Alice by Jane Weir

This sequence of poems, both lyrical and elegiac, charts a journey that begins in a Derby coffee shop and ends who knows where...

Often startling, they unearth chance, opportunity, compassion, love, loss and a collective ambition; bold and daring they never flinch or turn away, instead they look straight ahead-walk steady towards the wire.

Some of the poems in this pamphlet focus on the life of Alice Wheeldon. Alice lived in Derby and was an active sufferagette and socialist. Alice , as well as many others, was opposed to conscription during the First World War. She ran a successful second hand clothes business . Both her business and her home became a safe haven for conscientious objectors on the run during the war. Alice, with other members of her family and friends were imprisoned during the war for supposedly trying to assassinate Lloyd George and Arthur Henderson.

ALICE

We traipse along the sluggish Derwent,
lug our bags, hessian flour sacks
stashed with second hand clothes.
It's been a long day on the market
with only half the stock sold.
Ahead, three or four gulls, black backed,
snip at the swollen lips of the river.
Not quite a colony, they've turned
themselves in to the land,
to ride out rough weather.
These days we all flaunt
the protocol of the river bank.
It’s rhythms launder, can never erase,
relieve this century of its stains.
Banners of cormorants declare themselves.
We are careful to acknowledge them.

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