In the late 1990s Carole Bone turned up in my daytime astrology class: red hair, big eyes, bright mind, very eager to learn, fast talker, very hard to keep her quiet. Irrepressible. A great student to teach. Ten years on, and I was at last emerging from my 2001-8 retreat. Carole had just left my house, staggering under the weight of a bag full of poetry books…. T.S.Eliot, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dylan Thomas, Archy and Mehitabel, e e cummings, Anne Stevenson, Tom Leonard, Liz Lochhead.….she had kept in touch throughout my time out, sending messages of support, sending me her poems to read. She is a born writer. I remember thinking that day “She’ll be getting published before long.”
Here is her second published poem,“Sisterectomy”, which appeared in May 2010 in the Poetry Anthology 2010 published by United Press Ltd.
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Sisterectomy
I’ve had a sisterectomy
There’s no wound
or scar to show
No empty sleeve
to neatly fold and pin
in badge of loss
Elusive sibling ache
I carry it somewhere still
In head, in heart or gut
No scale can weigh its pain
No gauge can measure
The depth of its careless cut
Unhealed sorrow
flows through blood
that once ran thick
Its devastation hidden
In fractured bonds
Of severed root and tribe
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(Carole’s submission for the Poetry Anthology 2011 has been shortlisted. Our fingers are crossed, Carole!)
(carolebone@hotmail.co.uk)
Carole’s Biog : “…. mother of two magic boys – wife for thirty three years to a Capricorn who is without doubt my rock. Would be astrologer; this subject has kept me (relatively) sane by helping me to understand the contradictory pulls existing in my nature between the home-loving dreamer and the restless seeker after knowledge. And – a shy Virgo Rising…“
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ps….I am delighted to report that ‘Lilith and the Devil’ – the first of Carole’s poems to be published on “Writing from the Twelfth House” in February 2010, was re-published on 16.3.10 on the Write Anything site as part of a fine reflective piece by Carole, offering advice to would-be poets. To read it, and some more comments on Carole’s work, check out
http://writeanything.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/lillith-and-the-devil/
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350 words copyright Carole Bone/ Anne Whitaker 2010