Poem of the month - November 2007

heart - breaker wheelchair lady approaching 100 years old in a white straw hat with pink petunia and fine angry eyes on me because she too was once long as a lily and in love because today they tucked her disastrous limbs neatly sideways and dressed her for holidays and she thinks I don't know petunia was her colour the one she stung and blistered in and she thinks I don't know what laughter seamed her quartz and cunning face and she thinks I don't know what's coming to me Alison Fell Poem supplied courtesy of the Scottish Poetry Library

The inspiration for the poem Alison says:  'The poem is based on an old lady I saw on a dazzling summer's day in Clissold Park, Stoke Newington (North London) where I generally write in the mornings. It was perhaps the first time I'd been conscious not only of the patronising treatment meted out to the elderly by their 'carers', but also of the vast envy of the old towards the young. I haven't thought about this poem for years, so it seems strangely synchronistic that it should come up this summer, when I've just returned from (midwinter) Tasmania, where I have had to help my sister put my mother in a nursing home, and have been facing those issues in a very stark and personal way. A heartbreaker indeed.'

Biographical note Alison Fell was born in Dumfries and raised in villages in the Highlands and Borders. She is the author of seven novels, the most recent of which is 'Tricks of the Light (Doubleday/Black Swan 2004), and four poetry collections, including 'Kisses for Mayakovsky' and 'Lightyear', with photographs by her son Ivan Coleman (Smokestack 2005). Alison has been the Writing Fellow at the University of East Anglia, Royal Literary Fund Fellow at University College and the Courtauld Institute of Art, and AHRC Research Fellow in Creative Arts at Middlesex University. She lives in Stoke Newington, North London.