encompassing. No sacrifice But a giving-over Sacrum Facturae To make holy. Here in Nature I am divine Some Thing Divine Divided between body and soul. Liminally, I lie exposed before this force. I am naked. Just like I have returned to myself. I used to view nature as through a screen, but now my mind is turned on and on and on by holiness whole. 4: The Things I Think and the Things I Know Written after Zoe Gilbert introduced me to the spirit of Hearn. Where to begin when trying to explain the way of things? Start by cleaning the corner of a Celtic kitchen cupboard. There's no border between me and you, no order in which things should be done, in which songs should be sung in praise of the sun rising each day. And falling like I do for you, the world, and everything else in moments like this when all I think is clear. Hush. Quickly. Come. See that silver deer in the forest, must matted rut and ragged leaves? Allow me to humiliate myself for the love of you. I see- Him. Hunter of faeries and mischief-maker extraordinaire with velvet horns. Psychopomp. Cuckhold. Puck. Hold it. Hear Him. Hearn. Heard. Hard. Bard. Harlequin, of thee I sing you wild thing, to bring me down into the lowly culture of spirits and leaf mould and earth. It's happening. The Way of Things. You cannot calculate it down, this layer of fungus over everything I know. 5: How To Succeed as an Author Written after an encounter with a Waterstone's employee. Crouch in corners. Sneak past the shop assistants in Waterstones so that, pen in hand and spindly notepad poised, you can flick through The 2023 Writer's Yearbook. It's no wonder artists are famous for starving, Given how expensive these bloody things are. Ironic that they advertise contests for underrepresented voices with price tags like this. Still, in I sneak, roll for Stealth. Nat One. There's an employee peering over at me, all arms and t-shirt. 'Can I help you at all, Madam?' A pin trembles like my guilt. 'Um, I'm fine thank you. Sorry'. I scuttle under the floorboards in humiliation. I have discovered from this interaction that Success does not smell like the Waterstone's café on a Saturday afternoon. 5: Sylvanus/Pan/Wild Man Inspired by Amy Jeffs' 'Wild' Gig, in-between a folk shanty and love ballad. You charmed me in the woods where I momentarily lay, wondering at the Nature of Things. A snap of tree-twig. Startled rabbits and wide-eyes. But then I saw you like the spirit of a friend, and I knew my safety in you. Wild Man, my wild kin, the Wild can make a man become less than himself, become more than himself. You've become a great deal less of yourself now I can see you in this Nature. Appearing to me now draped in oversized clothes A cloak, once tightly-fitted to emphasise your Heroism now loosely hangs over one shoulder. You are unfazed, grin offhandedly beneath that mop of curly hair. You smile, bare, wild, Wandering through the woods until you come across something real in me. "Do all humans have eyes like yours? With pupils like pins? Mine are larger by far." With but a few words, I found myself hungry, not as I have been before, only for food. You wild thing, panacea to my loneliness, wastrel with your bright eyes, horns, and fey heart filled with mischief. Have you ever seen a human before? Afterwards, with a lull and a lilt, he whispers me to sleep. Animal limbs all tangled up together, at last we are one, body and spirit. You were gone by the time I woke. Yet you left your cloak behind as protection from the worms and the wood. And a snowdrop that still blossoms because of your kiss even now, whilst I prune with age. So I know you cared for me before the fey called you back. Many years later, I still await your wild return. For when you come again, and we will be whole. My spirit lover, Who for a moment wanted One Real Thing. And I, Who was made willingly wild as you are one night under a waxing moon.
6: More, Please! Inspired by Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen's thoughts on Maximalism
This is my stand,
my stance,
my call to celebrate the unnecessary.
This is my space.
Flowery adverbs and clutterous descriptions.
An appleblossom branch and dried orange wheels.
Pinafore dressed with puffed sleeves and high collars.
Frills. Flounces.
Cherries on the mantlepiece,
ripening before they become pie.
I am allowed these things.
Because that's what my life is.
It's all about crafting, and love, and
nourishing, cooking, baking, creating
a space.
A mushroom, froggy, witchy place for
me, myself, and my words to grow.
Grannycore, Cottagecore,
Maximalist Word Cluttercore,
Campness incarnate, teetering over the edge of cliché.
Clutter is stories.
Clutter is my story,
is me.
Messy and confused, clashing nature and
nurture and pulling everything out of
every wardrobe and cupboard.
Showing myself right up-
I don't mind what you reaction is to my
words,
my style,
my home,
my clutter cocoon.
Because here I am most myself.
Silken delicacy and grubby mess,
Here I am waiting to release chaos and clutter
Against all this mess in the outside world.
This is what beauty is to me.
We need more of it, please.
Cheltenham reminded me of how far I still have to go with my writing, but since when has Charlotte Husnjak let the prospect of great heights stop her from doing anything at all?
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