blue beads

                                        

                           Blue Beads

         mismatched and mysterious

     a sea bead from a midnight pool

     a sky bead strung with music of the air

         played on the lyre of wind-whipped trees

     twin notes of evensong caught in glass

         or two wild sloes

             demure Madonna blue

      intriguing as Ile Agois’ cragged slope

          where they were discarded

      someone’s

          then no one’s

              now pinned here to charm us

This poem was written as part of a 2016 project by Jersey Heritage, in association with Jersey Festival of Words, when 25 local writers were asked to write a label for an object in the Jersey Museum, with a limit of 60 words.  

I walked towards Ile Agois one very blustery day in January to get as close as possible to where the beads were found - thought to once be an early Christian monastic site. I got a great sense of how challenging it would have been to live there - including for the valiant members of the Société Jersiaise Archaeology Section who climbed and camped there to dig and investigate the site, and who found the blue beads.

The Ile Agois is a tidal stack which lies off the north coast of Jersey in the Parish

of St Mary. Although at one time a part of the headland which encloses Crabbe Bay on

its eastern side, it is now separated from the mainland by a narrow gorge 12m wide. The

island rises to a height of 76m above sea level and has an area of 417 square m. Three

of its sides are sheer but the fourth, the south-western, slopes steeply down to the sea.

A loose, black acidic soil overlies the bedrock which is comprised of two granite types, a

coarse and a fine grained, intersected by numerous small dykes. A dense growth of

blackthorn covers much of the upper surface of the island. Access to the Ile Agois is

difficult and may be gained only at low tide by descending the coastal cliff, crossing the

rocky beach and climbing the south-west face...

...Two beads were discovered in association with a lense of charcoal...

...near the base of the north end of the west wall to Hut 1.

The beads are of blue opaque glass, and are drum shaped with fluted edges. They

measure 5mm in height by 2mm in circumference. The perforation, which is very fine, is

through the long axis of the beads.

They conform to no known parallels of pre-historic or Roman beads. Neither do

they closely resemble Anglo-Saxon types except perhaps those recovered from late-Pagan

Saxon burials of the pre-seventh century.

Margaret Finlaison & Philip Holdsworth - Excavations on the Ile Agois, Jersey ABSJ Vol 22 1979

Halloween Power Cut

The town is suddenly blotted out.

As my eyes adjust to soft blacks,

emergency lights glimmer on in tower blocks

and I imagine people on their hands and knees

scrabbling for half-forgotten candles at the backs of drawers.

You stand beside me, a smudgy shape

safe as grey felt.

Cars nudge forward on the narrow street

lighting a huddle of revellers on pavements,

expressionist, mugging for effect.

A woman says that the blackout is island-wide

that the power link has been lost with France

and a passer-by jokes that it’s like the war, a curfew.

Someone will want to tell ghost stories soon.

We become spooky without familiar markers,

glow-worms inching forward by the gleam of mobile phones

anchored to voice and touch, heading towards the arts centre,

to the Frankenstein film I’ve seen before -

1931 black-and-white, Boris Karloff,

his made-up face a parchment of greys

caught in cinema’s ghosting machinery.

It’s lighter now outdoors than in

a soft flush falling from the sky.

As we wait outside the dark-struck cinema

a study in blacks and half-blacks,

I want to say something profound

about the carbon in our bodies coming from stars,

but I’m enjoying being blanked out, uncoloured.

I could shelter in this shadowiness

unfixing, becoming liminal,

floating high above the monochrome island.

Your voice, inside me, teasing and calm, brings me back.

Light will scare away half creatures, unfixed ghosts.

Should I grab you in the dark?

Could we find a way here in the gloaming,

blending atoms in these cinder blacks?

Have we made our world too bright?

Lost the instinct for half-light, half-anything?

As soon as day creeps back,

as the shadows of buildings become buildings again,

people will rush to post photos of the darkscape online,

but black is always there behind,

the sudden going of light like a person leaving their body.

Jacqueline Mézec

This poem was a runner up in the Mslexia Women's Poetry Competition 2014.

ghost in the graveyard

An art installation seen in St Brelade's Graveyard this week - inspired by the spirit of Claude Cahun.

21 ghosts

1                 the ghost of an unknown soldier

2                 the ghost of an unborn baby

3                 the ghosts lost in no man’s land

4                 ghost images on photographic films never developed

5                 the ghost of the marriage I never had

6                 the ghosts of people who have aged in my house

7                 the past lives of my atoms in the universe

8                 the ghost conversation I plot in my mind

9                 the ghost endings in my dreams

10              the ghostly fizz of the big bang

11              ghosts of dead stars in the night sky

12              actors ghosting in old black and white films

13              ghost radio stations broadcasting into space

14              ghost languages of lost tribes

15              the ghosts of all genetically-possible people never conceived

16              everything before the big bang

17              the ghost the world becomes when I close my eyes

18              mobile phone calls to the newly deceased

19              your voice on my answerphone

20              our last conversation in my head

21              the ghost of me

100 POEMS

I was pleased to be one of the 15 poets set the creative challenge by Jersey Arts Centre to contribute a new unpublished poem for this exhibition in November 2014 - part of the 10th Human Rights Festival.



The writers were asked to consider the 100th anniversary of the First World War as a starting point, but our poem could cover any aspect of war these past 100 years, or conflict resolution or peace.



The poems will be part of an anthology called 100 Poems and were very powerful and starkly beautiful on the walls of the Berni Gallery.



Now only the ghosts of our words linger in the space... 

100 wars

this ancestral war   this apocalypse war   this bankrupt war

this bastard war        this bickering war        this black war

this blackmail war          this blood war          this boy war

this brimstone war      this burning war    this censored war

this class war           this cliché war           this clinical war

this cold war            this crass war            this cynical war

this damn war            this death war            this desert war

this drug war             this epic war             this family war

this festering war     this feudal war     this flag-wavy war

this flesh war      this flickering war      this forgotten war

this fractious war    this failed war    this friendly-fire war

this fucked up war      this gaming war      this ghost war

this global war            this god war             this grave war

this hate war            this hero war            this hidden war

this hollow war         this holy war         this hopeless war

this hunger war      this industrial war      this jealous war

this just war        this karaoke war        this knee-jerk war

this knife war               this last war               this lost war

this love war           this maniac war           this mass war

this mock war        this neighbour war         this new war

this noble war             this old war             this panic war

this party war          this patriotic war          this pride war

this pretty-mess war     this puerile war     this putrid war

this quota war            this random war            this rap war

this rape war            this ratings war            this ritual war

this royal war            this sacred war            this secret war

this sex war             this silent war             this social war

this strategic war          this tactic war          this terror war

this time war             this tired war             this tit-tat war

this toothless war         this torture war         this toy war

this tribe war     this universal war     this vengeance war

this war on war          this widow war          this word war

this x-rated war       this death war       this youth war

this zeitgeist war        this dark war          this death war

this death war    this war war war war war war war war …

My anti-war poem - 100 wars - which was performed brilliantly

by Craig Hamilton at a War Poetry event at Jersey Arts Centre

last week.

Moles

Under garden and field, through humus and loam, moles tunnel

earth miners nose-diving through truffle brown

snaffling and snouting the ground in swims through soil

carving subterranean highways with shovel feet.

Nosing up towards brilliantine stars they are too blind to see

their neat little heaps punctuate green with soft sifted earth

flagrantly ignoring our boundaries, true ramblers knowing

that under turf all earth is free, moles criss-cross our land

nudging up little piles of disregard.

To be a mole-catcher was once deemed a profession

most worthy, hunting these Jersey ploughmen

with their digger feet and squiffy eyes and velveteen sheen

and even a cream-white breed in some parishes. *

Perhaps the mole-catcher would once have worn a waistcoat

made of their neat little skins, as he followed moles crossways

via their uncharted paths, knowing leaving a few to survive

would protect his trade, becoming wise in their ways.

And perhaps it is true that on moonlit nights

after a pint or two, my father went out to dig a few mounds

to augment their few, and when postcards came

warning the moles had returned, perhaps he regretted

the traps and the poison-blue worms he slipped

into their caves

for he knew that one day he too would be

in l’rouoyaume des taupes, the kingdom of moles **

berthed deep in the berried leafy clod

pressed tight with fusty soil muffling his ears

not hearing their digger feet scratching the ground

nuzzling close, tunnelling free.

* a cream-white form occurred sparingly in several parts of Jersey chiefly in St Lawrence and St Martin...  Frances Le Sueur, A Natural History of Jersey, 1976.

** dans l’rouoyaume des taupes (in the kingdom of moles) is a Jèrriais euphemism for being dead.

This poem was a runner up in the Mslexia Women's Poetry Competition 2013.