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Veronica was a multi-talented woman who moved to the village of Lawkland in Bowland in 2009 with her husband Richard and daughter Lizzie. She wrote poetry and plays and was also a photographer and publicity consultant. She took a course of creative writing at Keele University. She was a founder member of Settle Sessions and chaired the poetry group for a number of years. Her first publication was Two Left Boots in 2016, and it quickly sold out. In a review by Helena Nelson published in Sphinx magazine she wrote: A few of the poems are expertly disciplined and have precisely the right shape and sound for themselves. Anybody can format lines into a shape. Few poets can do it in a way that startles the reader into unexpected vividness – as happens here. The poem below is one that she particularly praised. |
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Veronica died of cancer in December 2017. She is much missed by the group. Fisherrow Press brought out her posthumous pamphlet Dancing to Another Tune in March 2019.
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LAWKLAND
It’s the ewe calling her lamb and high-pitched reply, it’s the faint smell of manure hanging in the air, it’s the chaos of swallows playing tag, the drone of the tractor as if sleeves rolled up, a silent hot air balloon in early morning, a hare stretching its legs, sunbathing midday. It’s a deer eating roses in late afternoon, then the roar of fighter planes ripping through the peace. It’s the ‘paper delivered by the Postman on his eighty-four-mile round six days a week, horizontal rain, home-made woodsmoke, the queue for the oil-tanker, snail-speed broadband. It’s waiting for snow to stop in a Breugel scene, then, splintered by four-by-fours, melting into mud. It’s how heavy dark can be or light midsummer, and the bite of winter nights. And it’s the stars. |