Veil of Tweed

We're re-posting this wonderful poem by Maria Jastrzębska today, as Maria has a new anthology coming out in October 2022, Small Odysseys (click the title to order a copy from Waterloo Press). She's a Polish-British poet, editor and translator, the author of sell-out drama Dementia Diaries and a founding member of Queer Writing South. The poem is from her collection Everyday Angels.

Maria says: 'Can you imagine, or do you remember how little information (let alone anything like positive images) there was about the lives of women who loved other women (or women generally) back in the 60s and 70s when I was growing up? This poem references two classics: The Killing of Sister George a play from 1964 about a “slightly sadistic masculine woman” adapted into a film in 1968 and made nastier and also more explicitly lesbian and Les Biches a French film from 1968 about bisexuality, “tortured” relationships, etc.'

VEIL OF TWEED

 

 

Behind a veil of tweed, through a smoke-screen 

of bravado I know too well, pouring out gin 

in your jodhpurs or PVC, Sister George

you don’t scare me, but you did once.

 

I fled from you into the arms of a biche

with long lashes, sulky lips. At least 

her hair was long, even though it all ended 

in tears. It might as well have been me 

 

slumped, sobbing face pressed 

against a bathroom door, behind which 

Anouk Aimée made love with a real man.

I wouldn’t cut my hair. Wore a frock 

 

to the hairdressers in case I looked like you 

when I walked out. At eighteen 

how afraid I was of being mistaken 

for a man. How afraid of being old.

Maria Jastrzębska

from Everyday Angels (Waterloo Press 2009)

 

www.mariajastrzebska.wordpress.com

What I did when I got back

We're very excited today to be able to share this evocative prose poem by Maria Jastrzębska. It has, as she says, a 'kind of end of summer' feel. It's from her new anthology Small Odysseys, due to be published in October. Really looking forward to reading more. Order your copies from Waterloo Press  

What I did when I got back

Plucked the tufts above my eyebrows. Made myself coffee but it didn’t seem worth boiling the milk. Separated my clothes into colours and delicates. Remembered to take out the handwash jumper.  Put one wash on.  Fed the cat, brushed her. Put Kőln Concert on full volume. Emptied the sand out of my smaller bag outside the back door. Wandered down into the garden where I saw the leaves were all yellow, started making a list of what needed doing – something had eaten through the gooseberry. I texted friends. J got back to me straight away, didn’t say much, just still quite low. H must have been at work. Took the overtly lesbian bits out of a poem and called it Pines Broken Below Marina Baja. It sounded edgy with, I thought, a degree of gravitas at the same time. Unpacked my books and papers, left them lying on the floor. Since I had the shower to myself I stayed under for what seemed like days. Ran downstairs naked because I’d forgotten to get a clean towel. Dressed in the softest fabrics I could find, old jeans, faded baggy cotton and linen top, aquamarine. Put the lesbian bits back in the poem. Called it Pining. 

Maria Jastrzębska is a key Anglo-Polish and European poet and no stranger to exploring heritage and archetypal figures of family. In this new work she widens her gaze. Unable – or unwilling – to settle, her speakers are nomadic. The personal is always political, the political – unmistakably human. Whether crossing borders, both literal and intangible, queering or reimagining histories, these poems urgently question the present, startle and illuminate. She is equally fluent in prose poem or lyric as well as the extraordinary and quizzical language of Ponglish. 

From Small Odysseys published by Waterloo Press October 2022

https://waterloopress.co.uk/books/small-odysseys-2022/