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| Templar Poetry |
Alice
Jane Weir
Jane Weir
This sequence of poems, both lyrical and elegiac, charts a journey that
begins in a Derby coffee shop and ends who knows where...
Often startling, they unearth chance, opportunity, compassion, love, loss
and a collective ambition; bold and daring they never flinch or turn away,
instead they look straight ahead-walk steady towards the wire.
Some of the poems in this pamphlet focus on the life of Alice Wheeldon .
Alice lived in Derby and was an active sufferagette and socialist. Alice , as
well as many others, was opposed to conscription during the First World
War. She ran a successful second hand clothes business . Both her business
and her home became a safe haven for conscientious objectors on the run
during the war. Alice, with other members of her family and friends were
imprisoned during the war for supposedly trying to assassinate Lloyd
George and Arthur Henderson.
begins in a Derby coffee shop and ends who knows where...
Often startling, they unearth chance, opportunity, compassion, love, loss
and a collective ambition; bold and daring they never flinch or turn away,
instead they look straight ahead-walk steady towards the wire.
Some of the poems in this pamphlet focus on the life of Alice Wheeldon .
Alice lived in Derby and was an active sufferagette and socialist. Alice , as
well as many others, was opposed to conscription during the First World
War. She ran a successful second hand clothes business . Both her business
and her home became a safe haven for conscientious objectors on the run
during the war. Alice, with other members of her family and friends were
imprisoned during the war for supposedly trying to assassinate Lloyd
George and Arthur Henderson.
ALICE
We traipse along the sluggish Derwent,
lug our bags, hessian flour sacks
stashed with second hand clothes.
It's been a long day on the market
with only half the stock sold.
Ahead, three or four gulls, black backed,
snip at the swollen lips of the river.
Not quite a colony, they've turned
themselves in to the land,
to ride out rough weather.
These days we all flaunt
the protocol of the river bank.
It’s rhythms launder, can never erase,
relieve this century of its stains.
Banners of cormorants declare themselves.
We are careful to acknowledge them.
© Jane Weir 2006
We traipse along the sluggish Derwent,
lug our bags, hessian flour sacks
stashed with second hand clothes.
It's been a long day on the market
with only half the stock sold.
Ahead, three or four gulls, black backed,
snip at the swollen lips of the river.
Not quite a colony, they've turned
themselves in to the land,
to ride out rough weather.
These days we all flaunt
the protocol of the river bank.
It’s rhythms launder, can never erase,
relieve this century of its stains.
Banners of cormorants declare themselves.
We are careful to acknowledge them.
© Jane Weir 2006
ISBN-13 978-0-9550023-3-5
PB £3.50