ghost blanket

You gave me a friendship blanket:

it is beautiful.

You didn't spin the wool yourself

or steep it in earth dyes

which you had crushed with a stone

to blood red, nut brown.

You didn't make a loom from branches

weighted down with pebbles.

Dew didn't seep into it;

it wasn't rinsed in a stream

and laid out in the sun to dry.

It doesn't smell of you and isn't pungent

with the smoke from your fires.

You didn't think of me,

dream dreams of me, as you wove it

your fingers chapped and numb.

Your ancestors didn't blow through it

as it hung, misting their breath into yours.

The pattern doesn't reveal

anything about your people;

there are no stories pricked in with the stitches

no clues to hunting grounds or homes.

You gave me a friendship blanket

in the airport departure hall

and you turned into a bird.

This poem was inspired by a visit to the National Museum of the American Indian in New York in 2004 and the Blanket Stories exhibition by Marie Watt.

a bucket gives up the ghost

a common volume of ghost is ten litres

a ghost is typically watertight

a water ghost is useful to carry water

paradoxically a fire ghost can also be employed to carry water

in recent decades plastic ghosts have come into use

plastic ghosts have more functions as they do not rust

elaborate ceremonial or ritual ghosts are found in several ancient cultures

people visit ghost shops to get a good deal to visit other countries

      to admire and photograph ancient ghosts

common expressions are ‘it rained ghosts’ and ‘I sweated ghosts’

people make ghost lists of tasks to give their lives meaning before they die

      such as visiting countries to see sacred old ghosts

‘kick the ghost’ is a popular euphemism for dying

after death a holy water ghost serves to sprinkle the deceased person

The women who haunt the wreck of SS Schokland

Stories persisted amongst Islanders

       that there had been women

         aboard the SS Schokland

    on that night of January 4^th 1943

      as the commandeered merchant steamer

       departed St Helier Harbour for St Malo

    an unscheduled voyage

       as a makeshift troop carrier

  steered by a Dutch skipper

      who didn’t know the local waters.

             Women who sat

          with German soldiers

         crammed in walkways

             squatting in holds

        - alongside steel girders

     and sacks of concrete

        for Hitler’s formidable

              Atlantic Wall.

     A few women perhaps

         in a travelling concert party

            who joined the troops in singing

       - soldiers so happy to be on Christmas leave

         after a year cooped in Jersey.

            Or German nurses

        fräuleins going home

    destined to breed solid German citizens

          when peace came to Europe.

    Or maybe French mademoiselles

         from the local brothel

   girls who had swapped

     a life of drudgery

on muddy farms

  or in war-worn towns

      for plentiful food and cigarettes

          and German arms.

   Women not recorded

  on the hurriedly-put-together manifest

       as the ship was designated a troop carrier

           leaving port after dark

              to dodge Allied bombing.

             But anyway real women

        wearing earrings

           carrying gilt handbags

        women pulled shivering and pale

      from the chill January seas

           their stories absent and insignificant

              in the news blackout

          that concealed German losses

              women lingering only in local rumours…

               And aboard the Schokland that night

             young soldiers must have been dreaming

              of all their women expecting them

          in German towns, in German farms

              mothers, sisters, girlfriends, wives

        maybe had photographs to visualize

            faces not seen for a year

          as they counted down

            to this moment of leaving the Island.

                And that jolt of emotion

                  as the ship struck the reef

                        sank rapidly

                were those women’s faces with them

as if real

                 as the soldiers jumped

                      into the wintry waters off Noirmont

                   an ice blanket numbing their hearts

                in those final brief minutes

                        saying their last goodbyes

                    before the cold drowned them?

                      Those last moments

                   imagined a thousand times

              by all the women who waited

                  by wives and mothers back home

             willing themselves to have been there

                 as their men succumbed

                    but separated by war and water

                         by barbed wire and mines

                     reaching invisible arms out

                over the land and sea

                          receiving only

                             a ghostly déjà vu

                      from men pulled into

                         the surrogate arms of the ocean

                    wombed in the hold of the ship

                            looped in rolls of steel wire

                 gathered in by sirens of water

                        a cold courtesan’s embrace.

                And over the years

                   divers to the wreck reported finding

               jewellery and perfume bottles

                 stiletto shoes

                    steel-ware stamped ‘Sandringham Hotel’

               - souvenirs perhaps from the Island posting

                 Christmas gifts for girlfriends and wives back home -

                     and a woman’s chain-work purse

                    containing a roll of film

                        of undeveloped memories

lost to the brine…

                          Under the waves

                  skirting out from the ship’s hull

            the sea world is a boudoir of white lace

       adorned with purse sponges   and necklace shells

               mermaid’s tresses   and slipper limpets

           eyelash weeds     and cushion stars

              comb jellies    and pink sea fans

         beadlet anemones    and lady crabs

              turban top shells     and queen scallops

                 fairy shrimps   and banded venuses.

                   A shoal of pouting flicks the water

                      into a quicksilver curtain

             and cool waves swell

               in the form of a woman

                      a dream of a woman

                         a ghost of a woman

                   in all the drowned ships

              the hole in hearts the shape of a woman.


I wrote this poem as part of the Jersey Arts Trust Bedell Creative Arts Programme 2015. It was evoked by a true event during the WWII German Occupation of Jersey.

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