Mud and stars

Three poems by Jemimah Hawkes from her collection, Startled Body.

Girton and Histon woods, 29th May 

There are many kinds of mud:
pale desert mud / which mushroom-clouds grey / when I step in; 	
footprinted, hoofprinted, / pawprinted, clawprinted mud, 
seashore mud / ribbed by tractor wheels, 
eczema mud flaked dry, 
mud pocked like frog skin, / snakeskin mud, 
mud scored deep / by metres-long spines, 
lithe mud like fossilised tailbones, 
mud which reaches the fields / only to dry out in the sun. 

Girton College, 17th July

Little chapel of the wood
Whose floor is stained glass, 
Gold leaf, brilliant needles.

Light quakes over the panes
Like water in wind, pines
Gild themselves in filtered sun. 

Wings perambulate 
A shared centre; 
The littlest shrubs are moved. 

When I leave, the sun
Has already shifted
Into stepping stones of light. 

Girton College, 22nd July, 4am

I go looking for dark and quiet
but find the motorway	sliding into dawn. 

The moon still hangs
over sleepless Girton, 
facing off streetlights, 
sunlight burning up the sky. 

Below, lorries honk		into volcanic haze.

Jemimah Hawkes: How I write

Beginning in April by visiting local natural sites, collecting sticks, making sound recordings, drawing and taking bark rubbings, I tried to engage every sense in the creation of these poems. I decided early on that the time and location the poems emerged from were essential parts, and so my collection, Startled Body, became a kind of nature journal or monitor as spring turned to summer. Note-taking was central to the writing process, and I enjoyed paying close attention and responding creatively to the world around me. It was important for the poems to stand alone as distilled moments of experience but also participate in a larger whole and I worked across a variety of forms, trying to convey as much of what I had encountered as possible.

Jemimah Hawkes has just completed an MA in poetry at Royal Holloway, including a final collection, Startled Body. www.jemimahhawkes.com

All poems copyright © Jemimah Hawkes 2024.