2015 MELITA HUME POETRY PRIZE SHORTLIST FOCUS: JESSICA MAYHEW

SHE GRADUATED WITH A MASTERS FROM UCL

Jessica Mayhew's pamphlet, Someone Else's Photograph, was published in 2012 by Crystal Clear Creators. She graduated with a Masters from University College London in 2015. Her poetry and fiction have been published in magazines and online, including in Ambit, Stand and Staple.

Rainy Season

Monks stay put

so they don’t hurt the shoots.

We trawl through gutter-run

the colour of precious wood

for another meal of rice

while cockroaches tide up walls

above the lapping line.

Fon Tok, rain tongue

spitting on a foot of soi water,

lightning I cannot pronounce

but count, gaining ground

each time saffron dusk cracks –

five miles, four miles, three.

We lie with windows open,

swiping mosquitoes we can only hear

but smear someone else’s blood,

mingled with mine, down white paint.

When I sleep, the rain

is bats back home

that have somehow learned to sing

the splashy notes of blackbirds

decked with frost, a proper October.

Here, alms bowls fill

with baht and water,

monks crouch, protected by the blue

of old tattoos, the five lines,

Buddha, serene, around every neck,

but all this season, your chest when bare, was wet.

We should make an amulet of the rain.

Comments

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

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