Hello WOL chums - long time no hear from Fifi. Apologies for that - making a living got in the way of having a life. But I had to share this with you: Ian McMillan (yes, the Ian McMillan) re-tweeted a poem of mine, so I'm as happy as a cat with two tails! The poem was inspired by watching Karen Alderson knitting during a get-together at an Arvon course run by WOL's very own Julian Jordon with Francesca Beard. A few explanations: for the non-knitters, a welt is the knitted 'waistband' thing at the bottom of a jumper or cardigan, a 'purl' is a type of stitch and 'cabled' refers to the twisted knitting resembling cables, usually found on Aran jumpers (see picture); a 'purler' is something that's the finest of its kind; a 'ganzey' is a term for a thick knitted jumper, traditionally blue, round-necked, and worn by fishermen.   

Knitting a Poem

Each word a stitch, knitted in rows

Of sentences, sounds, inspirations, ideas;

Each word holds the previous word and the next:

The interlinked strands of the thread of a yarn.

Each poem a purler: patterned precisely

Of mohair-fine meanings in cabled quatrains

Of texture and depth; a fisherman’s ganzey

Of fury and glory of phrases familiar

And new-minted turns.

A word-wealthy welt bearing seams of illusion

Or truth or perspective from back and from front,

Befitting its subject and crafted to measure,

Each work must be finished, cast off and tried on.

Removing one stitch, just one word of the rows

Of sentences, sounds, inspirations, ideas -

Removing one stitch

From the interlinked strands of the thread of the yarn

Unravels the whole.