The new Write Out Loud Poem of the Week is ‘Aubade’ by Terry Jones. The poem is written in a form known as a specula; after the mid-point of the poem every word or phrase used up to that point is employed in reverse order, with the punctuation occasionally varied to allow the structure to make sense. In 2011 Terry Jones won first prize in the Bridport international poetry competition; in the same year his extended pamphlet, Furious Resonance, was published by Poetry Salzburg.

 

When did you start writing poetry?

I began writing poetry somewhere back along the forest tracks of time when I grew more aware of the musical/ textural dimensions of language. 

 

Do you attend regular poetry mic nights?

I don't attend regular open mic nights, but I have done readings from time to time.

 

Your favourite poet/poem?

The poets that speak to me vary and change, but perennial favourites include Donne, Hopkins, Hardy, Yeats ... and more contemporaneously Jorie Graham and John Burnside, though there are many others in both categories. 

 

You're cast away on a desert island ... what's your luxury?

Desert island?  Well, you'd need some booze, I think.

 

 

AUBADE

by Terry Jones

 

My mother leaned against dreams.
                        Listen carefully;
she did not row above the river of thought,
she did not bleed a flower of imagination –
my mother leaned against dreams.
On a morning when her children rose in sunlight
to squeeze the kitchen back to waking,
and the table found its legs like a foal,
the black cooker shook its head,
chairs were branches in wind.
In the renewed silence of being,
white bread breathed in and out
where curtains which had been clouds
fell once more to their tasks;
at this time when one pale child or other
rose like a reflection from a well,
her face grew strange.

                        Listen carefully.

My mother leaned against dreams;
her face grew strange,
rose like a reflection from a well
at this time.  When one pale child or other
fell once more to their tasks
where curtains which had been clouds
and white bread breathed in and out,
in the renewed silence of being,
chairs were branches; in wind,
the black cooker shook its head
and the table found its legs like a foal.
To squeeze the kitchen back to waking,
on a morning when her children rose, in sunlight
my mother leaned against dreams:
she did not bleed; a flower of imagination,
she did not row.  Above the river of thought,

                        listen:  carefully

                           my mother leaned against dreams.