Just letting you know about my second collection of poetry, Boudicca & Co, available from international publisher
Salt
which is being launched this week. Click on the link below to Salt to see more.
My poems touch on many subjects, it's a pretty free-wheeling book, but largely they're about relationships, womanhood - if there is such a thing?! - feminism, lesbianism, motherhood. Plus there's a long and pretty graphic sequence written in the voice of Boudicca, the Warrior Queen of the Iceni, who revolted against the Romans in Britain, c. 60AD. Hence the title. In that section I touch on the horrors and stupidity of war, the poems having been inspired by more recent world conflicts.
Anyway, some of you who are interested in poetry might want to check it out. There's a recent photo of me on the Salt website, with some biog. info and an extract from the book. Plus endorsements by other writers.
Here's a poem from the book:
HOT DAYS IN THE EIGHTIES
On hot days in the eighties, you stopped
for ices at Taunton Services. Little
did you know then, twenty-something
in the white Ford Escort Estate —
radio on full, heater too, blasting out
to keep the engine cool — the traffic jams
from Portishead to Liverpool.
That was the decade of the motorway.
You chopped your locks in the back
of the car one day, dyke-short.
Kept dental dams in the glove box,
grew the hair under your arms
to a mousey fuzz. Purchased
a map of the highways, went native.
You wore a suede jacket and a crucifix
in the ‘V’ of your chest, strode
like a man (and the rest). Drove
a Lancia Delta into the dirt.
Years later it was a Mercedes camper van,
seven berth, and beads, hippy skirts,
needing to get close to the earth.
These days you don’t get out much,
stuck in with a husband and kids.
But the road’s strong, it hauls on you
like a blackbird on the worm,
and you find excuses — friends ill,
time alone — for the grip
of the wheel, a licence to roam.
Jane Holland _________________ BOUDICCA & CO - out now from
Salt Publishing
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