Little Gods by Jacob Polley Find!
Last Thursday some of the Grange Reading Detectives, plus members from the other three reading groups based in Grange Library, were treated to a very special evening with Jacob Polley. Jacob was born in Cumbria and still lives in Carlisle and came to the library to talk about his first novel "Talk of the Town" which Helen has already listed as a find. However Jacob is also a poet of great distinction and concluded the evening with a short unplanned poetry reading which the audience really appreciated. It is such a treat to listen to an author reading from their own work and the final poem that Jacob read on Thursday night, from his second collection "Little Gods", captured for me the essence of the Reading Detectives project so here it is and I hope it speaks to you as much as it does to me.
The Byre
There's a boy in the byre after dark, after school,
with his hands on the flanks of the beasts
as they breathe. And the coffin paths and drovers' roads
and yellow-lit farmyards stand utterly still.
The running waters with their overspill,
the woods and the wetlands: all wait.
Far off, the Princes' Streets and circuses,
the bypasses and contra-flows,
the crawler lanes, carriageways, viaducts and rails
groan with their masses and traffics and freights
while delis and arcades and paper shops glow,
and the boy in the byre after dark,
after school, listens to the breathing cattle
clatter on the byre floor and knows
their heat as his, his presence as their peace
and their peace as his. The folded hills
are full of snow, the cars parked, the dogs in.
Far off, the cities grind on their axes
of orange light, while owls sweep the field's edge,
and old mines and caves of focused slate
crowd their dark around each drip as it drops.
Nothing stops, upland or low.
See who sleeps or serves, keeps or lets go,
herds or heals, builds or grows.
See the boy who brings his thoughts
to forget among the animals at nightfall -
how he leaves them quietened in the stalls.
3 October 2009 from Mary Rossall
Finds
- On Lindale Hill
- Grange-over-Sands: The Story of a Gentle Township
- The Silent Traveller: A Chinese Artist in Lakeland
- Red Ike
- Cumbrian Privies
- Ethel Fisher's West Cumbrian Dialect titles
- The Embalmer's Book of Recipes by Ann Lingard
- Nella Last's Peace
- Riding the Stang by Dawn Robertson
- Life on the Fell - a pictorial chronicle of a Lakeland community
- About Scout Scar
- William Wilberforce - A Summer Diary 1779
- Beatrix Potter - the unknown years
- Smoke over Shap by Margaret Potter
- Songs of a Cragsman by George Basterfield
- The Grasmere Dialect Plays
- The Grizedale Experience: Sculpture, Art & Theatre in a Lakeland Forest
- An Atlas of The English Lakes
- How Hall. Poetry and Memories. A Passion for Ennerdale by Tom Rawling
- Stumpy, Hero of the Lakes
- The High Places by A. Harry Griffin
- The Highest House in Wathendale
- Kendal by Roger Bingham
- Secrets and Legends of Old Westmorland
- Reminiscences of Wordsworth Among the Peasantry of Westmorland by Canon Hardwicke Drummond Rawnsley
- Little Gods by Jacob Polley
- A Lakeland Summer
- Hunter of Harter Fell by Joseph E Chipperfield
- And Nobody Woke Up Dead
- An accessible paradise
- The Fleming Family novels and Graham Sutton
- Excursion to Loweswater. A Lakeland Visit 1865
- Writing on the Wall
- Beyond Scafell by Alan Robinson
- Rogue Herries by Hugh Walpole
- Kendal In The Nineteenth Century by A Wainwright
- In There Somewhere
- The Bondwomen by W G Collingwood
- "Ah'd Gaa Back Tomorra!"
- A Cumbrian Copper by Ray Huddart
- The Arsenic Labyrinth by Martin Edwards
- Old Will Stories by Dudley Hoys
- The Shield Ring by Rosemary Sutcliff
- T'Bacca Queen by Theodora Wilson Wilson
- Furness and the Industrial Revolution
- The Shadow of Black Combe
- The Painted Letters of Percy Kelly
- Ivver Sen
- Lakeland in the 1830s
- Wasdale Climbing Book By Michael Cocker
- Riding High by Barbara Sneyd
- Deborah in Langdale
- Early Recollections of Grange
- Hazard's Way by Roger Hubank
- Yan, Tan, Tethera
- Talk of the Town
- Capturing the Mountains
- Hope On, Hope Ever
- Mildred Edwards: Our City Our People 1889 - 1978 Memories
- Lakeland Limericks
- Surrounding loveliness
- Haweswater by Sarah Hall
- Coast to Coast by Jan Minshull
- Sunshine To The Sunless
- Geese, cattle wallopers and secret Irish paths
- Anarchists, Angels and wet Bank Holiday Mondays
- A more unconventional kind of find...?
- Skiddaw Summit by Kathleen Jones
- Thorstein of the Mere: A Saga of the Northmen in Lakeland
- Wednesday Early Closing
- Smoke Across The Fell
- The Sand Pilot of Morecambe Bay
- The Chronicles of Boggerthwaite
- Carrock Fell
- Feet in the Clouds
- Hercules and the Farmer's Wife
- Shepherd's Warning
- The Lazy Tour of Two Idle Apprentices
- I've been so busy reading I haven't had time to blog!
Recent posts
- Reading Detectives film
- Thank you!
- Coffee and books at the Bluebell Bookshop
- Mary learns to blog!
- Lucky 13!
- Grange over Sands get reading
Help the team
Have you got something to contribute? You can contact us to report your clues and you can comment on our blog posts. It doesn't matter where in the world you are!