This month we have two poems from Clare Finnimore, one about the shopping frenzy preceding Christmas, the other in remembrance of the Holocaust. Clare completed an MA in scriptwriting at Bath Spa University following a course in creative writing at Gloucestershire University. Previously she worked in the health service and in personal injury assessments seeing clients from Liverpool to Oxfordshire. She found the work very rewarding and was surprised to discover how much she liked writing detailed reports. It was only much later she moved into the world of fiction. She says her most enjoyable writing has been in collaboration with others. ‘When Will it Be Me,’ a comedy written with three other writers and performed at Burdell’s Yard in Bath played to a packed house and received a four star review. She says, ‘the best fun is to sit at the back of the theatre and hear people laughing’. Two of her short stories have featured in ‘Graffiti’ magazine. In November 2019 her short play ‘An Ordinary House’ was selected by Ragged Foils Productions and made into a podcast. Clare’s ‘In Focus’ radio programmes on Corinium Radio have featured other local writers including Selwyn Morgan, Gill Garrett, Rona Laycock and Iris Anne Lewis.
To read Clare’s poems go to cirenscene.com.
More stories and poems at http://www.somewhere-else-writers.org
LEAVES
Layer on layer sludged with rain
The rake in my hand uncovering on a cold winter’s day
A summer gone.
Later, on the bus the dog standing, trying for balance in the sway and pitch. The overcoats, hats, gloves and scarves, the windows fugged with rain.
We’re all in this together
And the summer’s gone.
Today it’s crazy Suzie, her frazzled hair is flying
As she dreams of Formula 1.
Slamming on the brakes for a shadow on the road
We’re all on this together
And the summer’s gone.
The choke of streets on diesel
The wending harried way
Clothes clagging damply as we pay and pay and play
We’re all in this together
And the leaves have gone.
ON ANOTHER TRAIN
Chinks of light in the cracks
the jerking of an engine, the sudden lurching stops.
They would wait for hours or days.
Forced aboard to destinations unknown.
The children crying and hungry.
Suffocation in a railway carriage
Speeding to Paris, her mother
Took a different train.
Beyond the sighing, the groaning and the dying, well before they reached that wasteland.
The knitting spills towards us, and who can know what thoughts are in those stitches; of mothers, brothers and friends, an entire generation nearly lost.
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