Time: A Summer School 2023 Showcase

Writing Room’s summer schools are always special. They bring together poets, short form writers, memoirists and novelists from Writing Room and beyond. They allow us to focus on both the minutiae of our work and the big picture, using a central theme to inspire us. And they encourage us to be open to new ideas and fresh ways of thinking – to be surprised, and to surprise ourselves.

This year’s Writing Room summer school was extra-special as it fell in the middle of our tenth anniversary year. We needed a suitably big theme to mark the occasion and it doesn’t get much bigger than Time.

Inspired by feedback - and knowing how helpful it is for writers to have deadlines - we invited attendees to develop pieces they began at summer school and send up to ten lines/100 words of poetry or 100 words of prose for this feature page. (The eagle-eyed will notice we didn’t include titles in the word count, and allowed up to 105 words in cases where serious damage would otherwise occur either to the piece or the writer!) The result is a jewel box of moments in time to treasure.

Thank you to everyone who came along to summer school, to all the tutors who ran with the idea of time in so many thrilling directions, and to everyone who contributed to this showcase. We are incredibly proud of you all.

The Great Scherzando

Carl Heap

Et Voila!

The Great Scherzando
Whose rise to flame was meteoric
Whose legend spread like wildfire
Snatches away the emerald cloth and….

The empty cage is now ablaze
With nine performing parakeets.

He opens the door and they hurtle out
In a flare of feathers; execute somersaults.
Loop the loop, career about the stalls and galleries,
And slalom down the banisters and drapes.

I sit with open mouth as he snaps his fingers
One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine -
And they vanish
In little explosive puffs of powder paint.

I shall always treasure
This one red feather.

The Flight of the Dragonflies

Eleanor Agozino

It was a fleeting moment:
I was kicking back in a hammock admiring my freshly painted sparkly twinkle toes when...
Flip! 3 rapacious dragonflies
hurtled through a comet of midges
at breakneck speed, faster than a bullet.

Those savvy dragonflies devoured them damp arse midges
in one swoop
like nature’s own bomber pilots!

School gates

Eleanor Marsh

The earthly gyroscope clicks,
Lickety split,
Down tea, check screen,
Stub toe, nearly scream,
A harsh clank, a lock slides,
Children toboggan, collide inside,
I scythe not glide,
Frisk for Prime,
Settle cries.
Preside

Three poems
Irene Wise

Heart of the Matter
“We have to talk,” she said
and bit into the lettuce,
teeth snapping over
the pale crisp centre.
Just one of her five-a-day,
he reasoned,
but the iceberg sunk his heart.

The First Time
“It’s better between
the sheets,” he said,
so she climbed inside.
The blanket was rough,
there were no sheets.
In later years,
they were hand-picked,
stiff at first,
but softened over time.
Unfazed by wrinkles,
she never ironed them.

Everything, now I’m older
streams, downloads,
fast-tracks, as I scramble
through the flux:
a supersonic moment
that burns into life
greater than sound.
Listen. Can you hear it?

Rose and Sam
Janet Horwood

Rose pulls her shawl tighter as she stares out of the soot-speckled window onto the street.  Outside the November rain plummets down endlessly.

In the kitchen she can hear her mother preparing the Shabbos meal. She should be in there,  helping, but her mind is elsewhere.

She is trying to wish away the words she has just heard. To pretend they hadn’t been spoken, or were just a fantasy.

Behind her she can hear her brother’s laboured breathing. The winter is always bad for his  chest. She knows that Sam is upset – but not as much as she is.

Taxi never comes
Janet Sillett

Waiting time stutters, falls back
tracking is five minutes
ten
infinity

waiting, time stalls
stumbling    a dream remembered in monochrome
misremembered
forgotten
within your grasp this journey but not realised
there is no cocooning in the smells of other journeys

maybe you have hit on the driver who never comes when called?
Ian Dury’s taxi which never comes   waiting    which never comes

so the taxi never arrives
so damn what?

there may be other routes
other dances

When I Slipped Under the Water, Age 6
Judith Johnson

It was unexpected,
A sudden change,
A sudden calm.
A descent in slow motion, it was,
My small body cradled by the water.

In the underpool world,
Amidst the flailing limbs,
A sense of wonder came.
A keen curiosity, it was,
An abandonment, an embrace.

No rough play in the pool! read the sign.
Always supervise small children! and
Make sure you wear a flotation device!

But under the water,
Before my brother
Pulled me up
With a life-saving
Whoosh!
I felt only the slow, calm acceptance of my fate.

Grandpa
Mary Mason

He is lying on the front room table in the smart suit I had seen at weddings and funerals. His fob watch carefully tucked away. He is very still.

The table takes up most of the room. Men standing near the doorway, heads bowed, holding their caps. Women sitting, rosary beads moving between their fingers. Quiet nods as we enter, Hail Marys continuing as the ongoing circle of the rosary holds the sadness.

Go and kiss him, whispers an uncle.

I stretch on my tippy toes to kiss his hard, cold face. I want to cry, shout, rage but instead quietly begin ‘Hail Mary’.

Matters of the heart
Patricia Harri

My heart would act like a person pounding their dough into shape on the stone slab. It flexed its muscles, impatient to release itself as I neared my moment to begin my organ recital. We talk about our heart being in our mouths. Yes, I was eating it, leaving my tongue like paper, my mouth, a desert. My heart would surely escape the confines of my body. As soon as my hands plunged into the keys, however, my heart returned like an unnoticed guest. It was feeding the music. Evolving sound, surrounded by joy.

He could be a dead man
Ralph Levinson

He could be a dead man. No sheets, legs splayed, there on his back. Defenceless, vulnerable, afraid of no one. His body open to the vapours rising from the peatlands, the sad calls of the terns, the wind, the seeping rivulets in the marshes. No sounds, no whispers, just a stirring of muscle in metronomic rhythm. Under a mess of sheets, Ben snores in bursts – a long period of silence followed by a groan. His forehead gleams in the thin light. He sits up with a start, studies Andy, his prone friend. If Andy mimics death, then death is welcome.

The day was dying
Roger Huddle

Walter sat on the front step watching the sun disappear. He felt a chill on the air. He was fretful. Across his knees he held Elsie’s rag doll, picked up as he sat down. She was out with her mother, gleaning. Soon the women would return carrying whatever they collected along the rows harvested by the men earlier. Handfuls of rye or oats, taken behind the landlord's back, could make soup for the family for a few days. He saw his two daughters, followed by their mother Jane and her mother Rose, both carrying large sacks on their broad shoulders.

When time goes fast
Sarah Richardson

Roger Bannister’s four-minute mile:
the kids you chased at school.
Meeting an old friend over
a bottle of Prosecco.
Your first kiss and
swimming in the sea.
Helter skelter ride down for
a dripping ninety-nine.
Reading a novel, you don’t want to end:
the last coffee before you start work.
That gap between snooze and the second alarm:
your neighbour’s cat escaping over the fence.

What the heart waves say
Skye Radford

Distance is meant to make the heart grow fonder
but mine is most fond next to yours

When oceans lap between us my heart grows
gills and flippers; I bloat into a boat that floats to you

Because fonder is closer, close to home
and home is where the heart is after all.

About time
Sue Dawson

A moment in an airport stopped the endearments: love, darling, sweet.

Rushing to grab the cases, magazines and takeaway cup of coffee (biodegradable, disposable), the passport must have slipped from her hands.

Could have happened to anyone.

There had been plenty of time, an hour before take-off; to look, to find, or if not, to together-curse, empathise, decide what to do.

‘You go back, I’ll get the gate, let them know,’ he’d shouted.

Words unsaid, thoughts undefined.

At just-too-late a kind hostess arrived, handed it back.

He went to Valencia, she rebooked.

Australia.

Stopped calling him darling after that.

Looted
Tara Furlong

Blurred figures mingle on the far side of a short, tightly packed row of cars. The dirty yellow grey of the road between us, puddled and irregular, recalls a muggy beach. The shadows angle, merge and separate by tall, rough hedges on the corner of the refurbished old house. The light of the lone streetlamp is lost in thick, overhanging branches.

They had sat in a car for some time before exiting, joined by occasional compatriots arriving on foot or on wheels. Time slows down, speeds up, on repeat. Cars pull magic tricks to manoeuvre out; and others in, tightly.

Ten Lines, 100 Words
Tony Lee

Alison, Kiare, Nazrene, Paul tutored us ‘til half past four
Time a concept presenting as now, then or even neverwhen
Nazrene’s novel in dual time zones, yet on time today
Others arriving in their own time zones, yet coming late
How does that work? Arriving early for next week perhaps
Rude to ask, to speak. Time not money after all
Time for tea, time to write, time to elegantly recite
Churchill said ‘If I’d had more time, I’d have written
(you) a shorter letter’, which would have been (much) better
Don’t you think? Less ink, more think, somehow more succinct

Walking in the Country
Tony Westbrook

Take a little stroll in the country with me
And pause the world for an hour or two
Let time go on by and then overtake itself
While you and I meander on, in our own, makeshift way
Going who knows where, by who knows when

We all need time to recover and heal
Not dancing endlessly to the rhythm of the clock
Our brains need a rest, every now and again
To recharge the neurons, that make up our minds
And let in the countryside that will light up our lives.

The Crossing
Tublu Mukherjee

He had a vague childhood recollection of cars lining up patiently in the grey early morning, waiting for the barrier to lift. The heat and faint sound of the fan blowing in hot air made him drowsy, and the car crossed imperceptibly over the rail tracks.

Here, many years later, he was again crossing. In the bright mid-afternoon light, people were pushing their bikes under the lowered barrier. The incessant sound of blaring horns, and hot humid air, made him agitated.

When the train passed it passed quickly, which surprised him, because in his memory it had seemed to take forever.

Summer School Immersion
Yasmin Jefferies

“Think of fast moments,” says Paul.

With his nine words I write 12 lines:

She’s a whirlwind

headlong proboscis

into my arm

split-second gripped fist

brachialis holds her tight

she guzzles, I smile

her belly filled

now charge

arrowing slap, blood!

instant victory

sorrow tumbles

Mosquito is dead.

Nazrene’s prompts:

Picture = Waving couple sort of symmetrical, his feet flat on the ground, her right ankle

slightly raised.

Momentous event = Eleven-year-old watching, “One small step for man…” on TV.

37 summers forward the event prompted by Alison is a wedding day untelevised.

Kiare’s 13 questions expose my wedding photographer…
                                                                                                                  
                                                                                                                        not THE END

Afterwards
Zaza Buyong

It’s early morning. You're cohabiting with your boyfriend in a Muslim country.

The landline phone rings. Your soon-to-be-ex husband tells you that your sister's been calling. ‘I’ve run out of excuses,’ he says. ‘I hate lying.'

You ring your sister. You don’t remember the conversation but read what you’ve scribbled: Room 281. Pantai Hospital. Dad is no more.

You ring the ex. ‘My father’s died,’ you tell him. ‘You have to come to the funeral.’

You hear the hesitation, his tenderheartedness, the acquiescence.

‘We’ll tell them all today,’ you promise.

You wake your boyfriend up and watch the sun rise.