arts

Poem Of The Week: Poams By Clare E. Potter

Poams

When you were seven I said I was giving up;
you broke from your colouring to ask, What?
Give up what, Mam? Maybe your child’s ear
needed assurance I did not mean you
(I hadn’t realised I’d said it aloud). Poems,
writing, trying to juggle all that, that’s all,

You laid your blue down, deliberate,
shifted the tone in your voice so you became
my mother that time, potato in palm,
peeler pointing at me, sorting those tears out.

Well, you can’t give up. You been doin them poams
since you were little, and look now, you got me
doin them too; and I’m brilliant!
Your words were a hoof to my doubt.

You let the dust of the kick settle
then picked up your pencil and finished the sky
-some spilled from the page onto the table,
the wide sky, which you later filled
with birds and other winged creatures.

Image by Pew Nguyen on Unsplash

Clare E. Potter’s fine poem – a recalled dialogue between mother and child – demands little commentary beyond that which is yielded naturally, in the affirming warmth of an eavesdrop. For this simple hymn to artistic process and resolution, to reciprocal encouragement, to generational continuity and to love, is a kind of corrective, a restoration of purpose vouchsafed by accident, and from an unexpected source.

The innocent wonder of the child, as (s)he first misinterprets the mother’s comment, and then responds to the clarification, is wrought in childlike language, as (s)he weakens maternal resolve in a moment of ingenuous uplift. The narrator’s confidence is restored by a ‘hoof’, a reset kick as well-directed as her own mother’s remembered pastoral care, itself rendered with a deliberate alliterative flourish.

The child’s rudimentary artistic endeavours are a mirror to an unsullied cheerfulness of attitude, a presentiment of a future enabled by the integrity of the mother figure’s own efforts, and confirmation of the latter’s epiphanic reawakening. As the child fills the canvas ‘with birds and other winged creatures’, a page is written.

‘Poams’ was first published in Poetry Wales, Winter 19-20, Volume 55, No.2

For more information about Poetry Wales click here.

Also by Steve Whitaker...

Poem Of The Week: The Old Pantry By Peter Scupham (1933-2022)

Review: There's No 'F' In Wonderful By Bill Broady

Poem Of The Week: Sleeping Through By Faith Lawrence

Poem Of The Week: Abra-Cadabra By Grace Nichols

Children’s Book Review: Hide And Seek: A Little Wizards Adventure By Sarah Jane Elliott

	Sunrise	3:41AM
Sunset	8:36PM