
Best Scottish Poems 2004 Introduction \| The Poems \| Acknowledgements

The poems

Helena Nelson

Source

Author's note

Editor's comment

Biography

Flowers

The affair was all coming and going
in snatched half-hours.
Not seeing the need
he never brought flowers.

Bring me a plant,
I asked – a forget-me-not
out of your garden.
He forgot

and came empty-handed,
sorry, blue-eyed.
I don't need flowers,
I said (lied).

He was always leaving.
Once he gave me his cold.
I cherished it, wishing
I had him to hold.

On balance, though
one thing was good:
he told me the truth.
I knew where I stood.

In my green courtyard
for hours, days, years
I stood where I knew,
waiting for flowers.

Source

From Starlight on Water (Aylsham: Rialto, 2003).
Reprinted by permission of the publisher.

Author's note

The title of my book comes from the final line in the Mr and Mrs Philpott sequence, so I’ll talk about them first. Mr and Mrs Philpott are a middle-aged couple who have somehow generated a whole set of poems (they are still arriving).

Each of the Philpotts has been married before. In Mr Philpott’s case his first wife (with whom he never really got on) is dead and his two grown-up sons are estranged. As for Mrs Philpott – her relationship with her husband involved dread and mental cruelty. In the end she ran away, leaving her husband and children. Much later she was divorced and took a part-time job as a cleaner (her skills are all domestic ones: cleaning, sewing, cooking etc). That’s how she met Mr Philpott, who was to become her second husband.

The Philpotts have quite a passionate relationship in their own way, but each is haunted by memories of things that didn’t work in the past. Mr Philpott is often scared (of death and isolation) and Mrs Philpott dreams about babies a lot – babies that shrink and vanish. They are sometimes slightly absurd, but at the same time curiously dignified. Often their fears and losses create a distance between them which is difficult to cross. They do love each other, but the love is fragile and delicate. You can’t always see it clearly, if at all – like starlight on water which exists as an idea but perhaps not as a reality. And at least one of them is ill.

That’s one love story. The book of poems deals with several. There are a goodly number about an affair that came to grief. The poem 'Flowers' belongs in this set. There are also poems about my daughter, who in her teens was ill with anorexia – and these are love poems too, but of a different kind. Some of my poems are just for fun ('Mens Sana in Corpore Banano' and 'The Ravell’d Sleeve of Ma' fit this category). Others focus on my difficult relationship with poetry and whatever I think it is, or might be.

Helena Nelson

Editor's comment

A fresh voice, witty and wry. Do we have a Scottish rival to Sophie Hannah and Wendy Cope? I like the reversal of clichés (e.g. ‘I stood where I knew’).

Hamish Whyte

Biography

Born in 1953 and brought up in Knutsford, Cheshire, Helena Nelson has now lived more than half of her life in Fife. She teaches English, Communication and Creative Writing at Glenrothes College. For the last decade she has contributed to a wide range of UK poetry magazines both as poet and reviewer. She also writes for Scribners British Writers series and is main writer and editor of further education resource Core.com 2002.

Poetry collections include: Mr & Mrs Philpott on Holiday at Auchterawe (Kettillonia, 2001), and Starlight on Water (Rialto Press, 2003). Starlight on Water was joint first-prize winner of the Jerwood Prize for Best First Collection, Aldeburgh 2003.