A warm and snouting thing

Ramona Herdman

• Publisher: The Emma Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781912915309
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: European Poetry
• Index: Literature

'A warm and snouting thing' dances delicately between the sizzle of nerves brought on by proximity to sex and the ambiguous stability of commitment and family. These poems emphasise the physicality, not only of desire, but of the human and natural worlds which surround and shape it: springing ferns, 'saddle-soap / and saddle-sores, ' and a vivid scene in which the speaker's mother boils alive 'two huge crabs, rough as roof-tiles' on a holiday with her husband and his lover. Herdman's voice is always precise, even at moments of the most brazen intimacy, whether staring at the backs of men's necks on the Tube across 'a little inch of shared air' or observing the 'patterned' flesh underneath the buttons of a corset. There are tales of teenage self-confidence ('vest tops in April') and adultery averted – but there is space here, too, for a settled life with a salad spinner, and a long-term lover's belly 'warm in its burrow'. The poet skilfully negotiates the twin pulls of the familiar and the unknown, generating a forceful and compelling charge from the energy of flight resisted.

Daphne

It was a red-brick university.

A bit of the classics, a bit of Marlowe:

but that was in another country,

And besides, the wench is dead.

Gods as swans, as stags;

naiads ever-replenishing like laughing rain.

We could spot a phallic symbol a mile off.

All of us on the pill, no question,

and on the prowl.

And mostly unsuccessful.

I think perhaps it was my ugliness that saved me.

Looking back, I was lucky –

night after night wide-eyed off my face through the city

wearing nothing but glitter, heels,

a vintage satin slip

with straps that snapped on the dancefloor

forever needing knotting back up.

But then they say

any woman can get laid anytime she wants

if she lowers her standards enough,

that you can’t blame wild dogs

for attacking raw meat left in the road,

that you should wear flats

so you can run away.

O nights I half-remember!

Old men buying us trebles.

Telling a boy of my really clear memory

of holding someone’s hand the night before

and him saying, That was me.

Nights I insisted on keeping my knickers on

or changed my mind buck-naked.

Thanks be to the men, to the world that let me.

But Daphne was beautiful.

We half-hated her for it.

I wonder now if some bad fairy

leant over her in envy once upon a time, said,

Yes, be beautiful. Be set apart.

Be water in the air. Be currency.

Be pawed. Be owned.

Be set apart from women. Be unsafe.

She kept on soft as the flow of water

till we forgot her face and liked her.

Shocked us like the dazzle of sun on sea

when Saturday night dolled-up – but we forgave her.

My mum called her The Alpha Female.

Water on a concrete campus. She shone.

She could’ve had anyone.

You know what they say

you don’t want what you can get.

Next to her, we were stick women.

From the Dean down, she got a reaction.

Lecturers ludicrous.

She almost gave in to the one

who’d been writing her essays.

He couldn’t believe his luck –

then ever after was scrabbled away with rage

that she froze last minute, said no.

How we howled when he published his novel about it,

him the hero, shining Apollo.

We were glad.

Hadn’t wanted his hot old hands on her.

Wanted her kept clear like the moon on water.

We sat on her bed and laughed as she packed to go home.

Never guessed she wouldn’t come back.

Fifteen years on, I meet her on Facebook,

giving nothing away. No relationship status.

A fine-looking woman for her age.

Great posture. Nothing like water.

More like a broad tree that owns

its own space, holds its fill of air.

Shaped

ticked

slee...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Other Titles from the Emma Press
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• He sits slightly too close and we don’t look at each other
• Jill had two ponies
• No Better Than She Should Be Red
• Nudes
• Ferns
• Sixteen
• Shave
• Daphne
• Shaped
• I’ll never have a child to bring to this beach
• Buttoned
• Marilyn
• Comeuppance
• Bless email and bless boredom and bless
• This is just to say
• Precipitation
• Two cats on a Valentine’s card
• Salad spinner
• Anniversary present
• Anemone
• There is a thing
• Tease
• Valentine, thirteen years in
• Notes on the Poems
• Acknowledgements
• About the Emma Press