Poetry

CREATIVE WRITING COMPILED AND EDITED BY EMMA HARDY

Dam Robinson is 33 and has been a secret writer all of his life. A performance poet, he has had over thirty poems published and regularly hosts his own poetry evenings.
He is currently looking for a publisher for his first novel, ‘Raintown’, and has just begun his second. See Dam over the summer when he hopes to perform across the country. Here is an extract from Raintown.

RAINTOWN

I watched the rain falling, steadily as it had done for the last two hours or so. It always rained in St. Jude's. I'd seen the grey slate roofs of the buildings turn from dirty grey into a deep, rich black. When it first started I'd watched the rain merge black dots of rain onto a huge grey slate canvas, creating a kind of urban collage.

Gradually though the rain filled in the empty grey patches in the same indiscriminate manner a child splashes watercolours onto a blank sheet of paper. Unlike a child the rain employed but two colours, grey and black. It looked as though the rain was colouring the roofs, the town and everything (including me) in its dark, depressing colours.

The town clock chimed. Two o'clock, Monday afternoon. Monday afternoons in St. Jude's were always grey and when it rained, black. The best day was probably Saturday, which always felt a light pastel blue, yeah even when it rained on a Saturday the colour only changed to a slightly darker shade.

Emma Sweeney was born and brought up in Birkenhead and studied English at the University of Cambridge. After graduating she spent time living in an isolated village in Japan, where she was the only English speaker. It was here that she began to write.
She is writing a novel about a photographer living in Japan, wrestling with her feelings for her boss. Another project she is currently working on a is collection of short stories by new British and Japanese writers which focuses on the experience of being a foreigner in both countries. The following extract is taken from one such short story, which alternates between the Japanese and British classrooms.

Perhaps it was a mistake to let them work in pairs. I desperately race around the classroom, arms flailing in clumsy attempts to grasp at adolescent screeches and high-pitched howls of derisive laughter. I envision myself calmly striding along rows of desks; snatching at wisps of half-formed giggles; tidying them away into a box and snapping shut the lid. But the sounds escape my clutch and the volume rises. I stand at the podium and raise my voice. No one listens. They are beginning to rise to their feet, milling around the room, gossiping with their friends. Row on row of identical white faces whirl dizzyingly around me. Suddenly, an oval shaped flash of olive whizzes past. I’m sure it’s her. She’s found me. I’m convinced. The pitch of their voices rises higher and higher, yet it takes longer and longer to reach me, as if all this is acting itself out in a distant, far off land.

‘I like your skirt, Miss’
The white faces and the olive face fly past so quickly that they all merge into one frightening mask, glaring down, closing in, suffocating.
‘Get out. Get out all of you. Get out now.’

Clare Shaw

CAN'T HEAR YOU

The first time they came through our sky,
the village turned pale. The roar
and the boom of the low-flying planes –
you couldn’t help yourself but duck.
They were overhead, but only just.
By the time one passed,
you were waiting for the next.

By August, there were four a day
By Winter – ten or more.
The village became concerned.
Crops grew brown and tasted of fumes.
Cows were milkless,
sheep walked in circles. Babies were born
too small, too soon, not born at all.

We lost weight, lost sleep,
lost teeth, lost hair. Lost count
of the letters we sent off –
Concerned of Ribblesdale, Mother of Two.
Mother of God, it was sweet relief
when war came at last. The planes went off
to somewhere else we couldn’t hear

and left us to our sleep:
the soft grey air of our bedrooms.
Outside, the quiet sky.
The bright island of the moon,
the night’s damp breath above the fields.
A sheep coughs.
Clouds drift in mirrored dunes.

The village dreams:
the boom and the roar
of the low flying planes;
the sirens and screams,
the blast and the blare
and the thick red air.
The fields and the houses and faces on fire.

Says its prayers and stuffs its ears:
can’t hear can’t hear can’t hear can’t hear