The Fig Tree - Issue 3
with Featured Poet Matthew M.C. Smith
Welcome to the third issue of The Fig Tree. I continue to be delighted with and encouraged by the positive responses to previous issues. The quality of submissions continues to be high.
This issue has a Featured Poet who I first met online when he was suggested as a guest poet on a Zoom session for our Read to Write group during a Covid lockdown. After he mentioned his admiration of the Welsh Second World War poet Alun Lewis, we jointly presented a session on Lewis over Zoom. We haven't met yet in real life, our main opportunity being scuppered when Matt caught Covid – I was in Swansea, where Matt lives, for the weekend but he was obviously unavailable!
Matt isn't just a terrific poet in his own right, he is also, amongst other things, a publisher of anthologies and individual pamphlets and collections through Black Bough Poetry and the host of TopTweetTuesday on the website formerly known as Twitter. You can read my review of his collection The Keeper of Aeons on my blog Tim Fellows Poetry. Matt's drive is to encourage and promote modern, short imagistic poetry and I've been lucky enough to be included in several of the anthologies, my personal favourite being the Tutankhamun themed Wonderful Things. Black Bough is, of course, a reference to the iconic imagistic poem In the Station of the Metro by Ezra Pound.
A quick word on Bob Beagrie, who completes a hat-trick, having appeared in all three issues so far. I recently reviewed his latest collection, Romanceros, on my personal blog. It is inspired by the Spanish Civil War, which ties in with my own interest through the poet Miguel Hernández. I can highly recommend it.
Our cover image for this issue is once again provided by Paul Brough, and is a variant of the image from issue 2. I think he's got a number of ideas for possible alternatives in future – I hope so, it could be fun to do a “spot the change” challenge if the changes are minor!
Some of you may be asking “why did he ask us for our favourite poet in our submissions?”. Or perhaps not. Firstly, it's to see who is paying attention. But I'm also actually interested. I'm gathering the info to see if any trends pop up and at the end of the year I'll do a special blog post with some feedback on it.
Forthcoming issues are filling up, but please do continue to send in submissions. I've tried, in this issue in particular, to show a variety of styles and voices. The poets included are wide ranging in their experience and how much they have been published – I intend this to continue, but only if I get the right range and ongoing high quality of submissions.
Thanks
Tim Fellows, Editor
Contributors: Matthew M.C. Smith, Bob Beagrie, Beth Brooke, Lisa Falshaw, Mike Farren, Moira Garland, Charlotte Holm, Alex Oliver, Hannah Stone, Rod Whitworth and Paul Brough.
The Fig Tree Featured Poet – Matthew M.C. Smith
One Child
I climbed the high birch
from my den,
a camouflaged, tarpaulin camp
with lookout holes.
I ascended
to be high, to reach, to dare myself,
a bow strapped to my back
with sharpened arrows,
bearing a chief’s feather headdress,
a shock of colour.
I was nimble up that trunk
stealthy on branches,
a plastic knife between my teeth
and a green grenade in my pocket
from another playset.
I reached empty nests,
some frayed, blue rope,
a frisbee swaying on twigs, faded in the sun
and felt the springing bough
testing its weight.
I fell with a crack
into the swirling-green, upturned
hurricane of ground,
a little, curly-blonde scrap
tumbling,
plumblining,
into a thud
of a heap.
Sucker-punched
on a bramble-mound,
barely breathing
and later,
not daring
to tell a soul
or show my broken arrows.
Matthew M.C. Smith
Pallas Athene
Even the mightiest bear great pain;
witness my birth through a father’s mountain head,
his bright brow darkening through convulsions of thunder.
I came in the contractions of clouds, thunder bolts breaching,
as his earthquake hands clasp his cliffs of temples.
I cracked his skull, shattered it to pieces, the almighty’s daughter,
bloodied and birthed.
A splintered-shell god grave and spent.
Matthew M.C. Smith
The Priest
After R.S. Thomas
When I was young, I stood before a miracle pool,
enchanted by a flock of light.
I found reverence in cold waters amidst a
forest-crown of mountains and saw this
as a passage to God.
I searched, gazing longingly at the inscrutable
darkness that made each fleck so bright,
keenly observing any movement in shadow
and followed a flight of birds breaking shade.
Returning from self-made trails, I found this place
had no name, not even in the old language
that I fought so hard to learn.
I prayed at midnight, half-turning from the curve
of love’s spine, its arc of flesh, and found
purpose and peace in the Book and candle.
I wonder about that place so far beyond,
where a deer, still, was startled in the glade and the
ramshackle, deserted farm that hugged the feet
of the valley’s fall.
Now, decades on, I touch the stonework,
palm the presence of this village church
as its old watcher, tracking with weary feet
a path flanked by rambling roses and crooked
gravestones that mark the resting place
of the noble dead.
I see the swallows’ artful looping,
their spirals that charm the simple onlookers.
And I smile too.
The river is grey besides this place of duty.
A sky as dark as slate breaks beyond, a golden gleam,
where the mountains are a jagged line,
spikes on a heart monitor, broken meters
of a lost song; unnamed, unuttered syllables
defying sight’s vanishing point; holding back
the secrets of my questions
from slipping in time.
Matthew M.C. Smith
Matthew M. C. Smith is a writer from Swansea. His work can be read in Poetry Wales, iamb, Black Iris, Barren Magazine, Acropolis, Atrium and Arachne Press. Matt is a staff writer and reviewer for Poetry Wales, London Grip and Broken Spine. His published collections include Origin: 21 Poems, The Keeper of Aeons and Paviland: Ice and Fire.
Matthew is campaigning for the return of the relics of the Red Lady of Paviland from Oxford to Swansea.
In 2024, he read in support with Owen Sheers and Matthew Hollis.
He edits Black Bough poetry, TopTweetTuesday and the Silver Branch series and tries to break down hierarchies in the poetry world by spotlighting lesser-known talent with more established names.
In the next life, he would like to be Luke Skywalker or Boba Fett.
Check out his writing page at www.blackboughpoetry.com/matthew-m-c-smith
Twitter: @MatthewMCSmith Also on Insta, FB and Bluesky
The Fig Tree Selection – July 2024
This section features up to ten poems, with a maximum of one per poet per issue.
A betrayal
Your grandmother had no intention of dying
although she did concede that if it happened
she wouldn’t mind her ashes being buried
next to Betty’s in Rose Bed Number 2
but since your grandfather wanted his
scattered from the top of Hay Tor and your aunt was
adamant they should be together
that’s where I took them. I remember
it was early Christmas morning
and my wish was for frost and light
with perhaps a breeze or at least some respite
from the unrelenting rain so I could maybe
channel her to the coast with the hope she might
mingle with the sand on the beach
where she loved to swelter in the sun
but as we passed the turning to Manaton
a mist came down. It’s not safe to go up there
I told your brother, so we huddled at the foot, shook
out their ashes, watched them
billow over gorse and granite and out of sight.
On a nearby boulder a rose was rotting
and your brother went climbing anyway
whooping and hopping from rock
to rock in thickening fog.
Deborah Harvey
Memento
I don’t know what made me remember
that student of History of Art
at the same college as me but the year
below.
She made herself a work of art, dressed in
Mondrian block colours, while lips and skin
were pale with pastel make-up under bobbed,
black hair.
We may have spoken once or twice, and once
I thought I saw a look that might have given
somebody with more confidence than me
encouragement,
but it wasn’t just that she was so far out
of my league, but that when I looked at her
I felt beneath her beauty I could see
her skull.
Perhaps I’d just read Eliot on Webster
and wanted everyone to know; or maybe
I was justifying faint-heartedness;
or perhaps
it was a sight that I could actually see.
I don’t recall her name so can’t check what
she made of life, but now I’ve remembered her
she won’t stop staring at me.
Mike Farren
Fellow-travellers in the quiet coach do their cross-word out loud
And after twenty minutes, I long to prompt them ‘vulgar injunction to desist or depart (4, 3).’ Being British, I heave some audible sighs, and turn the pages of my book as noisily as I can. Further down the carriage, royalists as naïve as Dick Whittington wave small union jacks. After twenty minutes, I long to cram their ‘Charlie-is-my-darling’ hats over their grinning gobs, spilling their Prosecco down their red, white, and blue tunics. But a Mindfulness exercise instructs me we are all part of the human race (the fast lane and the slow coaches alike). Disembarking at the terminus, I find the streets are not paved with gold, but slick with rain; I look in vain for jasper, sapphire, chalcedony and emerald, but this is neither the old nor the new Jerusalem, and my ancient feet disturb no onyx, carnelian, chrysolite or beryl. There are proletarian pebbles in my shoes; pigeons crapping on naval heroes, and children, too young to know how avian digestion works, are feeding them crumbs of bread. A revenant voice from my journey asks ‘dietary suggestion from abruptly shortened aristocrat (3, 4, 3, 4)’ but I’m scouring the stalls for some sourdough, then off I go, my bundle balanced on one shoulder, and the cat weaving between my knees.
Hannah Stone
St Helens Chapel
I followed the track
that Roman feet once trod
to find hidden
within a small dark copse
a place of sadness and neglect.
Forgotten remains.
The hallowed ground slumbers
fallen leaves curl embryonic
like patches of rust in between
the ivy, brambles and briars.
A fortress of evergreens
attacking, protecting, concealing.
The fine masonry robbed
capitals and columns collapsed
the tracery lost
demolished and demeaned
by mock salvation in the fields
and cow sheds of Barnburgh.
Charlotte Holm
The Pilgrimage of Lesser Gods
They come with the rain, their wagons rumbling overhead kicking up trails of sky-dust, the plod of hooves trampling Cumulonimbus, pulling up to encamp and let loose their raggedy brats to run riot, playing Knocky Knocky Hide-O on doors and windows, swinging on satellite dishes, lamp-posts, telephone wires, bouncing along the guttering, sliding down drain-pipes, sploshing through puddles, rattling letter-boxes to let us know they're here, to convince us they're real, desperate attention seekers they are, but who can blame them, we see straight through their cellophane forms, their calls lost to the downpour.
They come with the rain, from far and wide, speak the lingo of times long forgot, the shadow tongues of defunct civilisations, the pigeon blend of borderlands that spreads through the fissures in crumbling walls. Their rain-slick songs burn from the inside, fuelled by the smouldering pain of loss and placelessness, and should we listen awaken us to our own hurt, the unacknowledged histories of our own hearts. They infiltrate our homes, the exotic names of our appliances and contents of the fridge, salting the thickening soup of our mutual contact, the gifts borrowed back and forth, all the things we try and fail to possess. And when the rain stops, they rumble on, taking something of us with them, leaving relics of their presence in their wake.
Bob Beagrie
Wharncliffe Chase
It paints with textures
moss, thistle and grist
crushed stone, mushed pulp
pigments and petals;
calcite, feathers, blood and bone
and thumb-crumbled moorland dung
It scrapes at animal skins
stretched on deadbone frames
with tooth and claw
with grind and chaw
tangled with thorn shorn shreds of sheep-shed wool
The wind grates sky-scoured stories
farmyard slipped
and lap-water slaps
in puddles and ponds
reflecting alien script
in birch bark remnants
Scrivener-scrawed,
nail-dragged,
like a biting abductee:
sack-headed, bound
and sobbing
It steps back and cowers
from its own grim detritus
of ground gristle and mist
celebrating living dead materials
The rain has bled the wind-blown dust away
exposing secrets that
only this process can reveal
hidden as they are
beneath spells
cast in iron
cast in casements
cast in caustic cadavers
and choking throatworms
of spite
Alex Oliver
Alexander the Great’s loose change
at Leeds University Gallery
Pomfret-cake metal
smoothed
by my hand here now
I marvel at this gleaming mint
exposed with words.
Perhaps the soldier’s hand
bought his bread with these
bright coins in between
slaughter of the Persians
and trading with them.
The helmeted Alexander didn’t pull punches
he wanted an economy
gave work to thousands
who struck the die
over and over.
Men women children horses fed
defeated or slain.
This face or another
on that imperfect sphere
we are still summoned by gold.
Moira Garland
My Trawlerman
My three day millionaire
walked back home up Hessle Road,
money in his pocket,
swagger after a job well done; a good catch,
he was.
The bairns watched out for him,
ran into the street.
He bought them sweets,
gave them silver coins like fish scales.
It was his hands I always noticed,
weathered and raw from sea and salt,
stains of fish blood under his nails,
smell of fish guts.
Three days we had, lived like Kings;
money to go out, laughing
and walking down Rosamund Street,
me and my trawlerman.
Him walking alone down to St. Andrew’s Dock,
not even a glance backwards.
Me at home, fretting,
thinking of the murderous sea.
I knew about the knuckles of ice
that grew on the bulwark,
knew about the sudden storms,
knew they kept one eye on the job,
the other on the weather.
I knew there was no radio operator,
knew there would be no Mayday,
knew he would be flung overboard,
and icy water would seep through his skin.
I knew his last moments
in the smothering grasp of towering waves
would be agony.
Knew the sea would claim him.
We knew.
And still they went, with pride,
and traditions and superstitions
packed in their kitbags,
like their fathers and grandfathers before them.
That day, the wind touched my cheek
carrying the scent of his death
and I knew
something had to change.
Lisa Falshaw
The Headscarf revolutionaries were a group of women who lived in Hull and fought to improve the working conditions and safety for trawlermen, after 58 fishermen lost their lives in 3 separate trawler sinkings in less than a month in 1968. Lilian Bilocca and Yvonne Blenkinsop were two of those women.
Storm
The rain has stopped for now, and the wind,
and I step out into the calm
along the lane: late winter twigs
littered underfoot;
the bottom of Stuart’s fields
now part of the Medlock,
muddy and swirling.
On Dean Terrace, Chris is cleaning his car again
(everyone needs a hobby)
and bends my ear for the regulation quarter of an hour.
I walk down to the remains of the iron works,
wonder how many civilians
could crowd into that little semi-basement
down the spiral stone staircase.
Rod Whitworth
The Prophet Ezekiel Comes To Gaza
Ezekiel walks the wreckage of the road south.
The buildings all around are shattered, splintered;
a valley of dry bones that used to be a city.
Death is everywhere. He stands among the ruins in
a pale blue helmet, hi vis jacket, with empty hands,
stands until the rust coloured sunset turns to cold night.
He finds it hard to bear the indifference of the stars
and despite the urging of the Lord, he has no
appetite for prophecy, knows whatever he says
these bones will not live; nothing he can conjure
will make the dead along the Gaza Strip rise up again.
He cannot ask the wind to enter these lungs and
make them breathe. His hands are empty;
his mouth, the mouths of his brothers, the mouths
of his children stopped up with ash.
And the cold night fades with the morning star;
Ezekiel stands, waiting for the Lord and dew falls
upon the bones of the innocent dead.
Beth Brooke
Contributors
Bob Beagrie (PhD) lives in Middlesbrough and has published numerous collections of poetry, most recently: Romanceros (Drunk Muse Press 2024), Kō (Black Light Engine Room Press’ 2023), Eftwyrd (Smokestack Books 2023), and The Last Almanac (Yaffle Press 2023). His work has appeared in numerous international anthologies, journals and magazines and has been translated into Finnish, Urdu, Swedish, Dutch, Spanish, Estonian, Tamil, Gaelic and Karelian. He also writes short stories and plays.
Beth Brooke is a retired teacher. She has three poetry pamphlets out there and is a twice nominated poet for the Pushcart Prize. You can visit her website bethbrookepoetry.co.uk
Paul Brough is a Yorkshire based illustrator. You can see more of his artwork here
Lisa Falshaw lives and works in West Yorkshire. She writes poetry about loss and transitional states. She has had several micro poems published by Black Bough and poems published by Fevers of the Mind, Atrium, Dreamcatcher and forthcoming in Dawn Treader.
Mike Farren’s poems have appeared widely in journals and have won and placed in several competitions, recently winning the Red Shed prize (2023) and coming second in the Plaza Prize (>20 lines – 2024). His latest pamphlet is Smithereens (4Word). He is part of Yaffle publishing and co-hosts Rhubarb open mic.
Moira Garland is Leeds-based and her poetry wins include the 2016 Leeds Peace Poetry Competition. Her poetry appears in magazines such as The North, Stand, The Adriatic, Consilience, and Magma, and in various anthologies. A poem was set to music as part of the 2019 Leeds Lieder Festival. @moiragauthor: X/Threads/Instagram
Deborah Harvey (she/her) lives in Bristol, UK. She has an MA in Creative Writing and is co-director of The Leaping Word, which provides creative and counselling support for writers exploring the personal in their work. Her sixth poetry collection, Love the Albatross, will be published by Indigo Dreams in 2024. Her website is https://theleapingword.com/
Charlotte Holm is a textile artist living in East Yorkshire. She recently rekindled her love for writing poetry. Using words instead of pictures is a welcome challenge for her. Many of her poems are inspired by nature and history. In her spare time she loves to visit ancient places. Since submitting to The Fig Tree she has featured in Black Nore Review and in Ink, Sweat and Tears.
Alex Oliver has worked as, worked in or has been an altar boy (quit in anger), biker, guitarist, mechanic, architectural antiques salvage and sales, community music, magazines and projects (safety films), MA BA (Hons) dip cert, traveller, busker and more who's escaped being dead (or completely so) on several occasions. After decades of on-off poetry, he’s finally learning something about how to write - in the styles he likes to read. He has been 'published' in specialist periodicals, local media and community magazines, poetry and short stories. He has a T-shirt that reads: "The Person wearing this T-Shirt is a Famous Motorcycle Journalist".
Hannah Stone is the author of ten volumes of poetry (single-authored and collaborations) and also edits Dream Catcher literary journal, acts as poet-theologian to Leeds Church Institute and convenes the poets-composers forum for the Leeds Lieder festival, among other activities in the poetry community. Her most recent collection, The Invisible Worm, is available from Indigo Dreams Publishing.
Rod Whitworth was born in Ashton-under-Lyne in 1943 and has done a number of jobs including teaching maths (for 33 years) and conducting traffic censuses (the job that kept him on the streets). He now lives in the Garden City (aka Oldham) and is still tyrannised by commas.
All contributors retain copyright of their work.
Tim, great to see a new issue of The Fig Tree — such a fantastic collection of poems. Really like what you are doing with this wonderful poetry project!