PAULINE ROWE: TWO POEMS FROM A WEEK AT TATE EXCHANGE
In early November, we took over Tate Exchange at Tate Liverpool for a week, presenting a programme that sought to challenge the gender imbalance in photography. During the week our poet-in-residence Pauline Rowe led a workshop with a group of women from Kirkby, all of whom are over 60. We have been working with this group for some time, and are really happy to present this latest collaboration.
Here are two new poems: ‘Advice to a Young Friend’ and ‘Dear Friend’.
ADVICE TO A YOUNG FRIEND
Sometimes it’s hard to know what friendship is. Sometimes, in big families, you don’t get closeness and can’t say what’s wrong with your face –
like you can to a friend…
Spend time beneath the sky time amongst the trees
time to listen to the birds singing with your friends.
Keep going. Don’t give up. Get up early.
There’s no snow inside the goal. It’s amazing.
Listen.
Put your mobiles down.
It’s a lot warmer on the inside than the outside.
Let’s sit down together.
Come and join us at the table.
DEAR FRIEND
I would like to say good morning, dear friend.
I miss you. I can’t even take your number out of my phone. But I promise, as long as I can, to keep an eye on the girls.
I think about all the times you were there.
Thank you for staying through the darkest times, and for the chance to know you.
(You’re the only girls to call me Lily).
I accept you for who you are. You accept me.
Don’t think too much about the hospital appointment. Please stop worrying.
Friendship is a small world.
You say it’s the idiocy in me that keeps you going. I say thank you for the help when I most needed it.
I would have been lost without you.
