Stephen, Woolf, Virginia

Woman once,
you made yourself
one woman's room

and once alone,
you made yourself
no more.


I was reflecting on my new room. It's mine alone, and inside it I can be me without worrying about anyone else.

It's like the 'room of one's own' that Virginia Woolf said was essential if a woman was to write seriously. And even today I think it's a serious need, whether the time or solitude in a busy mother's life or the 'air space' amongst loud, contending authors. The Orange Prize has given women prominence that the Whitbread and Booker Prizes sometimes don't.

And I was also thinking about the name of a woman, and this woman in particular: her maiden name was her father's and her married name her husband's. What or who was she? Virginia, I suppose.

I'm not sure if she did that much for women in general: caught in her class and her time, she made a big ripple in the 'little lounge of literature' (as I think Salman Rushdie described it) but not much further.

And I thought about her end: suicide in a river. But just as she had made herself a career and a reputation, so she chose to take her own life: her choice to the end.

And this popped out (many words and an entire verse cut out to leave this very, very pared-down verse).

Charlotte Grace

You’re here beside me, Charlotte Grace:
your driving licensed name and face
are looking up from pink surroundings,
pink like newborn cheeks, surrounded
by your family, their friends, their
hopes, concerns and expectations.

Your name: your parents’ choice.
Your face: your parents’ legacy.

You’re looking up at me, who named,
baptised myself and I, with all my
hopes, concerns and expectations,
smile back at Charlotte Grace, my sister.

Lost Rivers

We are the Tyburn,
Walbrook, Westbourne,
Effra, Fleet, Falconbrook, Peck,
Neckinger and Stamford Brook.

We are rivers rushing downwards.

Down to the District, Hammersmith and City,
Piccadilly, Jubilee, Bakerloo, Waterloo,
Northern, Circle, Central, Metropolitan:
lines under ground, under water.

We are lost in the earth, in the flood.

We’re submerged, diverted,
sewered, turbid, caught in a culvert:
tide in a tunnel, grey-blue, suited
flotsam flecked with white.

We're so many: we are all undone.

It's Always Words

It’s always words with us.

Words that attempt to defuse
the bomb, diffuse the laser
creeping closer to the mark,
disarm the sighted weapon:

What?

It’s…

Words that deflect attention,
chaff in the radar’s eye,
white noise to hide the unspoken,
answers avoiding the question

Why?

It’s like…

Words that flatly deny
what is patently true,
retract what I cannot redact
and bluntly refuse to tell you

Who?

It’s like this…

Words that delay
what has to be said,
would sooner be dead
than finally tell you

When?

It’s like this:
this is what it’s like
and why and who I am
and when it came to be.

And when we’re together,
face to face, beside the fire,
ready to speak and to hear,
I’ll tell you how I feel.