Pamphlet 44 pages £5
ISBN 9781909404250
Publication date 1st December 2015
Margaret Eddershaw has financed the production costs of this collection and all proceeds from the book are going to Ibba Girls School in South Sudan. Poetry Space is selling copies at zero commission.
For 25 years Margaret was an actor, director and university teacher of theatre. She performed three of her own one-woman plays at Edinburgh Festival, on UK tour and in London during the 1980s.
In 1995 she took up residence in Greece and began writing poems. Since then she has written four suites of performance poems and presented them at Chester and Lancaster Literature Festivals and various venues in London.
In 2013, her first poetry collection, Catching Light, was published by Poetry Space. Of this Jo Waterworth wrote:
“No matter where her poems are set, what shines through each one is a strongly-held sense of our common humanity, and an awareness of the beauty of our shared world.”
Of Riding the Rainbow John Benington writes:
“This lively and witty collection shows that Margaret is a traveller who, in the tradition of great poets, has an extraordinary gift for finding a visual image or a spoken phrase which somehow conjures up a person, a place, a culture, a moment in time.”
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Sample poems by Margaret Eddershaw
RIDING THE RAINBOW
(over Victoria Falls in a helicopter)
We flutter in a bubble
over the misty delta,
forest patchwork within shimmering blue
spools beneath our feet.
The Zambezi snakes
through its brown skin
before foaming like milk
into unseen depths,
thundering under arched spans.
Filligree cobwebs of spray
whisper towards us,
lure us over the dizzying drop.
Suddenly,
in the stutter of a heartbeat,
rainbow lightning streaks through the gorge.
For one glorious moment
I am Gaia.
IBBA GIRLS’ PANTOUM
A ‘found’ poem based on the girls’ words,
We are really lucky to be learning here,
No-one ever beats us in this new school,
We can express ourselves without fear,
No fighting among the girls is the rule.
No-one ever beats us in this new school,
Our lovely teachers teach with great care,
No fighting among the girls is the rule,
Learning to live in peace and to share.
Our lovely teachers teach with great care,
We have clean water and delicious food,
Learning to live in peace and to share,
Our bad behaviours are changed to good.
We have clean water and delicious food,
No longer labourers, we just learn and play,
Our bad behaviours are changed to good,
Matron cares for us all in a true family way.
No longer labourers, we just learn and play,
Solars provide light for our study at night,
Matron cares for us all in a true family way,
We sleep in neat beds, with guards on site.
Solars provide light for our study at night,
We can express ourselves without fear,
We sleep in neat beds, with guards on site,
We are really lucky to be learning here.
