Mother and baby deaths. We must not avert our gaze.

On July 3, 2026July 3, 2026 By Pamela GallowayIn MusingsLeave a comment

Infant mortality in 1800 was 329 deaths per 1000 births in Britain. statista.com has a very impressive chart which shows how this rate has fallen steadily so that in 2020 it stood at 4 deaths per 1000 births. I present these facts as a backdrop to the findings, published recently, of Donna Ockenden’s report into maternity “care” at Nottingham University Hospitals. Over 500 mothers and babies were seriously injured or died between 2006 and 2024. Parents are calling for a government inquiry. I read reports of her findings, and watched videos of some of the affected parents speaking of their experiences in total horror. I reel from the findings in this report as I, perhaps, naively, believed Britain to be one of the safest countries to be pregnant and have a baby in. https://www.ockendenmaternityreview.org.uk/

Women consistently reported feeling dismissed, disempowered or blamed when they expressed anxiety or reported critical symptoms such as reduced foetal movements, severe pain, hypertension and postnatal deterioration. Instead of being taken seriously, their instincts and physical concerns were frequently minimised, normalised or reframed by staff as maternal anxiety. Tobi Thomas, The Guardian. https://guardian.com

Racism, prejudice and misogyny played a part. Women from black, Asian and other minority ethnic groups as well as those of lower socio-economic status and teens were particularly affected.

It’s difficult to watch mothers and fathers speak about what they went through when the child they were ready to welcome died or suffered injury causing cerebral palsy.

This hits me hard as it takes me back to my own experiences as an expectant mother more than thirty years ago. My book Passing Stranger tells some of this story. I post the title poem here with its shocking quote from a nurse: “Still not passed that foetus?”.

My ex and I had no problem with the getting pregnant part but I couldn’t hang on to those potential babes. Seven pregnancies, five miscarriages and thankfully two live births, my son and daughter. I know so well the deep hurt, the grief of losing a baby. Miscarriage has long been deeply misunderstood. I see that culture of denial around foetal and infant death beginning to change. And so it should. We are in the 21st century! Hold that up against 1800 and statistics from that era. As a society we should be deeply ashamed.

Passing stranger

Still not passed that fetus?
The nurse cajoles, jollying me along. 
Should I have said I’m sorry?

I am sorry. Sorry I would never pass
a long, cooped-up winter listening 
to the weight of your breath
through the dark, windows steamed 
with the warmth of  our closeness. In the night,
I might have passed my hands over you,
wondering that you were real,
separate but connected to me. 
I am sorry I’d never watch you pass 
a soccer ball down a field, 
call out to receive a team-mate’s pass
and end mud-spattered and tired, 
in need of a bath and hot cocoa.
Sorry not to have the chance to pass you 
on the street, a person I never met, catch your eye,
smile that uncertain, checking-you-out 
kind of smile, a passing stranger’s tentative exchange,
half recognise in your eyes, 
maybe your walk, something of me, 
once, long ago.

I am sorry I will eventually pass you,
a barely-formed collection of cells, coming apart,
disintegrating in the warm but caustic bath of my uterus, 
so much blood and tissue, flowing warm against my skin.
I summon the passing bells to toll.

From Passing Stranger, Pam Galloway. Inanna Publications, Toronto.

Musings plus… .

On May 26, 2026May 26, 2026 By Pamela GallowayIn MusingsLeave a comment

As any writer, I wish to have people read my work. Musings here have been randomly inspired pieces. I’ve therefore decided to dip into my books, published in Canada, to talk about some of the poems and stories behind them. Parallel Lines and Passing Stranger each present slices of my life so are, in part, poetic memoirs. I used family stories to throw light on my family history and added in research into life in 19th century Manchester for some poems.

Queen of red clay

I read this poem at the recent event “One City, Many Voices” at Central Library, Manchester. Organized by the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society (Lit and Phil) and the Muslim Arts and Culture Festival (MacFest). It brought together four poets with different connections to Manchester, born here or from another part of UK, migrated here and, for me, returned after 40 years away. Multi-generational and with different styles both in writing and presenting, the event was a stimulating peek into poetry in Manchester.

Peter Kalu, naseema bee and
Nora Blascok read from their work alongside me.

This poem, Queen of red clay, was inspired after reading accounts of factory and mill workers, this one about a woman working at a brick factory described by Elihu Burritt (American consular agent in Birmingham, noted pacifist and anti-slavery activist) who started out as a blacksmith himself. He undoubtedly knew something of what he wrote.

There were numerous brick factories in Manchester though Burritt’s observations were written after his time spent living in the Back Country. To me, his description of the conditions in the factory and his focus on the women who toiled in suffocating heat, leant dignity to the workers. I tried to give some sense of the living and working conditions for the working class at the time my ancestors lived and worked in Ancoats and Longsight. My cousin, Margaret Willis, has researched the genealogy of the Galloways extensively and found family members worked, as might be expected, in various jobs connected to the cotton trade, which boomed in the 19th century. Canal work, mill and factory work… .

Queen of red clay

Some irreverent wag, looking at her
standing…broad wooden sceptre in
her hand and her yellow turban on her head
might call her the Sultana of Edom or
the Queen of red clay…

Elihu Burrit 1868

She stands statuesque
her turbaned head, her thin garments
spattered with clay she works into bricks,
slaps into moulds, her hands
lift and turn these inedible loaves.

Pale-skinned girls
blood drained by the weight of wet clay
they carry on their heads
might be her pages

if only their court was gold-painted,
scented by spiced meat searing over open fires,
lady and attendants dressed in silk.
Instead they smell the blaze of kilns
push each common day toward week’s end
and a few pennies for the gin palace.

Beyond the factory wall
men are building monuments to labour.
No ceremony, no kings or queens cut ribbons.
Just brick on brick, slate roofs and chimneys
stacked against a raddled sky.

First published: TickleAce (Summer ’96) then in Parallel Lines (2006)

Science and Industry Museum Manchester

Working Class Movement Library Manchester

The People’s History Museum

Books

“My Library”– the Portico. An Update

On April 1, 2026May 26, 2026 By Pamela GallowayIn MusingsLeave a comment

Walk along Moseley St. beside the tram tracks in the centre of Manchester and where it crosses Charlotte St. you will see an impressive building which you’ll recognize as the Bank pub. Many people don’t look further. But if you take a turn at the corner you’ll find an unassuming green door. Look up and see “The Portico Library 1806”. Enter and a narrow staircase will lead you up to a room which I promise will provide you a definite “Wow” response.

It’s been seven years now since I came back to live here, to support Mum in her final years and since I decided to become a member of the Portico. Apart from being a stunning example of Manchester’s 19th century architecture and a pleasure to step inside, it’s Reading Room provided me a quiet space to write. In these years I’ve begun to refer to the Portico as “my library”.

Now, I’m excited to be involved in the Portico’s Reunite project which will see the library again occupy all three floors of the building with an £11 million revisioning of its space.

This significant juncture in its history is being supported by a Grant from the National Lottery Commission as well as a vigorous fund-raising campaign.

See theportico.org.uk for how you can add your support.

The Portico achieves so much in its limited top floor space being not only a library with 25,000+ centuries-old books but also an inspirational art gallery and a fine cafe fast becoming recognized as one of Manchester’s best lunch spots.

For its current exhibition “Everything and Nothing” the library staff ventured into the building’s attic where its archive is stored. What they found began to shape a consideration of what it is that makes a library and this is at the heart of the exhibition. Visitor’s are asked to contribute their ideas and to write a message to be placed in a time capsule to be opened in 2076.

For my contribution at this significant juncture in the library’s history, the library’s staff commissioned a poem from me to respond to the only other known poem to have been published, “The Portico” by Tinsley Pratt (1909). What an honour!

On display with “The Portico” by Tinsley Pratt:

#theportico.org.uk; #poetry; #porticoreunited; #antiquarianlibraries #antiquarianbooks

Our Old House

On February 5, 2026May 26, 2026 By Pamela GallowayIn MusingsLeave a comment

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Mum always said the day she and Dad moved into the house in Torridon Walk they thought they’d landed in Paradise. As an eight year old I guess I didn’t appreciate the full joy but it was definitely new, strange and huge. I recall running up the wide stairs to my very own bedroom, stopping on the way to use the upstairs, indoor toilet and splashing water into the bath just to watch it pool there under its own power.

A three-bedroomed council “semi” was at least four times bigger than our two-up-two down in Longsight’s slum clearance district. And that’s not counting the garden. Just to have a garden fulfilled a dream neither of my parents had imagined coming true. Front and back, grass, trees and rich, black soil waiting for Dad’s efforts at self-sufficiency. Well, at least in the vegetable department. Potatoes, onions, cabbage, carrots, lettuce, radish, beetroots and eventually tomatoes when he’d gained enough know-how. I was his garden help with the planting and inevitably the weeding. Mum chose berry bushes: blackcurrant, redcurrant, raspberries, gooseberries with the native brambles providing a harvest she turned into pies, jams and jellies and yes, I was kitchen assistant too.

In the sixties, Wythenshawe was in the countryside. The house was only a mile from Ringway airport with a single runway and newly built control tower and surrounding it were farms and country lanes which became our playground. There were fields right up alongside the house and, as I write, the one closest to the house is still intact, gone wild. Not farmed any longer and no doubt waiting for the next airport expansion. It will happen.

Mum and Dad lived in that house together for fifty-five years and for sixty-six years of marriage. The house gradually emptied of family chatter, comings and goings and gatherings over the next nine years when Mum lived there by herself. She died last May, two weeks before her 95^th birthday. The house is now waiting on its new family as its sale just completed. 65 years after our family moved in there. That’s an awful lot of memories. And as the cliche has it: if only the walls could talk.

Here’s another one: it’s only bricks and mortar but something lives in those memories and so there is sadness in closing the front gate behind me for the last time.

Illustration by Lilian Galloway. Here’s one of here poems about living in the place she loved.

Urban Thoughts

The countryside at my back door
The willow herbs, trees and fields
I’ve come to love them more and more
Winds that whistle, crows that caw.

Soon I fear, with noise and roar
This scene of peaceful interlude
Will be extinct and lost forever mpre
Because of human greed.

The things I love will all be lost
Swallowed. as by a mighty. frost
Trees and fields will be no more
When I look out from my back door.

Lilian Galloway

Rosa Grindon and the Shakespearean Garden

On March 11, 2025April 23, 2026 By Pamela GallowayIn MusingsLeave a comment

A Shakespearean Garden! I had never heard of such a thing until I came across a group of gardeners busy at work in Platt Fields Park, Manchester. I was there with some of my walking group, the Manchester and Salford Ramblers. https://www.manchesterandsalfordramblers.org.uk/ I hadn’t been in the park since I was a child. I was born in Longsight close to the city centre in a terrace of small dwellings ultimately tagged “slum housing”. Needless to say there were no trees on the streets where I lived but my mother knew that children needed to be in nature and breathe relatively fresh air. We had regular days out to a few of Manchester’s big parks and Platt Fields was one.

Recently, we Ramblers were on a “slow walk” in the park, allowing us to take in landmarks and history. First, there was Platt Hall itself, an 18^th century grand house which has been part of the Manchester Art Gallery since the 1920s. For many years, 1947-2017, it held the Gallery of Costume. For now it’s closed and its exact future role is to be decided but it will remain part of the Manchester Art Gallery.

We strolled past the boating lake, no boats in February, but I counted many water birds: Mute Swans, Tufted Ducks, moorhens, coots, gulls. I had no memory of the big pond or its boats! It was right after this that I caught sight of a mural that filled the side of a building at the Fallowfield Brow end of the park. A portrait of a woman painted in bright shades of purple, green and white. It was a bit of a way from the pond and I announced to everyone that I’d go ahead and find out who this woman was. I was thrilled to discover she was a Manchester Rosa (my daughter’s name). The group soon followed me and we began to learn about Rosa Grindon.

Rosa Elverson Grindon (1848-1923) came from simple beginnings, born in a small village in Derbyshire. She became a Shakespearean scholar who challenged many of the primarily male-dominated interpretations of women in the Bard’s plays. She was the first woman to be invited to lecture at the Stratford Festival and also ran the Manchester Literary Ladies Society, holding meetings in her back garden. She bequeathed money for the Shakespeare window in Manchester’s Central Library. Rosa was a philanthropist and a suffragist, with the goal of votes for women very much in her heart. Like her husband Leo, a botanist, she loved plants and in 1922, the 300^th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death, she developed the Shakespearean Garden in the park. It was planted with the 175 plants named in Shakespeare’s plays and poetry. The garden fell into serious neglect over many years of limited budgets for Manchester’s parks. Restoration began in 2021 by an enthusiastic group of gardeners who still tend the garden weekly. There’s an open invitation for interested people to join them. https://www.facebook.com/ShakespeareanGarden And for more on Platt Fields Park: https://friendsofplattfields.org.uk

The mural was painted in 2024 by Ethan Lemon who has created a visually stunning tribute to Rosa in its bold purple, white and green – colours of the suffrage movement. Ethan Lemon is an established studio and mural artist with an impressive and international list of clients. His murals are in many spots around Manchester. https://www.ethanlemonart.com

Here are a couple of examples of Shakespeare’s words on flowers:

I know a bank where the wild thyme blows,
Where oxlips and the nodding violet grows,
Quite over-canopied with luscious woodbine,
With sweet musk-roses and with eglantine:
There sleeps Titania sometime of the night,
Lull’d in these flowers with dances and delight.
A Midsummer Night’s Dream (2.1.255-60)

Here’s flowers for you;
Hot lavender, mints, savoury, marjoram;
The marigold, that goes to bed wi’ the sun
And with him rises weeping: these are flowers
Of middle summer, and I think they are given
To men of middle age.
The Winter’s Tale (4.4.122-7)

[Final note: in an ironic twist, as I researched Shakespearean Gardens I discovered there has been one in Vancouver BC (where I lived for 40 years) since 1916! So much for my literary awareness. I also found a link to the Canadian Women’s Press Club (1909) Who’s who at the 3d International Congress of Women, Rosa Grindon listed as having attended. Did she also travel west I wonder?]

Mayfield Park, Manchester and the colour purple.

On August 23, 2024August 28, 2024 By Pamela GallowayIn MusingsLeave a comment

Have you ever heard of “mauveine measles”? Likely not. I certainly hadn’t until I came across it in accounts of the rapid uptake in the use of newly synthesised purple dye in 1850s and 60s. It is not, in fact, an illness.

You will be familiar with the notion that purple has historically been the colour exclusively worn by royalty or clerics. The reason for this was because it was so expensive to make purple dye from the mucus of a sea snail found in the Mediterranean. It’s reported that this “Tyrian purple” was first made in Tyre (in what is now Lebanon) and that in 1^stcentury CE a pound of the dye cost as much as half a Roman soldier’s annual salary. This all changed when, in 1856 a young chemistry student named William Perkin discovered, quite accidentally, a way to synthesise a purple dye. He’d actually been trying to make quinine to treat malaria when he noticed a purple solution emerge from his mixings. He tested the effect of this unexpected colour on a piece of fabric and when it came out purple he quickly patented this first synthetically produced purple which he called mauveine. A craze for purple clothing took off and soon the label “mauveine measles” was being used to describe how the fashion statement was spreading through Britain.

I’ve learned all this after a Ramblers http://ramblers.org.uk walk yesterday took me to Manchester’s newest park (first in a hundred years), Mayfield Park. A site manager gave us a brief history of the site and told of its industrial past, in particular it having been where a man called Thomas Hoyle set up a dye works in 1856. We were told that it was Thomas who had first worked out how to make a purple dye from a plant, rubia tinctorum or European Madder. The park has been planted with many different purple plants to honour Thomas’s legacy as an innovator in making purple fabric available to ordinary folks not just the elite. Despite extensive searches I’ve not been able to find much at all about Thomas’s discovery and have to come down in favour of Perkin as the man who brought the colour purple to the masses.

Thomas Hoyle was, however a progressive employer at his dye-works and notably built a bathhouse for his workers. In 2019 when the site was being excavated for development the remains of the bathhouse were found. The tiles used in the pools were in remarkable condition and many have been saved and will be used in further building on the Mayfield Park site.

I haven’t written any poems about dye works but here’s one I wrote for my first manuscript (for my MFA, 24 years ago!!) about my family history through 19^th and 20^th centuries and Industrial Revolution stories from that time.

Queen of Red Clay

Some irreverent wag, looking at her

standing…broad wooden sceptre in

her hand and her yellow turban on her head

might call her the Sultana of Edom or

the Queen of red clay…

Elihu Burrit 1868

She stands statuesque

her turbanned head, her thin garments

spattered with clay she works into bricks,

slaps into moulds, her hands

lift and turn these inedible loaves.

Pale-skinned girls

blood drained by the weight of wet clay

they carry on their heads

might be her pages.

if only their court was gold-painted,

scented by spiced meat searing over open fires,

lady and attendants dressed in silk.

Instead they smell the blaze of kilns

push each common day toward week’s end

and a few pennies for the gin palace

Beyond the factory wall

men are building monuments to labour.

No ceremony, no kings or queens cut ribbons.

Just brick on brick, slate roofs and chimneys

stacked against a raddled sky..

https://mayfieldpark.com/

https://www.soci.org/about-us/history/notable-scientists-and-inventors/william-perkin

#mayfield stories

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jan/10/victorian-mayfield-bathhouse-uncovered-archaeologist-beneath-manchester-car-park

Walking into writing.

On February 8, 2024February 8, 2024 By Pamela GallowayIn MusingsLeave a comment

Another in my very occasional musings (note to self: get here more often!)

One step then another. Ignore the steady rain on this typical Manchester morning and lift eyes to the skeletal tops of trees. Listen. A robin, a blue-tit and the increasingly familiar cry of parakeets, now regarded as native birds in the UK. Beside the trail, neon green shoots push through the undergrowth; crocus and daffodils reach up, building confidence. I’m in the present moment as my yoga teacher instructs, attending to What Is and not to What If?

I’ve learned a lot about walking in the last few years. Practicalities like the importance of appropriate clothing. Being wet on the outside is of no concern to me today in my efficient waterproofs. A stick gives me more stability in mud or when climbing a slope. And I’m valuing the friendships I’m making when I go out on guided walks along canals, rivers, parks and out to the edge of the moors with my group, the Manchester and Salford Ramblers. People who love to be out and walking are friendly and open and I’ve had many great conversations. My mostly weekend walks are now between six and nine miles. Walks close to home are more relaxed affairs than they ever were when all I was thinking of was the dog’s need for exercise, my need to get back home for a cuppa and my own “programme” was conducted at the soulless gym. The pandemic cured me of my unhappy relationship with treadmills and weight machines. I now spend time in “my park” (Wythenshawe) and along “my river” (the Mersey) absorbing the rewards of fresh air, the entertainment of squirrels skittering in and around the trees and the sight of grebes, herons or cormorants. The river path connects me back to the other river close to my heart, the Mighty Fraser in B.C. where I have walked for many years and where many poems began to take shape. I get that bonus here too. As I walk, breathe and clear my mind words start to come through and I speak to nature as my audience. Sometimes I take out my phone, set the Voice Memo going so I can recall my thoughts when I get back to my desk.

These two poems evolved from my walking words.

Minding the Fraser Foreshore Trail

Stop. Before this tree,
lift my gaze into its lattice
of branches. They stretch, flex,
reach fingers to their neighbours
and somewhere inside this tangle of green,
scatter of leaves and needles, a bird sings.

I have promised myself, I will
stop, listen to the invisible, the hidden
bird that pipes an alert
mind birdsong,
mind rugged bark
mind branches, needles and leaves
mind this forest trail.

Some days

Along the lower trail that leads to the pond,
plants push through a chaos of growth
fed by the moist and richly-rotted soil along the creek.
This is where Tara forages for chamomile, she shows me
how it persists all winter in ragged patches beneath tough grasses,
their coarse blades bent to the rain.

Where the path rises and bends, cottonwoods
spread branches to make a ceiling, in summer
their leaves shut out the sky.
Now, their broad trunks are spaced
between alders, make a silent room, a space outside
judgment where I can listen
to the resounding toll of endings.

Inside this monochromed box,
shut-down, so little light
seeping through the slats this January morning,
I will allow no imaginings of a new day’s new blooms,
light caught within them and held, an hour,
a week, a season. This morning,
there will be no stirrings
of change to ring the pure bell
that signals all beginnings.

#walking #nature #poetry #hiking #writing

“My Library” – The Portico

On July 4, 2023 By Pamela GallowayIn MusingsLeave a comment

Opened in 1806 the Portico Library https://www.theportico.org.uk/ was funded and supported by 400 initial subscribers all of them well to do men. Women didn’t get a look-in until 1870 with the influence of the Married Women’s Property Act. The first committee envisioned a place which would hold a collection of books, journals and newspapers for the edification of its members and also provide them with a relaxing lunch venue. The Portico, as well as being a fine library has always had an excellent cafe.

Early members and those who sat on the library’s committee numbered amongst them some world famous names. There was Peter Mark Roget of thesaurus fame, and other members included John Dalton and numerous renowned authors, scientists, future Prime Ministers and wealthy industrialists. Like many old established institutions in Britain, the Portico is engaged in an examination of its connections to empire building, colonisation and the slave trade. No question that these were sources of money that funded the library and its book collection reflects this history. However, its members also included some radical abolitionists and anti-poverty campaigners.

When I landed in Manchester again four years ago (after 39 years away), I needed a quiet place to write. I did a tour of some of the libraries in the centre of Manchester seeking that perfect spot where I’d be able to sit through a day and quietly get words on to paper. The Portico’s reading room proved to be perfect for my needs. I became a member of the library and in the past year have also been volunteering one day a week which is bringing me into closer contact with the books.

The Portico Library is a membership library, but it is open to the public who can enjoy its atmosphere and its cafe. The library gained charitable status in 2017 and now has the goal of re-occupying the entire building, taking back the ground floor which has been rented out since the 1920s when the library was short of funds.

Members of the Portico have access to its collection of books numbering more than 25,000, mostly 19th century, but with some books much older.

Here is the oldest book in the collection, Historiae Animalium by Conrad Gesner, It is written in Latin and includes many stunning illustrations of animal species. It was published in 1551. There are two volumes which were discovered lying in an extreme state of disrepair, water damaged, in the attic of the building in the late twentieth century. The books were restored and rebound in 1999.

#porticolibrary, #oldbooks, #16thcenturybooks, #19thcenturybooks

Stop what you’re doing – the birds are singing!

On July 24, 2022July 24, 2022 By Pamela GallowayIn MusingsLeave a comment

There are no adequate words to describe birdsong. Humans have tried to represent the notes and tunes with words like “trill”, “chirrup”, “twitter”, “tweet” (and these latter two stolen back to label the chatter from our phones). People have even named birds after the sound they make as in cuckoo, chiffchaff, macaw, kittiwake. As I listen to the birds outside my window flying between the branches of the rowan, the buckthorn and all the flowering shrubs I cannot fix on any way to accurately convey the melodious sounds that cheer and inspire me.I consult the experts. Bird books provide all kinds of interesting facts. I learn there are calls and songs. Calls are short, simple phrasings while songs contain more notes and are longer. I recognise these differences. Calls do sound more purposeful, a bit like the human “hey, watch out!” or “stop, pay attention!” Songs are more decorative, seem to be released from the bird’s throat just for the hell of it. Is it blatant anthropomorphism to suggest the bird may be simply feeling good and wants to put that joy out into the world? I suspect, yes.

I consult the experts. I discover that male birds make most sound in spring and summer because it’s all to do with attracting a mate and keeping away rivals from his territory. Females don’t sing – only call (except English robins). Birds that don’t sing at all (e.g. gulls and parrots) have numerous calls. Most common garden birds are passerines or perching birds and all passerines sing. I have also learned that woodland birds have longer, richer songs to penetrate the dense foliage. Marshland birds sing more simply and repetitively in their more open surroundings.

Birds and birdsong have been subjects for poets through the ages. One of my favourites is The Darkling Thrush by Thomas Hardy which boldly speaks of hope coming through difficult times.

And I’ve had a go too, to pay homage to the songs of birds that have graced my journey through gardens, woods and forests.

The Darkling Thrush – Thomas Hardy

I leant upon a coppice gate
When Frost was spectre-grey,
And Winter’s dregs made desolate
The weakening eye of day.
The tangled bine-stems scored the sky
Like strings of broken lyres,
And all mankind that haunted nigh
Had sought their household fires.

The land’s sharp features seemed to be
The Century’s corpse outleant,
His crypt the cloudy canopy
The wind his death-lament.
The ancient pulse of germ and birth
Was shrunken hard and dry,
And every spirit upon earth
Seemed fervourless as I.

At once a voice arose among
The bleak twigs overheard
In a full-hearted evensong
Of joy illimited;
An aged thrush, frail, gaunt, and small
In blast-beruffled plume,
Had chosen thus to fling his soul
Upon the growing gloom.

So little cause for carolings
Of such ecstatic sound
Was written on terrestrial things
Afar or nigh around,
That I could think there trembled through
His happy good-night air
Some blessed Hope, whereof he knew
And I was unaware.

I was inspired to write the following poem for a friend’s husband who chose to create beautiful objects to leave in the world as he faced his end of life.

Birdsong

(For the memory of Gregory)

A robin is singing from the top of the cedar.
You are listening to the bird.
Waiting for the trills to stop, for the short night
before another chorus at dawn.

This spring you’ve learned there will be no more
so you work all the days and nights you have left
make chairs, tables, shelves to fill the space
you’ll leave behind. Carving, cutting grooves and curves,
following the lines with strokes, your hands
smoothing surfaces. They absorb your warmth.
You take a white cotton cloth, rub the stain into a circle.

Birdsong augured by the scrape and tap of tools.

Poetry and Music – Cardinal

On April 18, 2022 By Pamela GallowayIn MusingsLeave a comment

Rhythm, rhyme, the expression and stirring of emotion, memorable phrasing, all elements of poetry and of music. All through the ages, poets have been inspired by composers and composers by poets.

I got my chance, last year, to realise the magic that occurs when music and poetry combine. Isaac Zee, a highly talented young composer isaaczee.com came into my life when he rented a room in my house (how to pay the mortgage). He was invited to compose a piece for an innovative music project conceived by his colleagues Tristan Zaba and Mackenzie Warrener. Through their new company, Slow Rise Music they had landed funding from the Canadian Music Centre to produce three new vocal multi-instrumental compositions. Isaac was to write one of these and he needed lyrics. Would I be interested? How to say no! And yet I’d never before worked with a composer.

The theme, initially inspired by the previous year of pandemic, was “Survival”. And yet we were invited to think more broadly on this theme. What did survival mean to me? I’ve always written landscape poems — survival of the environment; I’ve written about my mother, who I care for, surviving life itself (she’s 91).

I began to write a new piece based on notes I had made on the topic of domestic abuse. The “Me Too” movement had raised awareness of the endemic nature of toxic masculinity and its impact on women. In England, many of us were raw with anger and sadness after the murder, by a serving police officer, of Sarah Everard a young woman simply walking home. For myself, I know too many women who have borne the scars of abusive relationships. And I know women reject the notion of victimhood. Women survive.

Isaac and I began the work. We met over Zoom and had wide-ranging discussions about how a poem works: structure and form and elements of musical composition. How did I write a poem and how did he compose a piece of music?

Our collaboration brought the composition “Cardinal” into life. It was one of three pieces for voice, keyboards and guitar performed in November 2021 in a concert, “Hanging By a Thread”, for a small Toronto audience. Tristan, guitar and bass voice and MacKenzie, keyboard and soprano voice had begun to realise their goal of breaking down barriers between genres in classical music. Conventionally this concert would have been a quartet, two musicians, two singers. Pop music or perhaps folk, more associated with the set-up they chose.

The video has a slow, silent start, be patient. Cardinal is the second song.

My thanks to Isaac for lifting up my words inside his music and to Tristan and MacKenzie for a profoundly moving performance.