Tag Archives: Ann Drysdale

R.I.P. Ann Drysdale… ‘Weirdness Observed’

What is she doing, the mad old bat,
Down on her knees in the garden?
In her busted boots and her happiness hat
She doesn’t know and she wouldn’t care
That the size of the arse sticking up in the air
Is shading so much of the garden.

She pulls out a weed, the mad old bat,
Out of the face of the garden.
She tuts at the trauma and fusses it flat
While the waste-not weed she will put to use
By turning it into salubrious juice
And giving it back to the garden.

What is she up to, the mad old bat
As she struts, stiff-kneed in the garden
With her doo-dah dog and her galloping cat?
Spreading compost and scattering seed
So one may sprout and the other may feed
In the windmill world of the garden.

She’s a cruel cartoon, is the mad old bat
As she talks to herself in the garden.
What on earth is this? and Good Lord, look at that!
And she squats and she mutters and giggles out loud
And informs her potatoes they’re doing her proud
As she creeps like a crone in the garden.

Where is she going, the mad old bat
As the sunset blesses the garden?
She is going nowhere, and that is that.
She will dig in the dark till the dawn sky pales
And the damp on her knees and the dirt in her nails
Go singing the song of the garden.

*****

Ann Drysdale, who died unexpectedly on August 16th (apparently in her sleep) was a superb poet and self-aware, self-directed, life-rich eccentric lover of the natural world, of gardens, of animals and birds, of unpretentious people in all walks of life. I knew her only through her poetry and our correspondence – which is to say, well enough to deeply regret that I never got to meet her in person.

The poem above was collected in Miss Jekyll’s Gardening Boots, Shoestring Press, 2015; as was the poem that I put up on this blog earlier this month, ‘When Mister Nifty Plays the Bones‘. Here is the bio that she chose to represent herself with:

“Ann Drysdale still lives in South Wales. She has been a hill farmer, water-gypsy, newspaper columnist and single parent – not necessarily in that order. She has written all her life; stories, essays, memoir, and a newspaper column that spanned twenty years of an eventful life. Her eighth volume of poetry – Feeling Unusual – came together during the strange times of Coronavirus and celebrates, among other things, the companionship of a wise cat and an imaginary horse.”

She was a much-loved member of the world of (especially formalist) poetry. George Simmers posted her ‘Song of Wandering Annie’ in the Snakeskin blog, and there is a tribute (and an enormous selection of her verse) in The HyperTexts. She was a truly good person.

Using form: Experimenting: Ann Drysdale, ‘When Mister Nifty Plays the Bones’

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With things like tongs in the palm of his hand
Tongue-depressors or langues-de-chat
He tappets the rhythm of his one-man-band
As he struts in the gutter with a tra-la-la.

He twinkles his fingers and he flicks his wrist
Hey-diddle-diddle and fiddle-de-dee
And his two tame twiddlesticks jump and twist
With a click-click-clackety, one-two-three

For Nifty’s bones are made of wood
And they click like sticks with a restless chatter
His brass as he passes is loud and good
But his rattling bones are a different matter

His drum tum-tums and his trombone groans
And his hi-hat cymbal softly sighs
But all I can hear is the homely bones
That sing out the song in his small sad eyes

He dances a foxtrot, quick-quick-slow
And the hi-hat hisses with a whispered yes
But the bones, bones, bones with their no-no-no
Tick-tock to the tune of uselessness

When Mister Nifty dances by
His fingers flicker and his brass bells shine
But a part of my heart feels cold and dry
As his lonely bones call out to mine.

*****

Ann Drysdale writes “I made this poem because I wanted to see if I could turn words into music, with assonance and dissonance, chiming and clashing like the components of Mr. Nifty’s one man marching band. Laying aside conventional metre and putting boom, boom, boom alongside tum titty tum titty tum. I wanted it to sing and to dance to itself, and for the reader to dance along with it.”

The poem was collected in Miss Jekyll’s Gardening Boots, Shoestring Press, 2015.

Ann Drysdale still lives in South Wales. She has been a hill farmer, water-gypsy, newspaper columnist and single parent – not necessarily in that order. She has written all her life; stories, essays, memoir, and a newspaper column that spanned twenty years of an eventful life. Her eighth volume of poetry – Feeling Unusual – came together during the strange times of Coronavirus and celebrates, among other things, the companionship of a wise cat and an imaginary horse.

Illustration – supplied by Ann Drysdale

Ann Drysdale, ‘Winter Song’

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When blizzards blow under the tiles
and the dishcloth crisps on the draining board
and the snowscape stretches for miles and miles
and only the idiot ventures abroad.
When it’s early to bed, and thank heavens for that,
then coldly keens the cast-out cat:
Miaow! Miaow! – a doleful din –
and who will rise and let him in?

When slippery stones by the pond
make filling a bucket an effort of will
and you’re walled-up for weeks in the back of beyond
in a farm at the foot of a hell of a hill
then it’s early to bed, and thank heavens for that,
till coldly keens the cast-out cat:
Miaow! Miaow! – a doleful din –
and who will rise and let him in?

*****

Ann Drysdale writes: “It was published in my very first collection, The Turn of the Cucumber (Peterloo Poets 1995) and dates from a time when I was bringing up three children as a single mum on a hand-to-mouth smallholding on the North York Moors.”

Editor’s note: Ann Drysdale takes the structure, but not the precise metre, of Shakespeare’s ‘Winter Song’ from Love’s Labours Lost. Her rollicking metre allows her “and the snowscape stretches for miles and miles” and the wonderful “in a farm at the foot of a hell of a hill”, for a bigger wintry landscape than Shakespeare shows.

Ann Drysdale now lives in South Wales and has been a hill farmer, water-gypsy, newspaper columnist and single parent – not necessarily in that order. Her eighth volume of poetry, Feeling Unusual, has recently joined a mixed list of published writing, including memoir, essays and a gonzo guidebook to the City of Newport.
http://www.poetrypf.co.uk/anndrysdalepage.html
http://www.shoestring-press.com

Photo: “Hole of Horkum, North York Moors” by reinholdbehringer is licensed under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.

Using form: villanelle: Ann Drysdale, ‘A Harmless, Necessary Cat…’

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Ann Drysdale, ‘Sleeping in Tongues’

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Three of us breathing; me and dog and cat.
Awoken by a faint and plaintive mew,
I hold my own breath, ascertaining that
the sound comes from one of the other two.
I act upon an educated guess
and lay a hand on cat, who quickly twists
into a different pose of idleness
and settles, silent. But the sound persists.
So dog it is, who wheezes in a dream
that has bestowed on him the gift of tongues
and things both are, and are not, what they seem.
I let the captive air out of my lungs.
Three of us breathing, dog and cat and me;
companionable synchronicity.

Ann Drysdale writes: “This poem emerged from a situation that took a minute to happen and evolved into a sonnet that takes a minute to read. I can almost believe that it sprang fully-formed from my fingertips, now that the pile of sawdust, chippings and paintflakes generated by the making of one into the other has been swept under the carpet and forgotten.”

Ann Drysdale now lives in South Wales and has been a hill farmer, water-gypsy, newspaper columnist and single parent – not necessarily in that order. Her most recent volume of poetry, Vanitas, joined a mixed list of published writing, including memoir, essays and a gonzo guidebook to the City of Newport. Another collection is accreting nicely and is due to be published next year.

Her poems have been published in several of the Potcake Chapbooks:
Tourists and Cannibals
Rogues and Roses
Careers and Other Catastrophes
Families and Other Fiascoes
Houses and Homes Forever
… all available from Sampson Low for the price of a coffee.

Launch: Potcake Chapbook 8, ‘Houses and Homes Forever’

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Ann Drysdale, “Perfect Binding”

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Ann Drysdale

The poet addresses an occasional lover
on a brief assignation in a twin-bedded room

Dearest, since we can do no other,
Here on the bed that fate decrees
Let us lie side by side together,
Heads and shoulders, hips and knees
Aligned along a central fissure
Like pages in a paperback;
Conjoined by heat and sticky pressure,
Divided by a constant crack.

And thus, though circumstance divide,
We lie together, if bereft,
Like vellum swelling either side
Of this, our necessary cleft.
So let us live, and let us love,
Proximity is written in
Although we may not always have
The bliss of lying skin to skin.

So let us love, and let us live
As we are simply bound to do;
Our numbers are consecutive,
Our sense and syntax follow through.
If anyone should ever look
We two will be forever found,
Pages in one another’s book;
Not stitched, my love, but perfect bound.

Ann Drysdale writes: “An occasional poem born during a long and lovely relationship. The publishing metaphor pleases me; it grew wings as I crafted the poem which, for once, said everything I wanted to say.”

Ann Drysdale now lives in South Wales and has been a hill farmer, water-gypsy, newspaper columnist and single parent – not necessarily in that order. Her poems have been published in several of the Potcake Chapbooks. Her seventh volume of poetry, Vanitas, has recently joined a mixed list of published writing, including memoir, essays and a gonzo guidebook to the City of Newport.

Annie's Vanitas

http://www.poetrypf.co.uk/anndrysdalepage.html
http://www.shoestring-press.com/2019/03/vanitas/

Formal Launch: Potcake Chapbook 3 – Careers and Other Catastrophes

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The launch of the third Potcake Chapbook brings us a passel of fresh Potcake Poets into the Sampson Low list, a couple of returning friends, and a slew of new art from Alban Low. Good news all round!

Careers! We’ve all had one or several of them, for better or worse. Marcus Bales and Daniel Galef review the frustrations of shopfloor sales and professions, while Annie Drysdale gives an exhilarating view of farmwork. From the newcomers (Gerry Cambridge, Martin Elster, Brian Gavin, Susan McLean, Rob Stuart, Tom Vaughan and Mindy Watson) we have everything from office workers and cafe proprietors to a madame ageing out of her profession and a hangman lamenting his obsolescence.

But really, there are no “newcomers” here. As always, the chapbook features poets who are very well-known as well as extremely skillful and experienced with formal verse.

And whether the writing of verse should be considered a career, or merely another catastrophe… well, that’s for future discussion.

Meanwhile, enjoy this for a couple of quid or have a copy mailed to someone who needs a fresh perspective on life.

Form in Formless Times

Searching for word-for-word memorable poetry… editing the Potcake Chapbook series for Sampson Low

Tag Archives: Ann Drysdale

R.I.P. Ann Drysdale… ‘Weirdness Observed’

Using form: Experimenting: Ann Drysdale, ‘When Mister Nifty Plays the Bones’

Ann Drysdale, ‘Winter Song’

Using form: villanelle: Ann Drysdale, ‘A Harmless, Necessary Cat…’

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Ann Drysdale, ‘Sleeping in Tongues’

Launch: Potcake Chapbook 8, ‘Houses and Homes Forever’

Potcake Poet’s Choice: Ann Drysdale, “Perfect Binding”

Formal Launch: Potcake Chapbook 3 – Careers and Other Catastrophes

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