Kate Hendry writes with restraint and poignancy about family relationships in The Lost Original (HappenStance, £5), one of the shortlisted entries in this year’s Callum Macdonald Memorial Award for Poetry Pamphlets (administered by the National Library of Scotland).

 

THE ART OF READING

 

In 1979 I read Enid Blyton

on the landing

in the yellow armchair.

~

My mother at the end of the corridor,

my brother upstairs, my father

renovating his latest rusty mangle.

~

Into the yellow armchair

first thing in the morning.

I read non-stop.

~

My mother, at the far end

of the corridor, with laundry basket

and damp sheets.

~

My brother, in his red room,

practising hitches and turns

from the Ashley Book of Knots.

~

My father, in the garage,

oiling wooden rollers,

building up layers of turquoise paint.

~

I read The Magic Faraway Tree

and finished it in one day,

starting the next one straight away.

~

I read till the sheets

were folded and the paint

was dry and the knots were all undone.

~

My father thought it dross.

He took his Acme mangle

with him when he left.