Rebecca Gethin
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Rebecca Gethin lives on Dartmoor which often inspires her writing. She is a keen gardener and walker and sells curious children’s books from round the world. She used to be a teacher in schools and tutored Creative Writing in a men’s prison for four years.
She has had two poetry collections published: River is the Plural of Rain (Oversteps Books, 2009); A Handful of Water (Cinnamon Press, 2014) and two novels, the latest being What the horses heard (Cinnamon Press, 2014). Her poems have appeared in several magazines such as The Interpreter’s House, Prole, The Lighthouse and Rialto and in various anthologies such as Her Wings of Glass (Second Light). Her sequence, Dartmoor Princess, is to be published in Raceme. A new pamphlet is also to be published by Three Drops in a Cauldron later this summer (possibly entitled A Rowan Sprig) and another pamphlet is in the making. Rebecca occasionally runs poetry workshops and she has given readings in Oxford, London, Swindon and in Devon. She has talked about her novels at Ways with Words in Devon. Her website is www.rebeccagethinwordpress.com |
Cleave
The sea hangs in a blue triangle,
a liquid held in a chalice
between two hills.
Far off, it looks higher
than me and, knowing it’s water,
I think how it might tip
and surge through the valley
and across the land. But it stays
in place, never spilling a drop.
…
Walking away I keep turning round –
a drag in my limbs –
to see how the level of blueness
shrinks, inch by inch
as I go back, step by step
towards the demands of roads,
cars, maps and time-keeping
until the curvature
of the hills has rolled closed.
(published in Butcher’s Dog, 2015)
Return
Today light is greying earlier,
fewer leaves on trees. I’m ravelling up
the route with my back to where I’m going,
as if being dragged. All the way there
station on station and all the way back
reversing their order. I didn’t notice the tall
mine-stacks, nor realise that sometimes
they lock the carriages at stops.
The next seat reads the Safety leaflet,
looks for the alarms. Easy to feel lost
in the fog beyond the window, losing
the way, losing track
like my grandmother forgetting not to make
two cups of tea. She always said only ever
buy return tickets. All I need do
is sit and wait till I get there.
(published in Brittle Star, 2105)
Blue
The colour of sky and sunlight
he acrobats
among the tree tops,
or with head on one side
he sometimes considers
the abracadabra
of the high twigs
where he splits open a seed
or spin-twizzles
a caterpillar
like a strand of spaghetti
and as he skitters
out of sight, you wonder
how the cobalt of his wings
grew from the yolk of an egg.
(published in The Broadsheet, 2015)
The sea hangs in a blue triangle,
a liquid held in a chalice
between two hills.
Far off, it looks higher
than me and, knowing it’s water,
I think how it might tip
and surge through the valley
and across the land. But it stays
in place, never spilling a drop.
…
Walking away I keep turning round –
a drag in my limbs –
to see how the level of blueness
shrinks, inch by inch
as I go back, step by step
towards the demands of roads,
cars, maps and time-keeping
until the curvature
of the hills has rolled closed.
(published in Butcher’s Dog, 2015)
Return
Today light is greying earlier,
fewer leaves on trees. I’m ravelling up
the route with my back to where I’m going,
as if being dragged. All the way there
station on station and all the way back
reversing their order. I didn’t notice the tall
mine-stacks, nor realise that sometimes
they lock the carriages at stops.
The next seat reads the Safety leaflet,
looks for the alarms. Easy to feel lost
in the fog beyond the window, losing
the way, losing track
like my grandmother forgetting not to make
two cups of tea. She always said only ever
buy return tickets. All I need do
is sit and wait till I get there.
(published in Brittle Star, 2105)
Blue
The colour of sky and sunlight
he acrobats
among the tree tops,
or with head on one side
he sometimes considers
the abracadabra
of the high twigs
where he splits open a seed
or spin-twizzles
a caterpillar
like a strand of spaghetti
and as he skitters
out of sight, you wonder
how the cobalt of his wings
grew from the yolk of an egg.
(published in The Broadsheet, 2015)