Giles Watson's Blog - Posts Tagged "lover-of-cold-weather"

Here is the title poem for my new collaboration with artist and photographer Martin Williamson. Martin’s photograph was taken near Silsden in Yorkshire, but for me, it triggered memories of long walks in the snow when I used to visit my Grandmother in Longsdon, near Leek in Staffordshire. The title of the collection is true: I am a lover of cold weather, and I used to adore it when it was icy and snowy. I love the way snow transforms landscapes, and the uncanny silence that descends with it. The poems in this collection are often expressions of that love for weather which others call “bad” (I love rain and wind and mist, too!) Is the collection a lament for our changing climate? Yes, but it’s a gentle one. For me, it is also an extended reflection on what it is like to belong in two very different countries at once.

We have worked very hard on the aesthetics of this book. We think we have made a little gem. We hope you do too!

After the poem, you’ll find a link to a reading of it, and also a link to the site where the book can be purchased online.

Lover of Cold Weather
(Poem by Giles Watson. Photograph by Martin Williamson.)

Snow on an ungritted road
is a crusted slurry: the way
is tar-black where a tyre
has crushed it, coasting
into a passing-place. Sloes,
shrivelled round their stones,
still cling to twigs. Ash-keys
dangle.

I have worked up sweat
beneath this dark overcoat;
my scarf is loosened. Though
I should have worn an extra
layer of sock, the chilblains
will be worth it, when I reach
the stone bridge in the valley,
find coal-tits on the suet hanging
at her door, and breathe the black
smell of slack drifting through
the village. Up here, anticipating
the charred and singing kettle, I hear
the hillside amplified, as though
the snow has brought rustlings
closer from the hedgerow, and
the woodpecker at the hollow
thrums in my left ear. Voices
drift from terraced cottages;
cows sigh out cud-sweet
steam within their byres,
magpies scold and scatter,
and somewhere, inscrutable
in cold drystone crevices
grass snakes coil, scale-eyed
and sleeping. I breathe in
ice-crystals, keep on walking.

In the old monochrome
of the snow-drift evening,
my grandmother is waiting
with her cooking in the oven,
the stems of her brussels
split with crosses,
her carrots seethed in butter,
salt and pepper,
and love and warmth
are black and white:
the only things that matter.

And only ivy prospers –
only holly will not wither –
yet I find I have become
a lover of cold weather.

The book is available here:

http://www.lulu.com/…/lover…/paperbac...

Here is a reading of this poem:

https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=i0jVB7M...