I Review Lucy Ingrams' Light-fall

All That Is Most Hopeful

Light-

           fall

by Lucy Ingrams

Flarestack

After heartbreak, the thought of another love, a tender love, can become a dry territory to be skirted, or walled off. Not in Lucy Ingrams’ Light-fall. Here, ‘loved me    loved me not’ exist in the same breaths and curvatures, to love, have loved, ‘is to carry  …  is to be carried away.’

Reading these poems again and again has enabled for me a different vision of what it is to be alert and sentient in the world after a thinning love: they are open with courage, even when (especially when?) ‘weary of flowers’.

Bound in the familiarly confident Flarestack style, each page holds levers, phrases and twists of sound, which shift and interact to unlock sensations of light and thorn, and above all a strange hope.

It is rare to find a pamphlet in which every poem sings, and I enjoyed so much about this from the very start. Its lines flex, supple as the sea rendered in the exquisite opening poem, Swimmer, right up to the final exhalation of Blue hour. The rich imagery of intimacy and distance ranges across landscapes and seasons, with an originality that requires close attention.

‘Can / you-in-me really heal?’ asks Ingrams in Lammas. Yes. And what is more, she has made the intimacies of a love’s passing available to her readers as a balm, beautiful as skylark song, strawberry light, and greenwood.

Light-fall is available from flarestackpoets@gmail.com

I Spy With My Little Eye Something Beginning with ...

 V                                                                                    V                        v

There were a dozen or more,        V          v                                           v

                                                            V            V

                                                                                       some larger than others.

We looked up to see Vs in the sky at 4.15pm on Saturday 7th November towards the end of our socially-distanced bike ride. Geese, distant at first, flew closer, then directly overhead, honking, purposeful. 

                                               V                                                     v

                      V

                                    V v                                                           V

We stopped on the cycleway. Dusk was approaching fast and the fly-past had all the exhilaration of a murmuration - thousands of geese in exact formations, heading north-west along the river.

I took out my phone, my fingers numb with cold. I snapped a wonky photo, then checked the BBC news website, saw that the Democrats had taken Pennsylvania in the US Election.

We pushed the rules, fist bumped, joined in with the geese, shrieked for wonderful happiness. 

The geese passed over, leaving us with a multiplicity of V-signs:

V : for get lost and good riddance.

V : for victory. 

V : for very, very, very, very, very relieved. 

I Party With Friends

Five of my friends have birthdays today - I'm wondering if I can celebrate, if the rule of six still applies for the moment.

At least I have been able to message my Longest-Serving Friend without breaking any rules. The girl I met at camp when we were 10, turns one month older than me today, as she always does. What we had in common back then has taken us 45 laughter-filled years to uncover, and we're still counting. We bonded over ping pong tables when we first met at camp, girls in a boys' world. Eight years later, we met again as freshers at Durham University. From that time on, we took better care of staying in touch, though she still beats me at ping pong. 

It's my other longer, Longest-Serving Friend's birthday too (2). And the birthday of my longer Longest-Serving Friend's son, James (3 - pictured below with the best of smiles and smartest of waistcoats), and of another Very Long-Serving Friend, Rebecca (4). The fifth is Amy (5), friend, colleague, former student. 

3rd November - the day on which Long-Serving Friends are born. Take note, if you want to avoid me.

My friend Paul is (2), though by some definitions, he should be (1). Paul has always been 14 years older than me, and when we first met, I was 6 or 7, and he was organist and choir master at my father's church, and he to tell me and brother Matthew off repeatedly for chatting in choir practice. So it's a semantic point, whether he is, in fact, my actual longest-serving friend. I argue that I was a pain-in-the-neck for the first 10 years at least, only graduating to friendship in my late teens.

Paul might be responsible for this blog's theme, however, as he allowed me to practise early DIY skills at his home, when, with my brothers, I helped to paint (mainly) his walls. And he brought apple juice when I had pneumonia (twice). I was around 8/9/10 on those occasions, and very ill. Paul re-labelled the apple juice 'Lizzy's Apple Juice', knowing how important that level of detail was in a large family. I can see it still, in a green bottle, sitting beside my bed, reassuring me that one day I would feel well enough again to drink it.  

Paul played at my wedding - the organ was half-built, though you'd never know it. It was over thirty degrees of heat, and he played baroque,  making best use of the notes available to him. He also played the organ at my mother's funeral three months later. I became goddaughter to Ruth, his daughter, and he is godfather to Jonty, my son. When they were growing up, spending new year's eve at Paul and Deborah's home was the highlight of my sons' year. And in that very hot summer a couple of years ago, he and Deborah provided refreshments at Jonty's post-A level piano concert. Happy birthday, Paul. Musician. Physics teacher. Steam engine fan. Reassuring and loyal friend. 

So rule of six, tier 2 or 3 or not, I'm going to party, celebrate friendship, eat cake on your behalf, toast you all, 3rd November babies, with a glass of something sparkling, and later, blow out the candles, make a wish that our friendships in the coming year will continue long, longer, longest.