At this time of year, there are lots of flower festivals all over the world. It’s been so hot here, the roses and Sweet Peas are glorious, as are the gladioli, those tall, statuesque flowers of lovely colours.
When I was a child, my mother, brothers and I would go into the pea fields to pick the garden peas. It was hot and dusty work and I would often sneak away and build a pea house out of the long pea straws. The lorry would come at 5.30 in the morning to take us to the pea fields and we would trail out to it, still sleepy from bed, to be bounced to our work.
FLOWER FESTIVAL
The day we couldn’t smell the roses It was almost cold, And the flowers were standing around In buckets, Long green stems shining.
Men and women were putting those roses Into a Catherine wheel of colour, And in a far corner Where there was cool shadow, Children were pinning rosebuds Into a cushion. Yet still we couldn’t smell them.
But as we stood there Eating our marmite sandwiches, Sunshine suddenly leapt through the tall windows, Petals unfurled, And as if someone had pressed a plunger The whole room exploded With warmth and scent and colour.
Growing older and having survived cancer at 40, a long time ago, certainly focuses the mind on the future and I was very aware of this when I wrote the poem FUTURE TENSE. I've always loved writing and still remember the excitement of the first longer piece of work I did. It was very experimental and I was certain it wouldn't get published. It probably wouldn't have but one of the small magazines, who did such great work for new writers, took that piece and many others. But that wasn't all they did. With infinite kindness, they often pointed out where I could improve my writing.
My first book was a picture book, MATTHEW AND HIS MAGIC KITE, but after that, I started wanting to capture the humour and interest of where I lived, so PRIVATE-KEEP OUT came next followed by KNOCK AND WAIT and ONE WAY ONLY. They're not biographies because all I wanted to do was to catch the spirit of those times.
It would be good if everyone wrote an account of their lives so their times are not lost. So many valuable histories unwritten and unread.
When I was a girl, I loved the American writer, BETTY MACDONALD, with her very funny accounts of her family and her life in the 1940's. But NORMAN MAILER's, 'THE NAKED AND THE DEAD' spun me up to the stars when I stumbled across it in the subscription library I belonged to at fifteen. ERNEST HEMINGWAY's 'CHRISTMAS IN PARIS 1923', was so sublime and beautiful it was like a torch for writers and the Toronto Star Weekly must have published it with joy in their hearts. I wonder if there still is a Toronto Star Weekly?
View all posts by gwengrant
