Poetry

Below are some examples of Jo Brandon poetry:

 

Cures – Jo Brandon (VP)[3395]

 

There are poems here of gorgeous imaginings where Jo Brandon shakes out the clothes of historical characters and wears them with conviction and poetic truth; there are also poems of personal experience where she charts what is important and what will be remembered.  A brilliant and heart-shaking collection from a poet who just gets better and better.

James Nash, Poet

 

 

 

From Cures:

Pontefract Cake

I was suspicious that it didn’t flower,
I’d heard that sun-bathed liquorice
bloomed silky blue purses that could
slip on the tips of your fingers like thimbles
but the roots run deep, so deep they needle
cellar floors and the ruins of buried walls.
My Pa’s treat was always to shush us like pups
by giving us a stick of it to gnaw, but I better liked
the sweeter Pomfret cakes rattling in the jar
like new pennies being saved for a seaside day.
I like the inside of my mouth turned black
like a cavern and the echoes it sets off
down my throat, how it settles in the stomach
like a warmed blanket and fingers creep
to unscrew the lid for another.
I like to run my tongue over the rise and fall
of the stamped letters; a small miracle to read
with a sense beside your eyes.
Pa says this manufactured stuff will rot
the teeth right out of my head. He says
I’ll be able to keep them in that jar I’ve emptied again.
I’ve looked up some strong words for my Pa,
not curses nor coarse stuff but book words
that sweet-savour almost as strong in my mouth;
I say Pa, it doesn’t matter if its pressed and shaped,
I say, it’s still medicine, Glycyrrhiza glabra, magic
words that sound like I’ve made them up, he has half
a mind, I can tell, to say so, instead he sticks his stump
of sweet wood, his Pontefract cane, back in his mouth
and chews. We savour quietly, each to their own.

 

The Learned Goose

 

“There is a gorgeousness to the collection which confidently encompasses mystery and clarity, menace and seduction, roguishness and solemnity.”

– Rachel Piercy, Poet

 

 

From The Learned Goose:

Girlguiding

Giddy with the solemnity of making promises,
no care for what I would actually promise,
watched the girls ahead of me
in their mud and sun-coloured uniforms,
bobbing their heads, one after the other,
like ducklings seeing a new world
beneath the glass of a lake.
Brown Owl repeats the same wisdom
as each girl enters the forest:
‘You’ll find the answer
on the surface of water’
and they look down and see and see and know.
But I didn’t find the water or the flower-filled forest,
I saw stencil-cut tissue paper and a chipped bathroom mirror
making a hole in the dimness of our church hall.
I didn’t want to lie
so I looked down – and down without saying the words
I should
‘You can try another time…’
The other girls soon filled their sashes, flipped them inside out
and each badge was held with finer stitches.
Mine stayed blank; waiting for those answers to form,
like runes, on the floor.

 

Samples from time as Digital Poet in Residence at Bradford Literature Festival, 2018:

Crow Hill Bog Burst

 

 

 

 

 

wax print poemundercliffe

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

From Phobia:

 

 

 

‘These poems stay with you; warmth infused with the extraordinary everyday… spun together in a kind of classical enchantment.’

– James Nash, Poet

 

 

 

 

 

 

These Bones

It’s strange to see your bones, smoke-white
and bright, know finally what you’re made of
though you took biology at school
you expect to see your heart resting mid-chest
like a set of bloody, unfeathered angel’s wings
and you think you see your soul as a shadow on the film
(because even now when you’re asked to draw God
you give him a beard).
They turn the sun-box off and I am a blue-black space
“there don’t seem to be any fractures”
“no breaks or splinters?” – I step up close
eager to light it up again.

 

Our Lady

She paints Mary over and over
her fingertips are stained blue
and gold. Mary’s eyes are always
sketched with a squint as if
she is blind or looking into the centre
of a sun. Her lips are always grey
as if she is painting out Mary’s colour,
saving her from accusations of feeling
anything other than pain.

I commissioned her to paint me a smiling Mary
in red and black, Warhol style
give her the look, I said, she would have had
the day Joseph believed her story, lent his name.
She divided the canvas into four, an eye, and an eye,
half a cupid’s bow, the corner of a mouth
held apart by her lines. She looked pleased
“Mary couldn’t smile without bearing the weight of the cross”
I was informed. I left her to those broad angels and
down-turned mouths she preferred.