A Quiet woman

 

After my recent small success (runner up out of 5000 entrants in Sage life story comp) I was touched to receive warm congratulations from a number of old members of a couple of writing groups – now defunct – I used to belong to.

 One of them – Doris Sloley had had her poetry book published and was going to be reading from it at our library on National Poetry Day.  I decided to go and support her and buy her book which she obligingly signed.

 Doris always emanated a warm tranquillity – quite rare in writer’s circles –and to me she personifies Somerset and Exmoor.  She was born between Wheddon Cross and Timberscombe and moved to a farm at the age of four.  She composed her first poem aged nine lying in bed at night.  Although she never wrote it down she can still remember it.  At thirteen, encouraged by her teacher, she wrote four poems which appeared in the school magazine.

 Then she had a fallow period when she was aware her poetry didn’t come up to Keats or Tennyson and writing poetry was considered very eccentric.  You didn’t tell anyone you wrote poetry.

 She had an idyllic childhood on the farm with her beloved sheep and all the sights, sounds and smells of Exmoor.  When she was about 39 her father retired from farming. This was a traumatic time for Doris; she took a job in an office but after three years the stress of life in the fast lane got to me and I had a nervous breakdown.

 Jenny Glanfield who encouraged and helped Doris put the book together says:

 unlike so much contemporary  poetry you don’t need a key to get into  Doris’s poems; there is no intellectual barrier  shutting out the reader.  On the contrary her poems are ‘hooky’- hooking you in and making you want to read on.
 

Dipping into Bluebells, Rainbows and Sheep over the last week I have found this to be true.  In Doris’s words it is accessible.  It is beautifully illustrated with Doris’s old photos underlying the verse as if one is looking through the mist of the years

I asked Doris which was her favourite poem and she said that was like asking a mother which was her favourite child. .

Heartbreak, joy, sadness and humour are present in this book.  What more is there?

 

Return to Exmoor

by Doris Sloley

Pick me a bluebell, next time you go there.

Walk through the wood and on over the stream,

Up the green slope with grasshoppers singing,

Just where I, oftentimes go in my dreams.

 

I can go back, myself, if I want but

If I return to the place that I knew,

All of my memories will crowd in and then

I shall be sad- but it’s different for you.

 

You haven’t known the fun of haymaking,

Watched tadpoles wriggle and dart in the pond,

Helped to ‘head out’ a corn rick by moon light,

Rode through the fields to the moorland beyond,

 

Run to a meadow where lambs were playing,

Skipping and racing in boundless delight,

Climbed up the hill where we would go sledging

In winter when all was coated in white.

 

Is there a tree, still, in the old orchard?

Can you find lanes where wild strawberries grow?

Are there blackberries, now in the cow field?

Do you hear calls of a distant curlew?

 

I want to keep all these memories of mine

Locked up in my heart, unaltered by time.

 

Doris now lives in the pretty village of Monksilver – so near and yet so far.  On a lighter note;

Compliment – or Not

 

It was all a long, long time ago

And I’ve no regrets, not now.

But did you have to give my name to

Your pedigree Friesian cow?

 

This is a book I shall be keeping close to hand.  Available from Amazon £9.99