Two poems by Susan Utting, both inspired by workshops at Reading Museum, led by Adrian Blamires and Lesley Saunders, the first at the “Oscar Wilde As Critic” exhibition, and the second a workshop looking at medieval artworks in the Museum, in this case the Bayeux Tapestry.
—
The Value of Nothing
“Society often forgives the criminal; it never forgives the dreamer”
Oscar Wilde: The Critic as Artist
The girl who stares into space is on detention, again,
for insubordination.
For insubordination read
daydreaming, that other world reached quietly by
means of dust-mote moving staircases, by way of
silences.
For silences read dumb ignorance, read
indolence, read downright insolence; by means of helter-
skelter slides through city-dirt-encrusted windows, across
playground tarmac, over regulation iron railings, over
pavements, along gutters,
(for gutters read star-gazers’ resting places)
down alleyways and entries, down muddy lanes to tree places,
up tree trunks, through the scratch of branches, slap of rain-
bedraggled leaves, up-up-away and through to where they know
the value of the nothing in her head:
that painted place that zigzags,
coils and skitters her to other lands, to anywhere she fancies,
where they know the priceless,
fiery possibilities of indolence.
—
The Ladies of the Leek Embroidery Society Copy the Bayeux Tapestry
Miss Edith Wardle, Miss Frost of Derby, Mrs C Gwynne, Miss Gater
Our fingertips bear witness to our labour, our thimble
fingers wither, pale beneath their metal caps. Poor, dear
Elizabeth has grown quite thin, round-backed from stooping
for The Ride to Bosham, and Phoebe’s wrists grew stiff when
Harold Sailed the Sea – the tedium of all those waves,
stem-stitchery in scalloped flourish after flourish!
Miss Gillett of Garfield, Miss F Pattinson, Mrs Watson, Miss Parker
We envied Mary Edith, though it was a stretch, as she
worked her magic on the comet, that miracle in the sky
for which her long back pained her for weeks beyond
the final knot and bitten yarn. Emily’s huddled witnesses
stared up amazed at what she’d made. Day after long day
we embroidered on, couch stitch, stem stitch, myth and men,
Miss Turnock, Miss Bentley, Mrs Worthington, Mrs Charles Smith
horse and great ship, cock and raven, hawk and bow and arrow,
broidered canopy, broad shield, legend, history. We have sewn
ourselves into the woof and warp of cloth, thread by thread
picked up precisely till, spellbound by our own crafting,
our needlepoints have made a chain, a sisterhood that holds us
here: read our names, these are our stories. Read us here.
Miss Clowes, Miss Lunn, Miss Garside, Miss A Allen, Mrs Iliffe …
—
SUSAN UTTING was born in South London, moved twenty times in forty years, then settled, after a fashion, in Berkshire. Her collections of poetry include Half the Human Race, Striptease, Houses Without Walls and Fair’s Fair.