Poetry by Clare Best

About Clare Best

Clare's poems are widely published in journals and magazines (Smiths Knoll, Resurgence, The Frogmore Papers, The New Writer, Living Earth) and have been broadcast on radio. Clare holds a Masters degree in Creative Writing from the University of Sussex. She is an experienced creative writing teacher and facilitator, and an Associate Lecturer for the Open University. She was leader of Tools for Writing workshops for life prisoners, HMP Shepton Mallet Outside In project, 2004, and has been Arts Council funded Writer in Residence at Woodlands Organic Farm, Lincolnshire since 2005.

Huexolotlin

Aztecs scattered hatchling shells
to honour the gods of food;
Navajo fenced the turkeys,
fed precious corn to feathered giants
centuries before Thanksgiving.

Now these Chinese fire-chickens,
seven-faced fowls of Korea,
Indian Dutch Peruvian Roman birds
know the fen and its cold washed skies
almost as well as the heron, though some
it is said, have drowned in heavy rain,
staring up to see why water falls.

This December day, slow motion stags
high-step in circles, fantails splayed,
wattles and dewbills scarlet in midwinter sun.
Hens strut the orchard, pip-pipping
through rosehips and bramleys
to the barn where the feast-birds perch
for their final parliament, practice curiosity,
study how to listen.

Note: The wild turkey was first domesticated by the native Mexicans or Aztecs who dedicated two religious festivals a year to the fowl they called huexolotlin. The Spanish brought turkeys to Europe in 1520, but for several hundred years confusion surrounded the origin of the woodland bird so closely associated with providence and celebration.

Conversion

In these few clover years
Hemplands has come back to life:

earthworms fat as your finger,
black loam over the golt you know

as you tread the dyke
beneath wheelings of steel grey

and white, the tell-tale sea metal cry
hundreds and thousands

of common gulls, oyster catchers,
great black-backed gulls,

a vast billowing sail of hungry birds
like a parachute steadying the plough.

Note: 'Hemplands' is the name of a field at Woodlands Farm. 'Golt' is, I believe, a Lincolnshire word meaning the subfertile undersoil, very silty, beneath the topsoil.

This poem is for Janet Teesdale, Louise Atkinson, Brenda Blackamore, Jane Chamberlain, Marion Clay, Stella Easterbrook, Mark Gott, Eileen Hardy, Nina van Harren, Barbara Hughes, Bruce Hughes, Celia Johnson, Nicky McCarthy and Vicki Sheppard. With appreciation and thanks, on behalf of everyone who enjoys your art.

Winter packers, after Cézanne

In these few clover years
Hemplands has come back to life:

earthworms fat as your finger,
black loam over the golt you know

as you tread the dyke
beneath wheelings of steel grey

and white, the tell-tale sea metal cry
hundreds and thousands

of common gulls, oyster catchers,
great black-backed gulls,

a vast billowing sail of hungry birds
like a parachute steadying the plough.

Writer in Residence

In 2005, Clare Best became Writer in Residence at Woodlands - this has been the first ever residency of its kind established on a farm. Arts Council England have funded the project, in two stages, and Clare's work here has also been supported by the Soil Association, by Huntingdon Farmers' Market and of course by Andrew Dennis and Woodlands Farm.

The aims of the residency were to celebrate Woodlands in poetry, to help establish the farm as a learning and healing resource centre, and to encourage people to seek artistic inspiration in the farmed landscape. A range of activities and projects were designed to serve these aims, including walks and writing workshops on the farm for children and adults, the production of a community recipe book - The Woodlands Farm Organic Seasonal Cook Book (order your copy here), and a poetry reading and concert with Anglia Concertante on the farm in April 2006.

As well as running these projects, Clare wrote poems directly inspired by Woodlands. These poems have been distributed, monthly, in the farm's organic fruit and vegetable boxes and can also be read here. The poems, now numbering around forty, will be collected and published in book form. Keep an eye out on this website for news of the collection. Poems will also be placed on story boards at various points around the farm and on the Farm Trail, beginning in spring 2008.

During the first year of the residency, Clare worked with local children from Kirton Primary School and Middlecott School and throughout 2005 several hundred children enjoyed visits to Woodlands with follow-up poetry workshops. As well as teaching the children about organic farming and healthy eating, these sessions inspired them to write some striking poems. You can read a selection of these in the Children's Involvement section of this website.

In the second year of the residency, groups of adult writers came to Woodlands on Sundays for Clare's themed writing workshops. These were days of walking and writing and sharing a passion for landscape. Some of the resulting work will soon be posted on this website, do look out for them!