The Scotswoman who married into the Home Counties
Like tweed like pearls
like fire like wood
like loss like Listen with Mother with me
Like prayer like water
like a Scots laird’s daughter
like your three darling war-dead before me
Like heather that shrivels in Hampshire
like silver birch going sick on the chalk
like your loch all clogged up beyond the border
Like grin and bear it
like you limp to the shop
like bravery how I wanted to shake you
Like you meant the marriage
like you could not
stop him being like he was
in his unlikeness
like a moor set down in a wheat farm
like your composure stiffening
Like your bad hip
like the smell of you ageing
like you knowing of the coming
of your death all the time he poured beer
that last evening in Broughton
like you never were like yourself down here.
About this poem
This poem was included in Best Scottish Poems 2014. Best Scottish Poems is an online publication, consisting of 20 poems chosen by a different editor each year, with comments by the editor and poets. It provides a personal overview of a year of Scottish poetry. The editor in 2014 was Roderick Watson.
Author’s note:
Clare Pollard invited a group of poets to break the rules of using ‘like’ in poetry. This was when I was lucky enough to enjoy monthly sessions with her, supported by New Writing North in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. I seem to remember Clare argued that we might sometimes set ourselves apart from the closest similes for our deepest experience if we policed our poetic language with blanket exclusions. So, this poem emerged, almost fully fledged, from an organised poetry writing session. My mother is its subject, and I guess the repetition of ‘like’ makes the word less and less substantial, so the subject coalesces towards the end with her metaphor.
