We Who Wrestle With Sylvia 

I do 

pub poetry at my Urmston local. 

It’s wholesome, a monthly welcome,  

like blood. Refreshing,  

it ain’t no karaoke, 

set in a mulled wine mug of a snug. 

We talk bollocks 

and read with cajones. 

One week, we tell origin stories: 

pint-size superheroes  

with the power of front-door poems… 

I’m teleported to an alley in the hills, 

direct like a sentence from the corner shop to the college bus. 

I’ve bought The Guardian with pocket shrapnel 

for its pamphlet of Plath. 

Her blurb’s drawn me. 

I’m peeking, impatience fingerish; 

she’s whispering secrets with delicious violence. 

For a song of a moment, 

whose swell never leaves me, 

I stand: coloned on cobbles; 

gaping. 

Fast forward –  

two words, horror: Cambridge interview. 

I’ve dolled up in bad advice  

to masquerade as a 19th century chick. 

It starts: 

“Well. What about Jane Austen?” 

“Well, whadabout Jane Austen.” 

It finishes. 10 seconds in. 

The clock’s a stanza break so white-vast it hurts 

like sun on snow. 

“I see you’ve studied war poetry. 

Pick a poem. Any poem.  

Any non-war poem.  

Discuss.” 

‘Daddy’ pings to mind 

but not to brain. 

My accent’s thick as trenchmud, 

thoughts barbed wire limbs. 

Urm. Is ‘Daddy’ a war poem… 

I fail  

because I don’t yet know 

I am a poet  

with an engine of a heart 

and no bonnet.  

Sylvia does.  

Memories of twenties 

are magnets of madness. 

Somewhere among: 

• a closebook brute called Hughes (no kidding) 

whose red bed I never fully leave; 

• drawers and drawers of psych patients 

screaming even through socks; 

• cloakrooms of doctors prescribing outta hats 

(one produces a printout of Jacob and the Angel –  

true story); 

• blackout hours drugged under-desk, 

dying for a siren; 

• ICU, A&E, OD,  

heartbeat BP BPD BD… 

I start to pen, 

shockingly, 

plathora of poems. 

I wrestle “me, me” meaning, 

I wrestle forms, feel breath, 

I wrestle darkroom darkness, 

I wrestle death, with sex, 

I wrestle to be brilliant, 

I wrestle lies, confess, 

I wrestle bad dads, umMums, 

black dogs, say-mania, 

I wrestle I 

wrestle I 

wrestle 

I wrestle with Sylvia. 

Back at The Barking Dog, 

I spin this quasimodo quasi-myth, 

my creation origin. 

Laid on my Docs is Sylvia –  

a black lab puppy wagging a bone. 

Holding my hand is a direct sunshine man  

who’s no fan of verses (honestly). 

He springs me: 

“So, Plath only got one phase, 

no difficult second album, 

no rose period, no born-again God”. 

Of course – she wudda developed 

like colour photos of colour cities, 

a master mage page planner.  

I’ve developed –  

squall surveyor raging against cages of night, 

to dwelling in these little houses of light. 

So: to odes of poets in pubs 

and bars of pubs in poets,  

to our Sylvia’s shadows of sonnets: 

let’s raise a pen – to toast.