Guest Poem by John Killick

John Killick has written and published poetry for most of his life. Two years ago he moved from North Yorkshire to Musselburgh just outside Edinburgh. He is involved in a scheme in which a poem by a local poet is published in the local newspaper, ‘The Courier’ once a month. His most recent full-length collection is 'Inside: Prison Poems' from Valley Press in 2023. Forthcoming is 'Go Forth: East Lothian Poems', a collaboration with Jock Stein, published by Handsel Press. This poem is from Acumen 113.

Anglezarke

As Edward Thomas his Adlestrop
so I my Anglezarke,
but with this difference:
for him it was the name
on the station sign
and the tranced afternoon;
for me it is the name
the rest clean gone
conjures the feeling,
but there must have been
water, woods, fields, for such
a place to have become,
as it has done, a touchstone
for stilled security.

Strange how a ‘sweet
especial rural scene’
can leave not even a trace
on the slides of childhood.
And yet what it means
is with me for ever.
Perhaps it has gone
through rocks like rain
in limestone country
to form an underground
stream of memory?
Then this writing becomes
the mind’s potholing.