A Useful Family!

After a two week Easter break, my Exeter University course in Writing Family History has restarted. So much of my family background - and especially the social history in which it's encapsulated - has proved fertile ground for writing, often fictionalised but also as the basis for factual articles and essays. A lot of my poetry, too, has sprung from recollections of people and places from my past; a recent example was rooted in my grandmother's strong Baptist faith.

Remember the Sabbath Day

Nan and Pop c. 1950

There was something about that hat she 

wore -

Bible black, with netted brim

to catch the alleluias,

a trinity of purple flowers

that graced its band,

a pin to skewer Satan.

Her chapel hat. She'd ram it on

with prayer-booked hands in tidy gloves,

check the oven for the Sunday roast,

raise high the cross

and sally forth

to hymn her way to Zion.

(Copyright Gill Garrett 2014)