The Academi Cardiff International Poetry Competition

Susan Utting

My Mother’s House

My mother’s house is full of birds and lodgers
sitting on the stairs, sleeping underneath the beds
and shinning up the drainpipes at the back;
she’s dowmnstairs, cooking on a disconnected stove, with a cast iron skillet full of earrings, small pearl
buttons lost from shirts, and silver collar studs.

My mother’s wardrobe’s full of ball-gowns,
sandwiches and biscuit barrels full of instant coffee, there’s granulated sugar in her dancing shoes
and corned beef in the pockets of her mother’s mother’s musquash; she’s counting out her trifle dishes, knitting needles,
crochet hooks, the motorcycle magazines and sixpences.

My mother’s landing’s full of women, queuing for the lodger -
the young one with the torch and cycle clips; she’s looking for
an egg-and-bacon pie and a Thermos flask of tea to tide them over,
while the lodgers on the stairs begin a song her father sang,
with choruses, rude verses, all the twiddly bits and harmonies.
They’re singing Suzy Green to her, we love you Suzy Green,

while she scoops vanilla ice-cream into amber sundae glasses,
adds angelica and violets, tiny roses made of marzipan and coffee flavoured biscuits, shaped like fans. 

Susan Utting runs poetry workshops country wide and teaches poetry and creative writing at Reading University. She was appointed Community Laureate for the Arts Council’s Year of the Artist 2000/2001. Her work has won many awards, including a Poetry Business Prize for the pamphlet, Something Small is Missing, and has twice been shortlisted for the Arvon Poetry Prize. Her first full collection, Striptease, was published in November 2001 by Smith/ Doorstop Books.