Writing is a journey, both imaginary and physical. My first book took me to the Arctic to 'catch the colours' of the Northern Lights. Then I hunkered down to catch the wind-blown voices of polar explorers on Shackleton's 1914-17 Endurance expedition. More recently I'm obsessed by space: the race, the rockets, the final frontier.

Hear a BBC Radio Leicester interview about my space poetry at: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p03wfpyp
Explore my digital narrrative PHILAE'S BOOK OF HOURS, published by the European Space Agency, at:
https://rosetta-art-tribute.tumblr.com/post/144241709712/siobhan-logan-philaes-book-of-hours

My prose-poetry collections FIREBRIDGE TO SKYSHORE
and MAD, HOPELESS & POSSIBLE are both published by Original Plus Press at:
http://thesamsmith.webs.com/originalpluschapbooks.htm

Contact me for signed copies or bookings at:
https://twitter.com/siobsi

Visit the writers' development service I co-run at: https://www.facebook.com/TheWritersShed/


About Me

My photo
Leicester, East Midlands
As a storyteller, my work crosses boundaries of myth, science, history and spoken word. It has been presented in the British Science Museum, Ledbury Poetry Festival, National Space Centre and the European Space Agency website. In 2014 I ran a digital residency on WW1 for 14-18NOW and Writing East Midlands. I teach Creative Writing at De Montfort University and have experience of leading school events, workshop tuition and mentoring. In addition, I co-run The Writers' Shed, a service for writers, at: https://www.facebook.com/TheWritersShed/

Friday 11 November 2016

Tommy's Scarf

Before the day closes, here is my act of remembrance. Back in 2014, this poem was inspired by the statue of an Unknown Soldier in Paddington Station. The Tommy is wearing a long hand-knit scarf over his uniform and reading a letter, perhaps from home.
 
 
 
Scarf



Her tapped-out knit-one-purl
was a private Morse code
as much lullaby as distress-call
between Field Service Postcards
from France. Her autumn spent
picking up and slipping stitches
to shoulder you from afar.
Today it is a coil of python
a slithering bundle of welted yarn
wrapping your jugular: a ribbed
belt of bullets machine-gun issue
pulling your bowed head to assent.
Then it was a muffler, her umbilical
shawl of twice-ravelled wool
that clicked and twitched
over many a clock-ticked night
into a candlewick fabric, elastic
boy-looped, long as a man:
a fleece itching with unsaid words
still warm with smells of her.
Did she cosset you, Tommy?
Fuss and mither you? Dab
spittle to polish you, tidy a wisp
of hair under your trench cap
when you defied her at last
and donned Kitchener's Blue?
Before this tasselled winding-cloth
you lay cat's cradled in a weft
of barbed-wire bindweed
that snagged on her name and stuck
for the two days it took to die.
A jagged casting-off attended by
No Man's rats and bluebottles.
Your fingers laced around her letter
in a certain light, are skeletal
but stubby nails, bent eyelashes
and boy-man jutting chin, are molten
unresolved, alive in metal.


 
Published in the Letters to an Unknown Soldier Anthology, ed. by Kate Pullinger & Bartlett  Nov. 2014. Written as part of a residency I led for 14-18-NOW and WEM in August 2014.