The Fig Tree - Issue 5
with Featured Poet Susan Darlington
Welcome to the fifth issue of The Fig Tree - the final one of 2024. We’ve been delighted with the quality of the submissions and the early 2025 issues are already filling up with more excellent content. Keep them coming and spread the word! One of the ideas for The Fig Tree was to also have “special issues” with specific, maybe topical, themes. Bearing this in mind, we are looking to publish a special issue on the theme of coal mining in early 2025, as part of the commemoration of the Miners’ Strike in the UK in 1984-1985. The call for submissions will be sent in a separate email so please keep an eye out for that. Thanks to Paul Brough for referencing this in his artwork for this issue!
This issue has, as I promised last time, the first woman to appear as the Featured Poet. I was made aware of Susan’s work by Ian Parks, and when I looked up some of her poems online I remembered having been previously impressed by the ones that Northern Gravy published in 2023. When she submitted her poems back in March I had no hesitation in offering her a Featured Poet slot. Eight months seemed a long time to wait back then, but here we are, and not before time.
Unfortunately I missed her recent reading at my writing group but I’m hoping to rectify that as soon as possible as reports came back that she is an excellent reader of her own work.
As November is upon us, another Remembrance Day comes around and we are more aware than ever of the conflicts that have happened in the past and are still happening today. This month's selection includes a terrific sonnet by Tim Taylor in the style of Wilfred Owen and the spirit of Siegfried Sassoon.
Once again I hope you enjoy reading this issue as much as I did collating it.
Thanks
Tim Fellows, Editor
Contributors: Susan Darlington, Angela Arnold, Penny Blackburn, Bart Edelman, David Hutchinson, Sarah James, Emma Lee, Mick Jenkinson, Alison Stark, Tim Taylor, Phil Wood and Paul Brough.
The Fig Tree Featured Poet – Susan Darlington
That First Winter, She Didn't Think She'd Survive
A cold so absolute that hoarfrost
feathered hair when it escaped her bearskin hat.
It cast a spell over everything it touched:
spruce trees held their needles close;
herring froze in ice with their gills open wide;
the notes of chaffinch descended in silence.
The country to which she’d run to escape convention
now made her stop.
She chafed at its stagnation.
At the brink of madness, Arctic blue shattering
on endless white, she held out her arms
and whirled round and round.
Snow came down fast, erased her tracks,
and each dizzying spin brought her closer
to the only god she ever knew.
Susan Darlington
Surviving the Wilderness
This is a fierce land.
Thorns devour bridleways
in a tangle of green, haul themselves
up trunks that squat on the skyline.
Moonless nights blink with amber stars.
The meek become statues
at the sharp tang of animal. Move
to crunch of bone. Safe, for now.
It’s the country her father
sought to tame with an axe
and a back that became a question
mark under a lifetime of tilling.
She sits in the cabin most days.
Back to a trousseau chest
painted with sweet violet
that fades under the metal cot.
Her skin, candle-tallow pale,
lights a book that’s open
at her lap, unread,
as she dreams of her sister,
long skirt dragging in the mud.
Snow pearling her loose hair
as she leads a tethered horse.
Both as unbroken as the land.
Susan Darlington
The Inheritance
It was the inheritance you didn’t want
from the mother who in life
showed you love in black and blue
but in death bequeathed you gold.
The chains that had been worn
in loops so tight they constricted her,
made her resent the freedoms
she thought motherhood had taken.
A reminder of her bad blood,
you had them melted down,
sins rising in black clouds
that rained on the town for days.
Only when the water was sluiced
down the drains did you cast
the gold in a design of your choice;
one that re-wrote your family tree.
Here was the version you wanted:
a pendant that rests at your throat
with two sisters – two innocent children –
in gold so bright they mock the sun.
Susan Darlington
Susan Darlington is the author of two pamphlets: Never Wear White (Alien Buddha Press, 2022) and Traumatropic Heart (Selcouth Station, 2021). She has been published in One Hand Clapping, Dreich, Ink Sweat & Tears, and Hedgehog Press among others. She was nominated in the Forward Prize 2024’s best single poem category by Northern Gravy and was commended in Black Cat Poetry Press’ nature competition (2024).
She regularly reads in and around the Leeds area and has been a guest at Soundbites (Leeds, 2021 and 2023), Wayward Girls and Wicked Women (York, 2023), and Flight of the Dragonfly (online, 2023).
The Fig Tree Selection – November 2024
This section features up to ten poems, with a maximum of one per poet per issue.
Soldier
When I am found, they'll put what's left of me
into a hole somewhere, and on my grave,
no doubt, they'll chisel some banality
about how brave I was, and how I gave
my life for king and country. If you read
my stone, do not believe a word of it.
I did not die for England, did not bleed
my life into a pool of gore and shit
for any purpose that I understand.
I want one thing, knowing the end is near
for me, alone in someone else’s land:
a reckoning for those who brought me here.
So if you see my grave, do not feel pride,
do not be sad: be angry that I died.
Tim Taylor
Consider Mister Toad
Consider Mister Toad—
A titan in his field.
How he walks the walk,
Talks the talk, each day,
On his merry way forward—
Three leaps to a bounce.
And he has destinations—
Certain places in mind—
Before running out of time,
Leaving behind the bloated skin,
Grown for such an occasion.
But it doesn’t trouble him,
Parotid creature that he is,
Secreting success everywhere,
Until, why, yes, he’s rivalless.
As for Missus Toad,
She knows to slip aside—
A hop here, a jump there,
Anything to keep what peace
Remains between them both,
And the junior toads about.
Watch Mister Toad squat—
Warty, hungry, ready—
Consuming prey, left and right.
Bart Edelman
The World is Blistering
And this little blister
is a woman carrying too heavy a load
and the whole sorrow of a husband.
And this little blister
is a man imagining mornings beyond
one naked slice and the earliest bus.
And this little blister
is a child impaling school days on her
mother's crutches, over and over.
And this little blister
is the lad clutching a leaflet saying hey hero,
see the world, not much else.
and here is our world
multiplied
hoping and caring and imagining
and caught
each under their own dome of pain
each containing a seed
Angela Arnold
Lost Junction
High Summer. The river runs low,
the canal lies dark. Slate waters reflect
bright bars of cloud across the rippled surface.
We race each other up the bank,
release rosebay fluffs as we scramble up.
From the top we see tracklines taut
in both directions. West towards Manchester
and the moors, east towards our industrial heart.
It’s easy to believe the rails are swollen in the heat,
fecund and ripe-to-burst. They have a fragile stillness,
eggshell breakable,
as they wait for the train’s approach.
We place our coins carefully. Dirty copper
dark against the steel.
The vibration grows. We grip each other,
bodies flat, low vantage point.
Not caring if the driver sees us
rolled over, clasped into the scutch-grass.
We swear we hear the flattening of the coins,
the dangerous punctuation
of the train’s stern and rattling voice.
In the after-silence we lie back to face the light,
watch a thousand broken willow-herbs
take seed within the sky.
Penny Blackburn
Beyond the Espaliered Pear Tree
It was all mine.
In spring, it became a barrier
impenetrable to the eye of the house,
but beyond the pear tree
the air-raid shelter beckoned –
its black mouth,
uneasy smells,
indescribable puddles,
and fears that had to be faced.
And the green shed
that did not seem to be used for anything much –
far too vast for reasonable utility,
but a trove of unnamed rusting machinery,
tins of unidentified treasure,
a gothic mansion of dream and adventure,
with vaulted rafters, sunset bats.
Then, the tree house,
hastily assembled by immature hands
in the swaying canopy of a silver birch
using unfamiliar tools.
How did I never fall to earth?
Mick Jenkinson
Boy on a Train
Piccadilly Line
The tube train’s full,
a small boy’s standing -
he only reaches halfway up his Mum.
As the train picks up speed through tunnels
rattling and screeching on curves
he clings tighter, burying his face in Mum’s coat.
We slow:
he looks up
seeking knowledge
in a terrifying world
of crowds, noise, tunnels, and darkness.
Boy on the train,
what have you seen?
What are your dreams?
Where are you going?
Is it Turnpike Lane?
David Hutchinson
Wallpaper Gazing
after Jonathan Edwards
Between the anaglypta’d walls
I grew up, cocooned,
product of Presbyterian striving,
Mancunian industry,
not questioning, while
repeating floral patterned reliefs
shaped dreams of other walls.
And when the anaglypta’d walls
tired, beyond sprucing up
with DIY re-gloss,
and woodchip became desired,
we stripped them bare for dressing
with another soon-to-be-retro look,
and I was gone.
Alison Stark
rum and raisin
I taste sun filtered by wet hair,
warming my brine-kissed skin,
sugar-coating its salt tang,
as I slip my hand into Mum’s –
linked like the tiny shells
that butterfly our sandcastle.
I taste pink thrift on cliff-tops,
our westie a white cloud on legs,
barking us on faster, racing
gulls, out-louding their squawks,
while our laughter dribbles
sweetly from mouth to chin.
I taste licked fingers sticky
with summer, and smiles that come
easily in those fluffy-towelled days.
That last, slow, lip-smacking bite,
crunching on the cone’s pointed tip
and asking for more, sure back then
that more is always possible.
Sarah James
A Moonlit Daughter
The mother’s sun suffered flares, a power
of uncontrollable bursts, devastating
in impact. Over as soon as the mother
thought someone might be watching,
rapidly smoothed to a brassy gloss
of display, desperately trying to be
gold achievement, to imitate success.
Her daughter looked bloodless.
No one watched until she fell,
white as the ice she skated across.
Then she was told to pull
herself up as bystanders mocked her
for being a brittle husk, a pale
reflection of her mother’s star.
Emma Lee
Fence Painting in Port Talbot
No smog today. He coats the fence
a ruddy-brown. No blossom gown,
just working faith to unfurl the sense
of spring. He will sweat out his frown.
No need to root this gloom, be tense
about the rust of his steel town,
his job. This labour’s not pretence.
He grins as angry as a clown.
Phil Wood
Contributors
Angela Arnold is a writer, poet, artist, a creative gardener and an environmental campaigner. Her poems have appeared in print magazines, anthologies and online, both in the UK and elsewhere. First collection In Between: ‘inner landscapes’ and relationships (Stairwell Books, 2023). She lives in North Wales. Twitter/X @AngelaArnold777
Penny Blackburn's poetry has featured in many journals and anthologies, including Spelt, Riggwelter and Phare and she was the winner of Poetry Tyne 2023. She has released her debut collection with Yaffle Press, Gaps Made of Static. She is on X and Facebook as @Penbee8.
Paul Brough is a Yorkshire based illustrator. You can see more of his artwork here
Bart Edelman’s poetry collections include Crossing the Hackensack, Under Damaris’ Dress, The Alphabet of Love, The Gentle Man, The Last Mojito, The Geographer’s Wife, Whistling to Trick the Wind, and This Body Is Never at Rest: New and Selected Poems 1993 – 2023. He lives in Pasadena, CA.
David Hutchinson is the Creative Director of The Poets of Esnoid, Poet, Spoken Word Artist, Poetry and Music Events Organiser, Member of The Society of Authors. Union Club, London. The Leeds Library. Sponsor of The National Youth Orchestra, and independent musicians. Previous life best bits - Farm Worker. Fishery Protection Officer (North East and North Sea), Aircraft Pilot, Press and Wedding Photographer Adult Education Tutor, Senior Exam Invigilator.
Sarah Leavesley/James is a prize-winning poet, fiction writer, journalist and photographer. Her recent collection Blood Sugar, Sex, Magic (Verve Poetry Press) won the CP Aware Award Prize for Poetry 2021 and was highly commended in the Forward Prizes. She also runs V. Press, publishing poetry and flash fiction. Website: http://sarah-james.co.uk
Mick Jenkinson is a poet and songwriter from Doncaster. He runs Well Spoken, a monthly poetry evening at Doncaster Brewery and delivers songwriting workshops for community projects. His poetry pamphlet When the Waters Rise, was published by Calder Valley, 2019. His album The Wheel Keeps on Turning was released this year. www.mickjenkinson.co.uk
Emma Lee’s publications include “The Significance of a Dress” (Arachne, 2020) and "Ghosts in the Desert" (IDP, 2015). She co-edited “Over Land, Over Sea,” (Five Leaves, 2015), reviews for magazines and blogs at https://emmalee1.wordpress.com
Alison Stark lives in East Yorkshire, works full-time in the NHS and has been writing poetry for the past couple of years. She has publications in the 2023 and 2024 High Wolds Poetry Collections and was chosen as a winner in The Guernsey Literary Festival's Poems on the Move International Poetry Prize 2024.
Tim Taylor has published two poetry collections, Sea Without a Shore, and LifeTimes, both with Maytree Press, and two novels. His poems have appeared in magazines such as Acumen, Orbis and Pennine Platform and various anthologies. Tim lives in Meltham near Huddersfield and teaches Ethics part-time at Leeds University - https://wordpress.com/view/timwordsblog.wordpress.com
Phil Wood was born in Wales. He has worked in statistics, education, shipping, and a biscuit factory. He enjoys chess and learning German. His writing can be found in various places, including : Byways (Arachne Press Anthology), The Seventh Quarry (issue 39) and Noon Journal of the Short Poem.
All contributors retain copyright of their work.