Three poems by Maureen Jivani
We chose Maureen Jivani to be our featured poet for October 2023. When we read her poems we were struck by their energy, their imaginative power, and their style. In the first poem, Jivani’s Mother Goose – traditionally the teller of stories for children – is battered and bent. She feeds her troubles to the hard ground in the form of seeds – note the focus on birth and re-growth. Her goose pursues her, bemused and lost, hissing its own troubles at her. Jivani seems to set up a relationship between these two which is both oppositional and co-dependent – the two somehow belong to each other. The poem ends with a stunningly poignant line made all the more powerful through the use of repetition in the final stanza. Her second poem, ’He isn’t an angel you know’, uses the character from Hardy’s novel ‘Tess of the D’Urbervilles’ to mourn the attachment women make to unsuitable men. The poem has a simple and weighty feel, almost elegaic. There’s a strong note of warning given to Tess, to us all, and perhaps even to the poet herself.
We don’t usually choose poems with gaps between words and lines that range over the page – quite apart from being a formatting nightmare, we feel that there needs to ba a pretty good reason for a poet to divert from the conventional layout. But Jivani gives us all the reason we need in her third poem, ‘A Wake with Black Feathers’. It’s a strange poem, but she carries it off with aplomb. There’s no clear narrative but a torrent of imagery and wordplay. She again refers to a nursery rhyme, although her squawking crows are less benign than the blackbirds in ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’. She creates a sense of confusion, panic, even, but beneath that we sense an undercurrent of tragedy. Look at the shape of the poem – to us it resembles partly outstretched wings. Again, Jivani lands a killer last line.
Maureen Jivani has a locker full of tools and the confidence to use them. We look forward to seeing more from this poet.
Old Mother Goose
the bird follows the old woman
through the fields where she is
scattering seeds
the day a cerulean blue
pales them both though only
the old woman is silenced head bent
against the wind
the goose
open beaked
hisses
at the woman’s heels
she’s asking where are they?
have you seen my clan can you
tell me what happened?
can you tell me who I am?
the old woman keeps on
heart in her head won’t let her stop
arthritic half-blind she feeds her troubles
to the hard ground
seeds for all her babies gone to earth
the silly lost goose
the goose plucking at the hem of her skirt
the goose pecking at the seeding soil
the goose broken-winged below the sky.
He isn’t an angel you know
Oh Yes I could walk for ever and ever with your arms around me
Must you, always, walk on and on
in your best silk stockings
through half-wood half-moorland,
through the night’s damp mists,
his eyes your only guide,
his hands washed clean of desertion,
his arm around your waist?
Must you, always, walk on and on
through mountains of silence,
through Melchester’s rough breath
crossing its bridge below the veiled
moon? Must you, always,
lay your head to rest upon that altar? Tess,
you must walk on. The centuries are turning.
A Wake with Black Feathers
storytelling shiny black dry flutter-heart and ruffled i
others too no sense in crying hungry pies baked with crusty
promise and seeping berryful plenty crows crows crows flickandflack
and tonguing all the livelong day and you mother nowhere
in this kitchen squawk where are they from these swelter-birds
hot-eyed and baking from the oven?
remembering two dozen blackbirds in your pie
i hold you close to my heart
the bird’s nest of my hair is flying
and
the bird’s nest of my head is flying
i hold you close to my heart
for the storybirds feast all from your finest dishes
and where are you now that mother
we have come asquabbling into your kitchen where kraaa-kaa-ka
red-eyed and baking from the oven go the crows storytelling
the blueberries in the pie full of themselves the milk spilt and tea black
your mutt barely grins his old custardy teeth bluster and ruffle
flapping the nets and your children all heartsore and storm-blown?
