Biography

Poet, 44, with a
veritable cornucopia of verses, stories and
observations. Specialises in motivational poems for
cats and for people. Rachel is many things: the
best-dressed woman on the poetry circuit; the woman
who won the 2004 Glastonbury Festival Poetry Slam,
although she only entered it for the experience (and
was perhaps the only person on site wearing
court-shoes); and the author of the well-known
story-books about Cheesegrater Leg-Iron Lion. In
short, a most peculiar talent.

She has had her poetry broadcast on Radios 1, 3 and 4, and is still holding out for Radio 2.

"Technicolour suburban entertainment" - John Hegley

"I was weeing myself" - Sue Perkins

"I love Rachel Pantechnicon" - Josie Long

***** - Three Weeks magazine, Edinburgh Fringe

Samples

LADY OF SHALOTT DAY

Don’t you hate it when it’s Lady of Shalott Day?
Don’t you don’t you?

Tirra lira tirra lira
goes the alarm on my bedside cabinet
and here’s one problem that can’t be solved
by reaching out and grabbing it –
because today is Lady of Shalott Day,
only once a year,
when you have to go into work in all your Lady of Shalott gear
and if you forget and wear your cardigan and your pop-socks
you have to put some money in the Lady of Shalott box.
And there’s Derek from Wages in his armour and his stupid plume
making a tapestry of the timesheets in the next-door room;
and it’s rosemary for remembrance
a pomegranate in your sandwich-box
when all you want’s a Penguin biscuit
but you daren’t risk it, not at all.
And meanwhile in the typing-pool
we’re not allowed to look directly at our typewriter keys –
the Qs the Ws the Es the Rs the Ts –
we have to look at them in a mirror;
and it’s rosemary for remembrance Tippex for typing-errors.
And we’re not allowed to look directly at the window-cleaner
cleaning windows leaning on a major supporting pillar
with his little ukulele singing Tirra lira
and his Lonsdale sweatshirt reading Eladsnol.

But it’s nice when you go home for a shower
where a shower-curtain hangs aslant the bath
and the eight-hour Shalottathon is on
with Philip Schofield as King Arth

* * * * * * *


FOUR MAGNOLIA WALLS

Four magnolia walls was all I wanted,
four magnolia walls was all I wanted.
Once you were a geography teacher,
now you are a decorator.
All I wanted was my four magnolia walls
and what I didn’t want was what I got:
you painted me a mural of a diagram
of an aerial view of a bird’s-foot delta –
alluvial deposits yellow, bright blue for the water,
the course of the river corresponding
to an existing hairline crack.
Geography teacher decorator, geography teacher decorator,
geography teacher decorator, don’t come back.

All I wanted in my bathroom
was the normal style of tiling – white tiles, horizontal,
every seventeenth tile with a picture of a seashell.
What I didn’t want was every seashell annotated
in Humbrol paint, approximately dated
to its nearest geological era,
telling me if it’s a bivalve, a brachiopod or a lamellibranch.
Geography teacher decorator, geography teacher decorator,
geography teacher decorator, don’t come back.

Underneath the ceiling, ornamental frieze:
stencilled lettering spelling out the principal industries
of the principal towns in Northamptonshire –
Wellingborough: boots & shoes
Kettering: boots & shoes too
Corby: steel
Brackley: wool
Daventry: unknown.
Geography teacher decorator, geography teacher decorator,
geography teacher decorator, actually that’s quite useful –
could you do me something similar with Rutland
in the vestibule?

* * * * * * *


GREAT GOD QUETZALCOATL GREEN HOT-WATER BOTTLE COVER

No more eiderdowns for me,
no extra sheets or electric socks -
there’s a new accoutrement in my blanket-box:
I’ve got a great god Quetzalcoatl green hot-water bottle cover -
a present from my aunt and uncle
from their trip to Central America –
Uncle Barry Auntie Erica,
both explorers, that’s how they met -
they both simultaneously discovered
the source of the River Ganges.
Half an hour either way, they’d’ve missed each other,
wouldn’t have met.
Life’s funny like that.

Anyway, they said 'Rachel, we’ve got you
a great god Quetzalcoatl green hot-water bottle cover.
We hope you like it -
it was either that or a pillowcase shaped like the god of spring
with a skull for a face and his liver on the outside,
but they didn’t do them in lavender
and we know you like lavender.'

But I like my great god Quetzalcoatl green hot-water bottle cover:
one half’s feathery, the other half’s scaly,
because of the dual nature of the deity -
part bird, part snake, part snake, part bird.
The feathery half keeps me awake, tickles my middle,
makes me laugh;
the scaly half gives me nightmares about lizards
and in that respect it’s a lot like life –
partly nice and partly nasty.

All poems are copyright of the originating author. Permission must be obtained before using or performing others' poems.