Sophia

 SOPHIA AND SOPHIA AND SOPHIA

Sophia, and Sophia, and Sophia.

My love. Before my tale of twisting folk,

before joke turned to wound and wound to joke,

before the Merry Andrew's puppet plays,

before night Mazard, down and up and maze,

before the games with cash and with desire,

I was found, a breathing baby in a bed.

I played in many beds, found you, and wed.

This poem was my contribution to the project '26 orphans', which the writers' group 26 Characters mounted in the autumn of 2022, in collaboration with the Foundling Museum. Participants were invited to choose a famous orphan from a list and write in the orphan's persona. 

My choice was Tom Jones, the hero of Henry Fielding's 1749 novel of that name. For those not familiar with the novel, which I read for the first time in pursuit of this project, I can summarise it thus:

"Foundling Tom is set on winning the hand of Sophia. After a trail of comic adventures, misadventures, blunders and crimes between Somerset and London, they marry."

I had better say that the poem owes much to editorial suggestions by Wendy Jones.  I read the poem to a small gathering in the museum in October 2022, and it seemed to go down well.

This is the night

This is the night

Later the weight of wood, the darkened sky,

those who will see strange things, those who deride him.

We do not see Jesus enthroned on high.

The picture's clustered soldiers almost hide him.


Blindfold, he singles out no captor's fist.

The childhood-nasty blares from the horn

deafen Jesus. Worn, he does not resist.

This is the night. We must pray for dawn.

'This is the night' is my response to Albrecht Dürer's print The mocking of Christ.  It's my contribution to the '26 prints' project organised jointly by the writers' group 26 Characters and the Eames Fine Art Gallery. The Dürer and my poem are on display in the gallery, along with 25 other prints and 25 other writers' responses to them, until 16 April, and all the works are reproduced in the exhibition guide.

Fuller information about the print is on the site of American dealer Masterworks Fine Art and in the book Albrecht Dürer: woodcuts and woodblocks by Walter L. Strauss (New York: Abaris, 1980), p. 360.

AYMESTREY TO BYTON

AYMESTREY TO BYTON

Camera, action.

Steep climb, slip, grasp stakes, barbed wire –

won't do that again.

Level streamside path,

climb, the half woods' length ridgeway,

nearing Byton now.

But we're going north,

shadows say, and waymarks gone,

no landmark certain,

no mobile signal.

Stumble on that steepest climb

we'd not do again.

Slippery, barbed wire

again down, walk unfinished;

back to start point. Wrap.

This poem was written for a project from 26 Characters, as were two pieces by me in 2015: 'Kirkconnel's bard' and 'The hang of the stones'.  The 26 Steps project behind the present poem was edited by Sandy Wilkie and Michelle Nicol.

26 Steps marks a hundred years since the publication of John Buchan's novel The thirty-nine steps.  The project identified 26 short walks in the UK between places whose names began with alphabetically adjacent letters.  I landed the walk from A to B, Aymestrey to Byton, a stretch of the Mortimer Trail.  Clare and I did this walk, partially, on Saturday 16 April 2016.  

It had its pains.  I take great pride in map-reading, and errors such as that described here are rare.  Also, since 1997, my feet have been happier cycling than walking; I took diminishing pleasure in a trek whose length was eventually some 12 miles.  But the weekend also led to my first visit to Tewkesbury Abbey, and lunch in Tewkesbury with friends and kin.  And some good tweeting from the train on the way home. 

The project has its own posting of 'Aymestrey to Byton', complete with photograph and sketch map.