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In this episode of Elixir, Helen is talking to Rozâ about two of her own poems ‘Mother’ & ‘My grandfather’s socks’
Topics of discussion:
Parental vs Romantic Love
Teaching Music
Motivating children with creative projects
The way creative teachers wish they could teach children
The importance of the arts in schooling
The vital importance of practising writing
My grandfather’s socks
Although my grandfather died two years before I was born,
I feel as if I know him by the things he forgot.
I am the things he left behind in this world before he went
to, well, wherever it is he went.
I know him by my name, my Latvian, mysteriously spelled
and wrongly pronounced name.
Thank you for all the conversation starters with all the Smiths
and Smythes of the world.
I love to see their names squirm when they read mine.
I know him by my bushy eyebrows that furrow
in that way only a brooding Eastern European’s would,
telling the world around me my deepest and darkest secrets.
I know him from my teeth that sit in my mouth
like an assembly of unruly children.
I have your wife’s sweet mouth
but I also have your tremendous teeth.
You must have been very wise to have such teeth
as those rearranging my jaw to fit in.
I know him by the feel of my tongue, sitting wrongly in my mouth.
Every time I slip up on a word I know it’s because my big, Latvian
tongue won’t fit in my tiny English mouth
and is too slow for my huge Italian voice.
I know him by the tear in the corner of my Nonna’s eye
each and every time she talks about you,
and I know from it that you must have been as handsome
as you were hers. I know you because
she’ll never love another.
I know him through my mother’s stories.
I can even feel her cheek still stinging 40 years after
you slapped her round the face with your huge,
soapy, washing-up-gloved hands.
I know him by the features in my brother’s face
that tell the world that he’s not from around here
though he was born in Homerton hospital like the rest of ya.
But most of all I know you by my feet.
Though you left me your name, face and memories,
the thing that brings me closest to you are my feet:
my cold, cold feet which cannot warm up
without your old grey socks that your daughter
gave me years ago when she realised I had your malady.
And so, I sit here on the edge of my bed
in another part of the world,
a 24 year old, English speaking woman,
unburdened by the hardships of war and refuge.
And I am my grandfather, her Baba, his Nonno,
her eternal fancy man, because I will always
have your feet and I will always know you.
Mother
Mother, like a god
Do you see me all at once?
From birth to the earth?
From womb to my tomb?
How many times have you seen me born?
How many times will you see me die?
How did you watch all the boundless possibilities of pain and suffering
And let us go forth as suckling babes into it?
Do you remember our first steps?
Did you see our first fall?
Do you look down on your creation?
Do you judge our choices?
Do you watch us fail and hope that we’ll find the right way again?
Do you see our faith and smile?
Do you hurt when we cry?
Do you hear our prayers and listen?
Do you know our wishes and grant them?
Do you know our wants and give all you possibly have to give?
Did you see that we would change?
Did you know that we would grow?
Did you know in your breast
That when evolution brought forth suckling
It brought forth nurturing too?
On that first Mother’s Day,
At the dawn of mammals
the day that love was invented.
The people behind Rozâ’s poems:
Rozâ’s maternal grandfather Arvids
Some of the paperwork from when Arvids was seeking asylum in Germany
Maternal grandparents Arvids and Maria Rosa (Nonno and Nonna)
Paternal grandmother Paddy
If you’d like to support The Elixir Poetry Podcast, you are very welcome to buy Helen a coffee :)