Jane Routh is a poet and photographer who manages woodlands and a flock of geese in the Forest of Bowland, North Lancashire, where she’s lived for the last thirty years. Books she returns to most often are by the American poet Charles Wright, and she’d travel a long way to see exhibitions by the photographers Thomas Joshua Cooper or Olivia Parker. An experienced teacher, she was a tutor for the Poetry Business Writing School.
Her first collection Circumnavigation won the Poetry Business Competition. Teach Yourself Mapmaking followed in 2006.

Quelle: poetry p f

Signal Flag K: I wish to communicate with you
KILO

Evenings, we sit on rocks above the bay
and watch the tides. If there are signs
of a good sunset, take a jacket and an apple.
A nod might say the buzzard's back
on the fence post, a small gesture
question a dark streak in the waves.
Neither of us has anything to say
significant enough to break the silence.
I think I like low springs best,
the whole bay an emptied bowl,
the uncaught moment of the turn.

In the winter we shall drag the armchairs
nearer the stove, light all the lamps
and read each other
poems we do not understand
in case sound speaks for itself.
We can take turns to fetch tea and oranges.
No one comes out here till spring.

When I live alone again and am used to fears
at night when sheep rub up against the walls,
I might remember scraps of old tunes;
I might remember singing in the bath.
Wrapped in white towels I shall stare out
through my reflection at the dark sea
for red lights half a mile off,
find a faint deck-light with binoculars
and watch the night-work of tiny figures.

Jane Routh
in collection Circumnavigation, 2002, Smith/Doorstop,
ISBN 1-902382-43-9
previously published in Signal Flags, 2001, Blue Nose Poetry