BETWEEN RIVERS is a quarterly series edited by Alan Horne. It is focused on the area bounded by the rivers Alyn, Dee and Gowy, on the border between England and Wales in Flintshire and Cheshire. You can read about the background to Between Rivers in the Introduction.
In this quarter’s edition we have four poems by Patricia Sumner. Brought up on the Isle of Anglesey, Sumner was a writer from an early age. She took a degree in English Literature and Philosophy, trained as a teacher, and then taught in a primary school for ten years: she has written extensively for children, publishing picture books, adventure stories, factual books, teaching resources and a novel. She studied creative writing with teachers including Dr Gladys Mary Coles, who featured in the Winter 2024 edition of Between Rivers. As a poet, Patricia Sumner has published two collections and has won prizes for her poetry and plays. At the moment she is editing a further collection of poems by herself and three other poets, which will come out under the Veneficia Publications imprint.
She now lives in the Vale of Clwyd, runs Cilan Proofreading and Editing, and teaches creative writing to adults. One of her projects is the creative writing class Ruthin Writers, which she teaches alongside poet and sound artist Diana Sanders, who was featured in the Spring 2023 Between Rivers.
In this selection of Sumner’s poems the fundamental elements of our region – landscape, weather, climate and the passage of day and night – take on a highly physical presence, becoming the stage over which the (often troubled) human and animal actors make their way.
We begin with her poem Border, originally published in Sumner’s pamphlet Beyond the Glass, produced by Thynks Publications. The poem takes us straight into the uplands surrounding the Dee and Alyn rivers, and to the question, ever-present in Between Rivers, of boundary and frontier, given fine emphasis by the slightly hunted tone of voice in the poem.
BORDER
Snaking through Nant-y-Garth shadow,
I’m glancing back. Crossroads, Llandegla,
the dusk monotoning colour, I push on
up towards empty moorland,
bleak as doors slammed shut.
Somewhere here, where hills are waves
on a heather sea, a border lies.
Meaningless to straggled sheep, but map-real
our animal instinct, our territory marking,
our keeping out and keeping in.
The ribbon road meanders
through a land of no man.
I follow its fading thread
as tired sun abandons an indifferent sky
and night falls too heavy.
Past Rhydtalog, bedraggled ponies
and scattered farms, I think again of home,
our huddled fire and walls
we’ve built like borders
to keep unbounded dreams safe.
Another poem from Beyond the Glass is Early Morning. This is also found in Sumner’s book The Promise of Dawn: Rites of Passage for All Beliefs, produced by Veneficia Publications. Early Morning inhabits the valley just as Borders does the moor, and in this more benign environment there is an everyday transformation: the coin-flip of dawn.
EARLY MORNING
Dew glistens the grey meadow. Light seeps
through cloud strata to silver the vale.
Treading the field in reverence, heads bowed,
silent heifers commence morning prayer.
Even swishing hooves are stifled
by the closeness of cloud, the stillness of air.
From somewhere, a rook scratches at sky –
its wings, snagged threads in silk –
till reluctant mist dissipates
and pine trees castellate the hill.
Now, like a tossed coin, night flips
and the vale is gilded with morning
and every tree bursts with blackbird and robin
singing the promise of dawn.
Also from The Promise of Dawn is the poem Unfolding Like Lilies. This time we have a strictly urban poem, but now our vulnerability to the elements comes most to life, as the wind-whipped speaker is blown from one location in the city of Chester to another, hoping for a sanctuary. Weather and climate in our region are mostly addressed through clichés about how wet it is: this is a more considered treatment.
UNFOLDING LIKE LILIES
March’s blast assaults us.
Mugger-gusts knife through alleys.
Toiling up Frodsham Street, they thrash us,
then hurtle, remorseless,
over rooftops, braced
and clinging.
Storm-blown ships, we pitch on the Eastgate Rows,
where timbers groan in momentary lulls.
People group, conspiratorial,
in penguin huddles by the city wall,
or loiter in synthetic precinct
to creep out stiff as spiders.
Reminding us to be gracious,
the woolly capped faithful
stand buffeted beneath Bridge Street Cross,
handing out hot cross buns
to the reluctant grateful,
who snatch, nod, hurry off.
In Northgate Square, we are spun
in a cyclone of leaves.
So we plunge
into cathedral shadow
to find ourselves held
in rare and sudden stillness.
Entering the nave, we sigh,
unfolding like lilies on gentle water,
blossoming into
a pool of peace –
that quiet distillation
of centuries of prayer.
The final selection is a new, presently uncollected poem, September Evening. Now the weather has changed, and Sumner evokes the end of a hot day, the oppressive atmosphere relieved only in part by the starlings which gather as dusk approaches.
SEPTEMBER EVENING
The day had ached and creaked with heat.
As afternoon smouldered towards night
and the sky ignited
with magenta, gold and flame,
a murmuration of starlings
swept, swirled and dived
above undulating hills fading blue-grey.
Tiny fleeting forms on ecstatic wing
melded into breakers;
alive with flight
and their cooling breeze,
they doused the shores of evening.
Back and forth along the vale,
shrill chatters rising to shrieks,
they spun and soared
above regiments of weary maize,
stretching sycamores seeking air
and hedges sinking
into a sighing land.
I hope you have enjoyed these poems. Patricia Sumner’s The Promise of Dawn is available here along with a number of her books for children. You can find out more about her writing, teaching and other activities on her Facebook page.
By David Selzer