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Jenny McRobert was born in Hackney, London and now lives on the Watercress Way near Winchester. Working as a Psychologist, she wrote textbooks and articles – her transition to poet has been one of her most enjoyable journeys. Jenny’s debut collection Silver Samovar was published by The High Window Press 2021. Pegasus rising – Won first prize in the International Welsh Poetry Competition 2023. Talking to a dragonfly in Great Ormond Street Hospital was shortlisted for the Plough Arts Poetry Prize 2023. The Giraffe in the room was Commended for Ware Poets Prize 2022, Cherry Brandy was shortlisted for the Fish Poetry Prize in 2022.
Published poems appear in Dreamcatcher and online in Ink Sweat & Tears, The High Window, Words for the Wild, and in anthologies. Jenny is a founder committee member of Winchester Muse poetry platform and helps run their monthly ‘hybrid’ sessions.
NB: A copy of Silver Samovar by Jenny McRobert can be purchased by following the link.
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Introduction
I started writing poetry late in my life, perhaps because I had more to say than in my earlier years. Certainly, inhabiting the space of my childhood, as an adult, has allowed my younger voice to be heard in a way that could never have happened then. Many of this selection of eight poems is written in the first person, which someone once described as rather like ‘stripping off your clothes and standing naked in Piccadilly Circus.’ That just about sums it up for me, and I suspect many other poets. But do it we must.
I have found that that unpicking the past reveals a rich seam of poetry that informs the present and future. Exploring my own past and that of my immigrant Grandparents, one of whom I never met, is a major theme in Silver Samovar, my debut collection, and is still often present in my current poems. The poem Cherry Brandy is taken from that collection, all others offered here are currently unpublished. [JMR]
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Jenny McRobert: Eight Poems
PEGASUS RISING
This night, this heavy August night when the grass sweats
giant beads, we lay ourselves down to escape our own light pollution.
We wait for the Perseids, scanning the constellations as Pegasus rises,
all his suns dazzling in diamante. We don’t think it strange
that an owl’s whoo gets no answer in the night’s torpid breath
which rises and falls in the space between worlds. Above us,
bats flit-flap, panic as their sonar finds no echo. Moths
turn away from a darkened moon, gentle
onto the whites of our hands. We don’t speak of it,
here in the dark, the call inside my body that gets no echo,
the unborn shooting stars – still floating in the void –
that never came to earth, never made their mark.
What would they have been? Would I have push-chaired them
through shopping malls with that middle distant look
of utter mum-exhaustion? Taken for granted their milky way
skin, lop-sided sleep-smiles reflected in shop windows?
Yes, I would have taken it all: the poo and the piss,
even the endless readings of The Tiger Who Came to Tea.
We look up as Pegasus prances forward, magnificent
in his paddock of constellations. He will never be reined-in
to circle in a sawdust solar system. He pays no attention
to the faint glow of our tiny blue marble, slightly off kilter
on its axis, or to the night’s relentless tread or to your hand
in the darkness, casually brushing against mine.
(Winner of the International Welsh Poetry Competition, 2023)
THE GIRAFFE IN THE ROOM
A giraffe was outside the school gates waiting for me.
She offered to walk me home. I admired her long unhurried gait,
the pleasing pattern of her skin, that neck so high
that it strained mine to find her head, let alone
the little tufted horns on top. Walking next to her
at least no one can miss me, I thought.
I picked up a stick, rattled it along the railings,
dared the rough boys to pick a fight.
Her back was sloping like a playground slide,
but I knew she would bear my weight
should I need to climb on. She spoke
as we walked the streets, past houses
dark behind glaring windows –
she missed Africa, the yellow swaying grass,
the nightly whooam, whooam of the lion, pulsing
through the bush. We crossed the common,
I’ll give you my coat, I said, if you are cold?
She smiled, craned her neck, nibbled a high branch.
A car passed by – the driver narrowly missing a bollard,
his mouth a long black O. We reached home
and I wondered how she would fit in the house.
I turned my key in the latch.
Giraffe ducked her neck and squeezed
through the door. We made toast.
I helped her slip and slide her way upstairs,
tucked her into bed. All night
I whispered in her ear, and she in mine.
TALKING TO A DRAGONFLY IN GREAT ORMOND STREET HOSPITAL
I am convinced that I once heard a dragonfly
speak. It was so very quiet, like the puff
that dust makes from the flap of a bird’s wing, like
the far-off chuntering of a wheat field or drops
of rain drum-rolling on a skin of water,
or tuning in the radio just in time to hear
the one perfect note in a jangled aria. Or perhaps
it was just the hum of London traffic, muted
through a thick glass window. I heard
her wings tap-tap-tapping on the pane
as she zoomed in like a kamikaze pilot.
You’re out of place, I said, no more
than you, she replied, trapped
in that bed. She was right. The worst thing was:
the steely coldness of the bedpan, a close second,
the young doctors crowding round
my bed listening to my naughty heart, one
a real blusher. Then developing a boredom crush
on the student nurse who handed me
my sick-making cocktail of pills. Bed sores.
The embarrassment of it all. Visitors
didn’t help – Mum and Dad, their anxiety
wrapped in wax paper with the chicken legs
they brought. So, I retreated into the nymph
stage, where no one could shake me
from my reed stem, my bubbled-up anger
rising silently to the surface: pop, pop, pop.
I badly need someone to talk to.
Outside of the window, dragonfly
nodded. Why are you so beautiful? I said,
my moon face is all blown up
with Prednisolone. I can’t move,
can’t stay awake. Are you real? I already
knew the answer, and that she would
be waiting for me on a hot summer afternoon
when my boating days came back.
MARC CHAGALL: THE BLUE VIOLINIST
He teeters on the edge of a stool which is itself teetering
between two roof-tops
in the darkness of the shtetl. His legs
are crossed, the right foot
a blur, perhaps tapping, keeping time? There are
two birds, open-beaked, one on his knee just watching,
the other looking outwards. A third is on his shoulder,
or perhaps between shoulder and breast,
its thin legs splayed in movement, its wings
folded upwards like two hands in prayer. The musician’s eyes
are full, softly dark, looking up
at the moon. He seems so young:
his slim neck bending
toward his instrument – his violin
free, not wedged tight under his chin.
A squeeze box holds him around the waist.
The shetl is still, as if
frozen in sleep. The indigo sky sifts with clouds
that ruffle like furrowed brows. And I wonder:
why is it that only the moon is listening?
Or is it that his notes, stretched out like bands of sinew in the sky
can’t be snatched, made captive
to the tobacco-hazed bars or cafes of other places
where smooth-faced men gather to eat, share tables
overladen with blintzes, bowls of kasha and borscht
with sour cream like white boats
floating on a red sea
in a moment of indecision. The vodka ebbs and flows
and they are singing their songs
of youth, songs of great horsemanship,
of the vast grassy steppe lands, of
the motherland, of
pretty virgins ripe for kissing, songs
of brotherhood. So loud, so
very loud. Songs
that can drown a shtetl.
CHERRY BRANDY
When the trees had withered like crones in a winter queue
she would wheel the stone jar from the shed, roll up her sleeves
to show her navvy arms, scrub the liver-dark inside of it.
Then the deadweight sack of dried cherries, heaved
to her shoulders, emptied into its neck, swallowed down with
white sugar, and gallons of brandy – not the refined French type,
but rough barrels from the Brick Lane brewery. In the gloom of
the pantry, among the sides of salt beef, the huge confectioners’ jars
of pickling herrings and cucumbers, the stone jar settled for a month,
then half a month more – the mystery of its mellowing reticent
inside its thick skin. The lid came off with a pop! its potent belly
scooped out, strained and bottled with tidy corks, ready for sale.
My father and his sister, would bolt down the pulp stolen from
her muslin, and roll themselves under a bed, clear out of reach
of her broom, smacking lips bruised with love.
PORTRAIT OF MY GRANDFATHER AS A SHOPKEEPER
When the century was still young enough
to race into a new modernity, Grandfather
owned a tobacco shop. Grandfather
who I never knew, who my father never knew:
here he is, photographed outside the shop,
hands deep in pockets. He is neat in tie,
stud-collared shirt, and braces as he leans
on the doorpost. When I see him there, I know
he smells like his shop – winter smog sifted
with a sickly scent of pipe smoke and polish
from the notched wooden counter. Piles
of pipes and pouches, packs of cigarettes
shoulder-to-shoulder on an overstuffed shelf
for all the world as innocent as dolly mixtures.
The high pitch of the till startles the silence
as Grandpa hands over a pack of ‘Myrtle Grove.’
Breathe deep the smoke will do you good.
He looks so sad in the photo, is he grieving
over his books again? Grandma said
in Odessa he sold books, pages
curling from the touch of too many lovers,
curling black as the shop was torched. Tucked
away in my odds and ends drawer, I find
an older photograph from a Glasgow studio
and he’s a ‘looker’ alright – smooth skinned,
dapper waxed moustache, handsome dark eyes
staring into elsewhere. Uncle Nat and Aunty Fran
are toddlers, Grandma is solid in her best silks.
Clicked and captured. She told me the story;
how he gambled away his boots playing Clobyosh,
walked home barefoot in the snow. I imagine
them at the docks crammed into a cattle boat,
eyes reflecting the flicker of fire, shuffling
their feet as the boat casts off. Did he
light up, flick the ash into the waves?
They might have grabbed the rail, stayed on deck
and watched the stars jostling for position
in the black sky. Did she slip her hand over
his, fingers intertwining his bony knuckles?
How long did she hold fast to his hand?
STOLEN WORDS
Someone has stolen your words. Did they zig-zag
down the corridor, dropping them here and there, wearing
your skirt, the one that disappeared in last Wednesday’s laundry,
even though they sewed your name into the waist band. Someone
has stolen your words. Did you leave them congealing
on the plate with the mashed potato, pureed greens
and minced meat that they brought you for lunch,
that you didn’t eat, holding out for the blueberry yoghurt
and biscuits? Did you leave your words in a case
with your glasses, which you now refuse to wear? Is this
why you look at me like you don’t know who I am, smiling
vaguely, then turning your face to the wall, seeking the runes
that will explain all of this to you? How I wish that I could.
I comb your hair, help you put on your cardi, take you out
into the Sunday garden where there are spring flowers, nodding
prayerfully as we pass by, where you look at me and you say:
When are you taking me home? And I see the crazy paving,
the weeds bursting through the gaps, on this meandering path.
MY HALF OF THE SKY
When I die
I will donate my body.
My washed-out hair will become
a Copper Beech, out on the common,
its autumn leaves flirting
with the sky, or handfuls of fern knitting
soil back together when my ears
run riot as tornadoes.
My eyes will be knots in an oak tree spying
on the shuffling of hedgehogs and badgers.
As for my teeth, they will be
chalk columns, holding up the South Downs
for families on Sunday walks. My lips
will keep spinning in space like
twin moons, my shoulder blades will shore up
my half of the sky. You won’t see my ribcage,
it will be in disguise as stalactites embracing
the Earth’s core. My thunder thighs
will get into the mix of a storm, chuck
lightning bolts, play rounders
with the clouds. My womb
will become fruitful in the sea give birth
to the swell of plankton
and the whale’s song.
My feet will mulch down, nourish every root
in every forest, my toes as uncut diamonds will
remember their worth. I will hold
my heartbeat until the last: it will pulse
like solar wind, gush into every waterfall,
migrate with starlings, flutter inside
every new birth. And if it turns out
that I am asked the question,
Did you enjoy my creation?
I will have my answer:
Oh yes. God yes.
The High Window 