the poet
Rachel Hosein Nisbet is a director of the Elmet Trust, which curates Ted Hughes’ birthplace. She's run eco-poetry workshops, and taught eco-poetry courses in the English Department of the University of Lausanne. Thanks to Yorkshire Policy Innovation Partnership, Rachel has been able to begin A Field Guide to Belonging. This collection-in-progress scores her grandfather’s memoirs about the Upper Calder Valley in blank verse poems. These she echoes in prose poems that revisit sites described – while also, in encountering them, giving place to her Indo-Caribbean heritage. Rachel's early poetry appeared in Blackout Magazine, Offshoots, PAN: Philosophy Activism Nature and Land. With photographer Gilbert Paquet, she co-created Erratics: Greenland, Photographed with Poetry.
the poems
For Three Generations,
We’ve Gone
I arrive late. Still cod fillets and smoked kippers
juicy salmon steaks and the marled flesh of sea bream
are beached on ice before me. Rimbaud criticized
the texture of troubadours’ rhyme-rich verse
but the fishmonger says – sea-fish not spawning yet
water’s too cold. Fish, still fat. Makes him glad
good trade. But a massive moon-roiled orgy
will wreck the Atlantic stocks soon – and then, what crash?
No haddock, no plaice, no choice kipper pairs
his luxuriant drapery, unmade. Take stock
the fish van brings notice of a faint marine breeze
to this town square, whose nearest sands are Carboniferous
delta sediments, once visited by wrasse, stripped bluer
than fisherwomen’s eyes. The scene fades. Cataracts gather.
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Tucked Up,
Under the Jam Shelf
My grandmother makes jam
but I have never seen her
it is too dangerous: her hands extending
close to a boiling pot, veins exposed
brim-full of thick syrup, it churns
and heats to scalding-lava hot
she preserves, standing in the path
of this volcanic caldera
the sweetness of summer fruit
the tart pinch of strawberries
the blusher embrace of raspberries
rich and chalky on the tongue
these were pleasures they both knew
otherwise, before fire blazed
before a motorbike sacrificed
a lad against a pub wall, before
his brother stepped forward to take his place
in the wake of war, in the face of a mother
a mother, who baked kindness into both of them
even as they swelled with naughtiness
like oatcakes mixed with bicarb that dry
racked on a wooden creel, raised ceiling high
a half teaspoon of salt of the earth clinks
the pot turns jammy. Labelled jars reach the jam shelf.
Fledgling Crow
I shadowed as late sun meets mill chimney
I scored north of your nest, as I watch that
O-shaped drill hole, sandblasted, yet coal black
opening your eye to solar therapy
to swifts, now hithering and thithering
with synchronised wing tilts, then, a contretemps flap
it’s your folks! Mum’s tail feathers fold directly
her claws crimp sandstone, her beak clamps dinner
Fountain Street, that all-you-can-eat buffet
a wall-scaling snail, wheaked from a lintel
a strayed clothes moth, ripe for the catch. Dad nabs
a spider, focused on gnat-eddies nearing
its web, spun between two iron railings. Like
a man fishing a weir, he was ripped clear
what offerings, this cornucopia
compost-heaped carrot peelings, bilberries
freighted from Eaves Wood.
O, Crow, what bounty plumps you!
Publishing credits
All poems: exclusive first publication by iamb