Chess Game

This week we are very sad to tell you all that the talented poet and author Jill Gardiner passed away recently. Jill was a prolific writer, a meticulous researcher and a generous friend. She will be missed by all. In her honour, we are reposting one of her remarkable poems. 

Jill once explained what inspired today's poem: 'Early on in our relationship, when we could not wait to get our hands on each other, we also used to play a lot of chess. My partner, a past contestant in London chess tournaments, would almost always win, but I still enjoyed the challenge. As the game is so often viewed as a mainly male preserve, this autobiographical story also appealed to me as a metaphor for seduction.'

 

Chess Game

Shall we play chess or go to bed?

We can’t make up our minds

so you get the chess set,

I fetch the wine, and we both

slip out of our clothes.

This bed is big enough for all of us:

you, propped up on a pillow

too far away to reach:

between us, queens and kings,

their armies of retainers.

A clock ticks.  Your pawns advance.

My knight prepares to pounce.

The curve of your hip.  Two moves

and I’ll have you in check.  Too late.

What is your bishop doing down there?

You tell me I’m beautiful: this is not 

the time, now you’ve swiped my pawn, 

gone up a piece.  Oh your skin

and you so at ease in it

as if you went naked everywhere.

I must concentrate, this is serious.

Your breath so close, your body

out of reach.  I could stretch...

You must be joking.  Not my queen.

Your breasts.  I resign, I concede.

This poem appears in With Some Wild Woman – Poems 1989-2019 (Tollington Press), described by Rosie Bailey as ‘a real page-turner’ and by Jackie Wills as ‘starting with bosoms, bras and crushes, it explores all aspects of lesbian love’.

Jill Gardiner was also a social historian, author of From the Closet to the Screen – Women at the Gateways Club 1945-85 (Pandora Press). A former Chair of Brighton Poets, her poems were published in various journals, including Artemis, and commended in competitions, including by Jackie Kay in the Cardiff International.