SixPoets

Rita Ray

Rita Ray

I have published poetry in several magazines and journals and in 2010 won the Cheshire prize for Literature. I write stories for children published by both OUP and Dingles & Co. (USA). My poetry for children is in numerous anthologies, including The Works (Macmillan Children's Books, Ed. Paul Cookson) and I have published a variety of educational materials.

My time is divided between art and writing and I exhibit locally, a special interest being portraits. Looking closely at a person to paint a portrait feels much like composing a poem. Art can be a rich source of ideas for poems.

Travel always sharpens our perceptions of the world and a couple of trips to China working in remote areas inspired several poems.

I struggle with an irresistible urge to make people laugh, despite my yearning to be taken seriously. (As someone wrote: “I wanted to be a philosopher but cheerfulness kept creeping in.”) A friend suggested I try memoir writing but after 50000 words of self-indulgence I've only got as far as age nine. However, it led me to prose and I'm now writing a crime novel.


Still life with oranges and walnuts (Luis Melendez)

First I notice the pumpkin – or is it a melon?
Did they have melons?

It must be late afternoon as the light slants in
making plain wood boxes shine like ingots.
They will eat the shelled walnuts after dinner.

An orange is set apart - for balance,
to fill a too empty space.

In the manner of the old masters the canvas
was prepared with rich raw sienna
that glows through fruit skins and terra cotta.

One by one the oranges will disappear
to be peeled, squeezed, sucked.

The little boys turning the spit
will open their eyes in wonder,
hope to scoop a fingerful of juice
from the scrubbed-out well in the table.

I want to believe there are cooks
and maids, hot in mob caps,
fetching and peeling,
calling, ‘Hurry, hurry!'

But there is no kitchen,
no boys turning the spit
and dreaming of oranges,

only a fiction of angles and shadows
secret codes to fool the eye, to lie to us –
the covered jug, the fruit forever ripe.

The dark backboard ends at the frame's edge.
You are alone in that small space
wiping your brushes on a rag

for the light is going
and you have no way of keeping it.

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