I Love Poetry Workshops

So, today, a masterclass with Moniza Alvi at the Ilkley Literature Festival on the theme of the adventure of poetry. Intense two hours full of leaps and excitement.

This is not from the class, but afterwards.

It begins to rain and a little wind
lifts the clematis and the rose
on the wall as if to see what's underneath,
turns the brave October flower's face to the stones
and holds it there like a shirt turned inside out
on a bouncing washing line.

Quietly, small drips of rain splash lengths
of wet down the window at an angle of
maybe forty-five degrees.

Protractors and set squares with broken points
in a grubby pencil case,
on long afternoons when life seemed shut out
behind tall windows
you could only open with a hook on a pole,
when rain ran straight down in parallel lines
and the wind howled in the green downpipe
on the wall outside the classroom.

Years of that - sitting on hard square chairs
at ink-stained desks with heavy lids, watching
the weather, watching the clock, watching the white-shirted
back of the girl in front, watching a teacher in tweed
with chalky fingers, watching
and wondering how this and the future joined up.