Get Back In The Pool

Yesterday entries opened for the Great North Swim -  Windermere on 18/19 June 2011. Before I went to bed last night I looked at the pool timetable for the aquatic centre. This morning I had some work to do, but beforehand I packed my swimming bag and put it by the front door. 'Hmm,' I thought. 'It looks like I'm intending to go swimming.' 

Sure enough, I did. First time since Sunday 26 September. I swam 16x50m lengths and came out buzzing, and buzzed for the rest of the day.

Although my swim bore no resemblance to this one described by Vicki Feaver, the title is just right.

Swimming in January
Because, like every new lover,
I want to enter the underworld
and take you with me, I lead you 
into the sea in January - naked into a sea
that flows round our calves and knees
like green fire: deeper and deeper -
feet off the shingle now - gulping half air,
half salt-water, drifting almost to the edge
where there's no returning
before we strike back
to the beach - past windsurfers
sealed in rubber wet-suits, struggling
to lift orange sails, past wading birds
dipping yellow beaks into a film
of mirrored cloud - emerge,
white legs moving like sticks over
oil-blackened sand, at the breakwater
where we draped clothes and towels,
rubbing each other back to life.


Vicki Feaver
(ps. she didn't select any of my poems in Mslexia's competition in 2010, but I bear her no malice.)

Preparing To Take The Plunge

The weather is changing - blustery and autumnal but still with a warm wind - and Rainy City is living up to its name. However, we've committed to swimming in Salford Docks on the 26th, so we signed up at the watersports centre for Saturday morning's open water swimming session to familiarise ourselves with the water and a part of the course.

Saturday's session will start at 6.30am!! so we nipped down to watch the Monday evening session to prepare ourselves (didn't have time on this occasion to jump in).

The training takes place in Ontario Basin, which is where the Great Swim finishes

 and here are some people getting in ...ulp... look at those hardy souls in shorty wetsuits and those brave boys in their trunks...eek! I will be in full wetsuit, possibly two hats and at this point I'm wondering whether I'll wear the swim socks I bought in January. I do like the feel of the water on my feet though, so maybe not, we'll see.

I hope the organisers will have cleared these guys out of the way

they were looking a bit territorial...

Niamh from Words A Day visited my blog and mentioned The Handless Maiden by Vicki Feaver. There is a poem in this collection called The River God which is a great poem, but here's one by Stevie Smith which I believe Feaver was nodding to when she wrote hers. 

He is another character I'm hoping not to meet while I'm swimming...

The River God

I may be smelly and I may be old,

Rough in my pebbles, reedy in my pools

But where my fish float by I bless their swimming.

And I like the people to bathe in me, especially women.

But I can drown the fools

Who bathe too close to the weir, contrary to rules.

And they take a long time drowning

As I throw them up now and then in a spirit of clowning.

Hi yih, yippity yap, merrily I flow,

O I may be an old foul river but I have plenty of go.

Once there was a lady who was too bold

She bathed in me by the tall black cliff where the water runs cold,

So I brought her down here

To be my beautiful dear.

Oh will she stay with me will she stay

This beautiful lady, or will she go away?

She lies in my beautiful deep river bed with many a weed

To hold her, and many a waving reed.

Oh who would guess what a beautiful white face lies there

Waiting for me to smooth and wash away the fear

She looks at me with. Hi yih, do not let her

Go. There is no one on earth who does not forget her

Now. They say I am a foolish old smelly river

But they do not know of my wide original bed

Where the lady waits, with her golden sleepy head.

If she wishes to go I will not forgive her.

Stevie Smith

from Modern Women Poets ed. Deryn Rees-Jones

...see what I mean?!

Mslexia Poetry Competition

It's that time of year again - time to assemble some poems and spruce them up for a beauty contest in the form of  Mslexia's annual Poetry Competition.

This year's judge is Vicki Feaver, a poet whose work I admire very much. Although she was interested in poetry from a young age, she only started writing in earnest and publishing her work later in life  - comparatively speaking - in her mid-thirties. Unlike some female poets, she brings her experience as a woman very potently into her poetry, I really appreciate and enjoy this aspect of her work, and take permission from it when I'm writing. There's a vulnerability to the way she writes, about some very dark subjects. Yet in the vulnerability, there is a streak which comes over as doggedly determined and tenacious. For example, listen to her reading her poem Music and God. I can't stop myself from crying when I hear it. And as for the ending, well I won't spoil it, but the first time I heard it, it came as quite a shock, and still makes my hair stand on end.

So, which poems to send to her? They will have to have legs, to run past the initial sifters, and make it to the final batch that she'll get to see. The cost to enter this competition is relatively cheap - £5 for 3 poems, so how many little batches will I select - one? two? three?!! Last year one of my poems was a runner-up, a very small poem, picked out by Ruth Padel. It was such a wonderful, thrilling experience, I'd love to repeat it, so here goes.....