Turning Precious Memories into Poems

With the best of intentions I restarted my blog posts in May of this year but then my sister died. She'd been ill for the last year but I always thought she'd be fine again, thought we'd go walking once more along the seafront near her home, a seaside town where she'd lived since her time on a nearby commune. I can't imagine what it would be like to live on a commune, or in a caravan on a cliff top field, which was another of her many exploits. How can siblings be so different? I was always the staid, sensible, quiet one. My sister was the bubbly, glamorous, adventurous one. 

It takes weeks, sometimes months, maybe even years, for precious memories to be turned into poems. For example, in 2023 Under the Radar published Herring Night which emerged out of a childhood memory of my Grandma and Great Aunts who came from Eastern Europe and loved nothing more than a supper of pickled herrings. The poem talks about the Polish celebration of Śledziówka when herrings are a special feast on the evening before Lent, and compares it with the poverty experienced in the early 1900s in Eastern Europe when herrings were considered a blessing when there was nothing else to eat. The final version was draft number 10. Numbers 1 to 9 had rambled through a myriad of forms.

Maybe one day I'll be able to write a poem about my sister. Before she died she'd requested a Humanist burial with a cardboard coffin, no eulogy, no prayers, just a peaceful meadow. The funeral director asked me for a piece of music reflecting her life, to be played after the coffin had been lowered. My sister loved dancing. Long ago she had been awarded medals for her ballroom dancing. Her jive routine would pull a crowd in a dance hall and she adored musical theatre. I selected 'Good Morning Good Morning' from 'Singing in the Rain' partly for the upbeat nature of the song and partly for the amazing dance routine that we used to watch together from the film - it's the scene where the three of them end the dance with a forward roll over the back of a settee. When the funeral director played the music, it created a certain incongruence in that peaceful meadow, but everyone there agreed that it reflected their memories of my sister. She did so enjoy her life. Rest in peace Big Sis xx