In 2006 my younger son, Louis, took me on a renaissance tour of Italy, making up, he said, for a lack of inspired presents in previous years. It was quite magical - I brought back a full notebook and a full camera.   

Dining with Copernicus

‘Al Brindisi’, Ferrara

Away from blazing main street restaurants,

we thread our way between cyclists,

cruising the internet cafes,

through the shadows of narrow alleys,

until the sun sneaks a beam through

onto a sign board – Al Brindisi AD 1435 -

yet another ‘oldest tavern in Europe.’

Banquettes, dark wine bottles

behind chicken wire frames,

a wooden board with cheese

spiralled from mild to ferocious,

the waiters whisper and offer

only expensive wine.

My place mat, made of brown paper,

says that Tasso and Cellini ate here,

so did the student Copernicus,

who,seeing this same sky,

thought up earth moving heresies.

So do I, walking slowly back,

seeing the full moon through

the open oval above a courtyard,

thinking of the curious Copernicus,

a moment’s dizziness may just

have been the angle of my gaze,

but it felt like the moon sucking.

Chiesa di S.Giorgio Maggiore,

Venice 2006

Ten euros for the tower.

We are hot already, unlikely

to enjoy the climb, stopping

for longer rests at shorter intervals,

just to hunt down that view.

We weigh up the discomfort.

You shrug, I succumb,

we walk towards the stairs,

to face a netting wall.

A robed and tonsured monk

approaches, motions us

towards a gleaming lift.

Long forbidden, long sloping

steps with shallow drops

encircle the lift shaft,

its steel skeleton humming.

We watch the stairs recede,

the monk smiles, speechless.

A swirl of wind balloons my skirt,

we lean out of our brick basket

blinded by sun on white buildings

and water, light that trembles

flashes evidence of glass on boats.

Water buses like fat woodlice interlace

with speedboats darting between

in joyful, suicidal transits,

a liner at rest, a Gulliver sleeping,

disturbs the scale of boats, buildings

and the grandest of canals, wearing

its gondolas, a plague of stick insects.

The monk is patient, speechless,

waiting for us to tire of the world,

seen as half-map, half-model below.

I raise my camera, catch a habitual

impatience cross his face; he knows

and I know the futility of possession.

 Review

Something in the Blood

a chapbook published by Selkirk Lapwing Press

There’s an Italian flavour to many of the early poems in Vivien Jones’ book, plus several haiku and one wince-inducing line in ‘The Mermaid’s Song’, but the collection really hits its stride later on, when she gets much closer to home.

‘Best Medicine’, ‘Belated’ and ‘Chambers Street Museum, Edinburgh’, deal with motherhood and family relationships with a nice balance of gentle humour and poignancy, while ‘After The Music’ and ‘A New Viol’ build on that, with the former making good use of form and repetition, and the latter boasting the splendid line “How I love yew”. When Jones sets about disputing her own line “as if life itself could be silenced”, she’s at her best, a poet engaging with vitality and honest passion.

Matt Merrit in Sphinx Chapbook Review

Fountain ; Bologna

In 2008, along with several other writers, I took part in a Kinetic Poetry project - creating poems to be animated - if you'd like to see the results visit http://www.dgaaweb.net/      There was a launch event at the Wigtown Book Festival in a red velvet cinema-in-a-tent, in a gale, which felt like a Dorothy moment......

This is a piece of flash fiction - a sound bite of words that tells a story in 250 words or less - a great way to practice brevity 

Parrot

It was an African Grey. He, she – no-one knew which or how to tell – spent most days huffed in a ball of grey feathers, opening its lemon eyes in a slow blink at passing traffic. Every now and then the child begged a wooden cotton reel and poked it through the hole where the feeding bowl fitted. The parrot pinched the reel between its sharp upper and chiselled lower beak with surprising delicacy and hacked it to matchstick splinters in an hour. The child gawped at the little pile of debris mixed with its oily shit on the floor of its cage.

One day, impatient to find a bare reel for the parrot, she searched in her mother’s sewing box but there was only one nearly empty. It had a short length of red thread on it. She didn’t ask. She knew it was too little to be useful so she gave it all to the parrot.

She had never heard a parrot choke. She was too afraid to fetch her mother while the parrot strained its beak against the tightening loops of stout nylon thread. It fell so softly. The thread was the same colour as its tail.

I also love photography - I'm fascinated by textures in nature, particularly those I can see on my daily walks around our estuary village.