Issue 37

£4.00

Dream Catcher 37 features  poems from poets living with hearing loss, or autism, with blindness or suffering prejudice against who they are. Powerful work by Tanvir Ratul, Becca Miles, Imogen Godwin and Donna Williams.   We welcome the added diversity these poets bring to our pages.
Elsewhere, Dream Catcher 37  includes several reworkings of traditional tales: Eleanor Porter examines The Twelve Dancing Princesses; Linda Lee Welch tackles Little Red Riding Hood and Charlotte McCormac goes inside out through the Mirror on the Wall. And, as you would expect, there are poems born of  Rage , Fear, Love, Humour, Schooldays, Nature, Cruelty, Mystery, Vengeance, Philosophy, Illness and Death. What more could you wish for!
Reviews of books by Paula McLain, Pam Zinnemann-Hope, Miller Oberman and Robyn Bolam.
Increased subscriptions have allowed us to include full colour images of this issue’s artist, Freya Horsley, and we hope to be able to continue to do so in the future. .
Read the review of this issue by playwright Claire Booker. “This is a lively collection of poetry, fiction and artwork on the big themes of love, vengeance, nature, mystery, illness and death (among others!)… what a lovely inter-weaving of featured artist Freya Horsely’s boldly impressionistic and colourfully dexterous work.” Click here to see the full review.”

Category:
Pride

Daylight catches him up
and thrusts devotion upon him
like an unwanted gift.
It lies torn open, hidden
under the bed.

It could not be refused: he accepted –
but tried to change it. Could not.
Changed his costume instead.
Bland. Waited until he felt ready
to wear his rainbow stripes.

Charlotte McCormac
The Child

came up to me and whispered low
‘my balloon has the universe
inside, just for me’
I agreed that was marvellous
a wonder indeed
that he could hold
a string
that held a universe

He sensed I was not
totally sincere
just humouring him
the set of my mouth,
the giggle in my eyes
told him of disbelief and
a patronising attitude

he said again
‘the universe is in it!
not foolin’ or joking
it scares me sometimes
that I might let it go
who knows who might grab
the universe in their hands
bad hands, careless hands’

I began to sweat
not from belief
but from a possibility that he
believed
in a way that twisted
tormented his mind with the string
held tight in a small hand
while the eyes stared in fear

‘what if I brush a pin,
a thorn
and it pops
what happens to us?
with a universe exploding in our faces?
will the universe expand
out there
in space?
will there be room
for the world…
and us?’

I thought and said
‘if you have the universe contained
then we’re in there too
and all the popping will do
is put the universe into the universe
because we’re in there
and out here
all at the same time’

he looked so thoughtful
and I could see the idea
working its way through
and the child who barely
reached up to my waist
understood
worked it out
agreed

he reached for a rose
growing nearby just there
and broke off a thorn
and studied it well
before he looked at me
once again
‘I hope you’re right’

Glen Proctor
My Mother’s Things

My mother’s things, there are so few of them,
She’d always chuck things in the bin if there
Was just a hint that they were making up
Their minds to irritate. ‘No bloody good,’
She’d say, accusingly, and anything
And everything would go. Not one trace left
That I was once a child. All gone: my toys,
My books, my Sheffield Wednesday scarf, my soft
Brown monkey that I used to take to bed.
All her stuff’s gone as well. Just one tin box
For life insurance policies and snaps
And birth and death certificates and two
St Margaret’s parish magazines. One with
My christening, one with my father’s death.
Her life stripped down to what she thought it meant.
Not much, I seem to hear her say, Not much.

Alan Smith
Drawing the Shade

This beach is never blank.
In spite of the wind’s whip and the swipe of the waves
it lies under sky like an open page,
its ridged lines written by the tide
as though the moon has pressed her frowning forehead to the sand.

Here bladderwrack spells out darkly
in gothic script the water-logged names of the sea;
and the dot-dash of cockle and razor shell
encoding a secret, safe and salty;
the pattern of runes printed by sea-birds’feet, untranslatable.

We and our shadows walk the shore.
Yours is short and never still. Mine,
a measure of my days, stretches long to the West.
Seabirds, circling, freckle the sand with shade.
I throw my arms wide, hair a halo in the east wind,

and you begin to draw
with your spade around the shape my shadow makes.
The plastic blade slices wet sand. Your small hand
cannot hold the line, swerving out of true.
You make a botch of me. We laugh, and race towards the sea.

And this is what the years will do.
Some time distant you will half-recall the day,
the beach whose mysteries you pondered; and someone –
outline wavering, face no longer clear –
sketched in sand between one tide and the next.

Susan Wallace

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