Having wrestled a little with the poetry jigsaw produced during a wonderful day at the Brontë Parsonage Museum last weekend it is my pleasure to present the resulting compositions. The experiment yielded two poems, which, by the nature of their composition are rather experimental of course.

Directly behind my machine in the garden grows one of the Cyprus pines planted by Charlotte Bronte and Arthur Nicholls with only a handful of guests in attendance as part of their wedding celebrations in 1854 before leaving for their honeymoon in Ireland. With great sadness Mr Nicholls was to loose both Charlotte and their unborn child within the year. The first poem, 1854 seemed to me to be talking about this short chapter of Brontë history, charged with such joyful and tragic news.

Something I talked about more than once in the garden was the sounds that we all heard. The steam trains, the wind in the trees, birds calling and the church clock. All these things would have sounded the same one hundred and fifty years ago and the second poem generated on the day, Listening Back is both celebratory and reflective and relates to this idea in part.