Jacqueline Gabbitas is a poet and free-lance writer. She was born in Worksop in Nottinghamshire and now lives and works in London. Jacqueline co-edits the literary magazine, Brittle Star. She has an MA in Writing from Sheffield Hallam, under E A Markham, and now studies with The Poetry School, where she works. She is a reader for The Literary Consultancy and teaches a poetry workshop once a month in Walthamstow. Her poems have been published in various magazines. She was one of thirty poets showcased in The Poetry School’s anthology, Entering The Tapestry (Enitharmon 2003). Although her main love is poetry, she started her career writing articles on contemporary art for magazines such as Make: the Women’s Art Journal.

Quelle: poetry p f


Gutter

I have marked a doorway “vision”
on a map of my house. I’ve named

rooms ‘people’ and ‘nature’, ‘apples’
and ‘light’. I can tell you

there’s no guttering here:
there’s nothing to guide
the rain away, nothing

to catch leaves from trees that on my map
are the names
of windows.

And because of this, I‘ve no sense of roof,
of capping off.

Images fill my landing,
squeeze under doors I didn’t name –
there must be
space between some rooms
that poetry can’t occupy.

And if a room is full of ‘questions’ or ‘blind’, ‘fusing’
or ‘slow’, who could think

of a channel to trap them,
a roof to cap them off, when ‘questions’
and ‘blind’, when ‘apples’ and ‘song’

know outside these walls there is ‘grass’,
and ‘deep’ and ‘sky’?

first published in Magma, No. 30, 2004