* I bought a rechargeable torch
with winding mechanism
from my first salary.
By the sides of roads, under
bushes and plants,
geranium and box,
I find the choicest hedgehogs.
Then I light a safety match,
put the jars down,
and smoke the fleas out from the spikes.
* If the hedgehog chokes on the smoke
It doesn’t matter too much.
Wise men never grieve the dead,
they say, but you have to listen carefully
because hedgehogs talk quietly
and often get overwhelmed by leaves.
* I keep my fleas under the bed,
in a shoebox. Once there was a riot,
a mutiny, and I had to escape through a window.
They jumped down the street in packs.
Ruth Yates, 15, Maharishi school, Lathom, Ormskirk, Lancashire
For the last young poet choice this term, I go back to the wonderful batch of submissions from Maharishi school, which are outstanding for their liveliness and originality. None more so than Ruth Yates’s poem, which makes astonishing leaps in narrative, image, tone and finally jumps off the page.
This is a poem as much about hedgehogs as fleas. Despite the disclaimer “it doesn’t matter too much”, I think they are the emotional heart of the poem which, at the end of the second verse, suddenly goes quiet, threatens to become tender. The language is very assured and woven through with strands of rhyme: the tough consonance of torchmatch, boxhedgehogs; the flea tune in smoke, spikes, chokes, shoebox, packs; and the whisper of vulnerability in salary, carefully, quietly, mutiny.
A fabulous poem: funny, gripping, and brave enough to allow the line, “Wise men never grieve the dead”.
Mimi Khalvati
Ruth Yates receives Emergency Kit: Poems for Strange Times, edited by Jo Shapcott and Matthew Sweeney (Faber). Her poem was submitted by Cliff Yates. Mimi Khalvati is TES guest poet for the autumn term. She has published five collections of poetry, including her Selected Poems, published by Carcanet in 2001. Please send poems, no longer than 20 lines, to Friday magazine, Admiral House, 66-68 East Smithfield, London E1W 1BX. Include the poet’s name, age and address, the name of the submitting teacher and the school address. Or email: friday@tes.co.uk
