Spark Catchers
revolution, because revolution is in the heart of the poet.”
He worries that in education poetry has been seen to be “this distant thing”, that it’s been marginalised. “It’s the scariest thing of all because it will say the unsayable.”
Poetry also creates spaces in which some of the dominant forces in society can be resisted and challenged. “Poems are an antidote to advertising, to corporate ownership of our physical and human space. So the act of writing a poem is a revolutionary act because it is an original thing in a world where we’re told that to be original is a threat, because you can’t sell it and you can’t package it and it doesn’t fit into a model. It matters that we exercise that part of ourselves.
“There are so many different ways of being angry,” Lemn says. A century or more after the match girls strike, his anger at their struggle lives in the poem and will continue to live in the Olympic legacy site after the games are over in August.
For more on Lemn’s work visit
www.lemnsissay.com
Tide twists on the Thames and lifts the Lea to the brim of Bow Where shoals of sirens work by way of the waves. At the fire factory the fortress of flames
In tidal shifts East London Lampades made
Millions of matches that lit candles for the well-to-do And the ne’er-do-well to do alike. Strike.
The greatest threat to their lives was The sulferuous spite filled spit of diablo The molten madness of a spark
They became spark catchers and on the word “strike” a parched arched woman would dive With hand outstretched to catch the light.
And Land like a crouching tiger with fist high Holding the malevolent flare tight
‘til it became an ash dot in the palm. Strike. The women applauded the magnificent grace
The skill it took, the pirouette in mid air The precision, perfection and the peace.
Beneath stars by the bending bridge of Bow In the silver sheen of a phosphorous moon They practised Spark Catching.
“The fist the earth the spark it’s core The fist the body the spark it’s heart” The Matchmakers march. Strike.
Lampades The Torch bearers The Catchers of light.
Sparks fly Matchmakers strike. 27 uniteWORKS July/August 2012
Mark Thomas
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