Line Break, TN2’s poetry series, is excited to feature two poems from Trinity poet Rebecca Gutteridge.
Poet’s Statement
I am a British master’s student studying Irish Writing at Trinity. My academic interests lie in gender and material culture, and my poetry – while finding freedom from the rigid constraints of academic writing– follows similar themes. My lyric is set within dislocating domestic spaces that bridge childhood and adulthood: playing on spatial awareness and distance to convey a sense of alienation. Memories of childhood often invade present concerns with love and loss. More recently, my writing has been shaped by my move to Ireland, expatriatism and the uncanniness of cultural similarity within difference in a postcolonial landscape.
For me, the delight of poetry is found in the fluidity of its rules. As a dyspraxic and chronic pain sufferer, this freedom from the constraints of the physical facilitated by the act of poetry is what I relish the most; the writing process is often laboured, and through brain fog, images must be teased from their concealment in sticky syntax. I find catharsis in the continuous process of drafting and reappraising, though some poems arise in a more polished form than others such as ‘Pears’.
Say Nuttin’ (Pears)
Pears Part I:
Pears.
Not what you’d expect from Tinder.
You piggybacked me to them,
so that my feet wouldn’t get wet
only to shower my hair with pear
drops when my head hit foliage.
“Say nuttin’”, you said: entreating
to impress,
as you, with the weight of
two
crunched, squashed, squelched
pears underfoot;
I played my part, gave girly
squeals of delight.
“Pear jam,
pear tart,
poached pear;
there’s so many things you can do with pears…”
Who taught you to flirt like a 70’s cookbook?
All the while, flesh
decayed around us.
I wasn’t listening–
(it felt good to be enmeshed in the
spine of masculinity)
you didn’t notice.
“…Nature’s bounty; my Nana used to make a great pear tart.”
‘Say nuttin’’ had very clearly been lost on you.
“…Do you know how to tell if a pear is perfectly ripe?”
Who knew you could mansplain fucking pears.
“…You remind me of her a bit, my Nana. She’d have loved all this.”
Bingo.
The pears watched on,
impervious to me
willing the impossible
survival
of something digitally sourced
in their organic world.
But, not to worry;
you gave me a tour
of how your Nana changed
the hierarchy of photo frames
based on who was this month’s
favourite.
(I felt compelled to iconoclasm
as you prepared to slot me in amongst them),
on an unchanging threshold
of lace net curtains
and a familiar, familial odour
we forged an unspoken understanding;
trauma starts at home,
when matriarchs play chess
with a two-dimensional collective
of smiles.
And by the fireplace,
freckled hands, they found their prize:
you, not fully formed–
Hurler of the Year 2006–
enshrined:
with gappy teeth, tie and stick.
It struck me that you were still not fully formed;
are men ever fully formed?
Pears Part II:
Pears.
There’s something addictive about bruised fruit. I am
at the doorstep to your interior ulterior,
fumbling with my laces;
you handed me
a “safe home”,
for the journey,
and a pear,
for formalities.
As bruised skin grazed pocket
my cheeks recalled their last
meeting point with yours:
under the immersion heater,
it had rumbled an accompaniment–
a concerto of Creaking G-Plan House–
to our rumbling laughter
about aliens
and your “Michelangelo bum”
in bed,
while my red wine-steeped shirt was
still stewing in the sink. Like pears,
and I would not remind you
(a piece of mine remained there)
that just for a while,
amongst those pears
–they knew that something in me was too wild,
too fragile, to tie you down–
I had entertained an idea of us
when you talked healing:
the garden you plan to grow,
outside of Co. Wicklow,
or Westmeath, was it?
