Animal People
By Carol Rumens
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About this ebook
Carol Rumens
Carol Rumens is originally from South London and now lives in North Wales, where she teaches creative writing at Bangor University. She has published sixteen collections of poetry, most recently Animal People (Seren, 2016). Her work appears in many anthologies, including The Best British Poetry (2014) and The Forward Anthology (2016). She is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature.
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Animal People - Carol Rumens
Animal People
I.M. Yurij Georgievich Drobyshev, b. Leningrad,
June, 1932, d. Pentir, Gwynedd, November, 2015.
Seren is the book imprint of
Poetry Wales Press Ltd.
57 Nolton Street, Bridgend, Wales, CF31 3AE
www.serenbooks.com
facebook.com/SerenBooks
twitter@SerenBooks
The right of Carol Rumens to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
© Carol Rumens 2016
ISBN: 978-1-78172-318-0
ebook: 978-1-78172-319-7
Kindle: 978-1-78172-320-3
A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted at any time or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise without the prior permission of the copyright holder.
The publisher acknowledges the financial assistance of the Welsh Books Council.
Cover Image: Joseph Albert Wettlauf des Igels und des Hasen, 1862
Printed in Bembo by Latimer Trend & Company Ltd, Plymouth.
Author Website: www.carolrumens.co.uk
Contents
On Standby
An Artistic Family
Easter Snow
The Teacher and the Ghosts
Spring Forward, Fall Back: a Gwynedd Skein
The Homeless Ship
March Morning, Pearson Park
Remote Bermudas
1. School Trip
2. Keats’s Reach
3. The Campus of Time-Enough
4. Lumen de Lumine
The Big Bang Year
Her to Apollo
Glosa on ‘Woman of Spring’
Two Birthday Cards
1. Under Moel Rhiwen
2. White Night
Fire, Stone, Snowdonia
Praying with the Imam at Summerfade
The Reddish Wheel-Barrow
Happy Seventieth-Birthday Blues, Mr Zimmerman
All Souls’ Saturday Night
Owls of the Ukraine
The Search
John Rodker Composes a Cold Elegy for Isaac Rosenberg
Pyramid Text
Zootoca Vivipara
House Clearance
Song of The Obsolete
Home Thoughts from the Cow-Shed
Figurine
Danae, Dinarii
It’s Time for the Weather!
A Christmas Stocking
Happy Christmas, Sister Dympna
Small Facts
In Memory of a Rationalist
From an Evening Walk-Diary
Marshalsea Quadrille
A Few Study-Notes
Hamlet
The Ship of State
Footnote
Three Fado
Laundry Blue
The Hare and the Hedgehog
On the Spectrum
About Animal People
Acknowledgements
On Standby
Pass me that small pencil, sharpened nicely
At both ends, a pencil with two eyes,
And up for anything – a screed, a scribble.
The gold and navy stripes, still visible,
Might be school uniform – the low-slung tie
Of anti-fashion, mocking and awry.
The pupils do their time; some pencils sidle
Off desks and drop and vanish. But the word
Is out, this pencil says, when a bright-voiced
Young teacher names the mist in someone’s head.
And the kid stares, and sees the point at last.
A pencil starts from scratch, like anyone.
It knows hard graft, despair and knuckled tension,
A shadow flickering like a footballer’s –
Designed for transfer. It diminishes,
But leaves hard copy, proofed by crossings-out,
Forensics of