An Online Resource for Writers and Readers of Poetry in and around the City of Canterbury      ~      mail@canterburypoets.co.uk

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Kate Adams Biography: My initial training in creative arts, was in the 1970s as a painter but I have always loved writing. Writing and painting from childhood have existed for me side by side, though as an adult I have had to prioritize one form to the detriment of the other due to time pressures. As a painter I am interested in landscape and the expression of mood through colour. My writing has focused on human struggle and emotion. I use landscape, a sense of place, in poetry to portray feeling. In 1990 I had to give up my paid job due to prolonged illness. I currently work as a volunteer for Kent Refugee Help, a small charity supporting detained migrants and refugees. Their struggle for freedom and survival in a hostile world inspired me to begin writing poetry.

Always

Always I wanted to take you here
This far away country,
As far as yours, that you lost as a child.

This magical view –so English
The grey sweep of sky over flat land
Still, white river, the sheds,
Tipping into the dark,
Mud and slime,

Different from your remembrances
Of heat and light,
The mountains and the desert sand
 Places you hold internally. 

At dusk I scan the colours
The orange, yellow of autumn’s fire,
Tail lights of cars, moving on some
Distant road that intersects the marsh.

You and I were stars colliding
We burned each other then shot apart

But wishes live like dreams
I see you in the white sheep grazing
The black bent trees,
The curves and rectangles,
That make a landscape.

(November 29 2007)





Sunday In Detention

Sunday and the house dies
In the darkening afternoon.
The floor a wreck of coffee cups
And papers screwed.

My seminar unwritten, books unread
I’m an island in this debris
No human face, nobody’s warmth
The sky outside not beckoning
The cold sea no incentive
To take a walk.

And so I phone you in that hellish place
To pass some time, to hear a voice.
You say; I’m in the corridor
Just walking.
I can’t play pool no more,
 Can’t eat can’t sleep.
I’m sick and tired and bored.

I see your feet and feel the weight
Of all those months of waiting
Twenty months and no less time for
Good behaviour
Twenty months, indefinite.
Sunday in detention.

 I’m in detention too.
Can’t read, can’t write, can’t work,
I’m going to die here on my own.

Don’t die. You say
It’s almost Monday, hold out for Monday.
Monday is a new day.
Monday is a new week.
I’m waiting here for Monday.
So can you.

Sunday in detention. Who’s helping who?

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