Creative Showcase – Deborah Tyler-Bennett

Deborah Tyler-Bennett is one of the East Midland’s most respected poets, and well known for her excellent workshops and the Rhymes and Wines night held each month in Loughborough. To mark the publication of her new collection Pavillion the Literature Network presents a small selection of Deborah’s poetry.

Pavillion is a celebration of the world of the English dandy, its gorgeous peacock feathers and fading glamour. Her cast of eccentric and complicated characters entertain their listeners at the bar, flashy and flamboyant as Brighton’s fantasy Pavilion, revealing the sad truths and disturbing secrets behind their cheap make-up.

Deborah Tyler-Bennett’s previous publications include Clark Gable in Mansfield (King’s England, 2003), and selected poems in Take Five (Shoestring, 2003). In 2001 her poem ‘Kirk Alloway’ won the Hugh MacDiarmid Trophy.

Flaneur

Kagool sheathed, they rush, avoiding rain,
crushing past awnings’ gushing waterfalls
and there he’s cloistered. Elegance calls
attention (world’s washed down a drain).
Dove-grey suit, with silver-headed cane,
exotic plant against Plain Jane pub walls
and, for an instant, sodden summer stalls,
pub front transformed to sudden picture-frame.

Could be imagining yellow rose,
tonal handkerchief, glossed ballroom shoes,
my nocturne formed of brushstrokes and regret,
torch song from a vanquished Pierrot Show.

He’s real enough. Discussing current news.
Blue smoke furling from his cigarette.

West Pier Serenade

There’s a dance going on in the dark above our heads,
men pressing women against laundered suits,
a girl’s surprised to find her older partner dances
better than boys, a woman leaves imprinted lips
staining the bar-tender’s milky cheek.

Above us, the burned-out Pier against evening’s
Guinness-black curtain, where feet shuffle in rhythm
(a few toes getting stepped on), and maybe this
close stepping’s what we’re made for,
hands tight against gabardine or georgette clad backs.
It may be the sea, or the dancers’ suggestive whispering:
‘At last, at last, at last …’

Above our heads, pier-bones lost to night,
where phantoms clutch each other.
Only the sea? Or a woman breathing to her partner,
before kissing him: ‘I wish tonight would last,
would last … would last …’

Artist

Around him waltz rouged women and louche
men, or Spivs and Good Time Girls push by his chair,
lobby filling with slit gowns and rented-suits.

He’s better dressed than them, Versace handkerchief,
gilt 1940s watch, strap fragile as sunglasses
kept on indoors.

Flamed tie (shapely as a red sheath-dress),
face set, hands manicured, walk sloped, as if emerging
from one of the pictures he copies for a living.

Dark glasses making eyes unreadable, he could be
film-noir villain, or victim, delicate fingers
made for circling wine-glass.

Stepping between scarlet and jet
he holds out photographs of favoured images
like Tarot Cards:

Competition dancer, number at his back, gazing
from a balcony … Girl in titanium chiffon
mauling roses … Well-heeled couples paddling.

‘Which do you like?’ He asks, I point to
the numbered man. Signs the photo’s back
hands it to me, fingers trembling.

His voice is full of cases being packed, of clasps snapped shut,
petals dropping, dance-number taken off,
and cast bin-wards,
full of wine-glasses in undetected corners,
of Flash Harrys and satin-clad honeys, leaning out
from repeating canvases of black, white, crimson.