Memory Day Literature Works

Heather Holcroft-Pinn, Projects Officer www.literatureworks.org.uk  and Claire Coleman joined us for the September PCAP Community Memory Café in Pewsey at the Bouverie Hall. We listened as Heather recited some well known and not so well known poems. Following a reviving cup of tea, the group then talked about being Lost then Found. Then the magic happened. We would like to thank Heather and Claire for their time. We hope to see them again next year.

Lost and found – a poem by the Community Memory Café Group Pewsey.

Sasha got lost on the way to this social.

Worse if it was for an interview!

We’d all feel anxious, pressured, stressed.

Some of can’t remember our left from right, 

but Phyl says “I’m so old I’m very used to my left and right,

we’ve been together a long time.

 

We’ve all got memories of getting lost.

When Natalie was eleven, she had to find her way 

to big school by the 3A bus, and back again 

at the end of the day. She was all on her own, 

“who do I ask? I can’t find the bus.”

At long last she found a man with books under his arm.

He knew it was the second bus stop.

When I got home they said

“where have you been?

 

Sasha once, when she was young, fell asleep 

on a bag of royal mail on the train.

She went up and down the track all night 

from London to Bristol!

 

Sue got lost in a forest, in Belgium.

It was in bright sunlight, 

but she didn’t find her way back

until it was dark, lit only

by starlight.

 

Once Violet came out from the shops

and got in her husband’s white van.

A stranger looked at her.

She had got into the wrong van!

“It wouldn’t have been so bad 

if he had been good looking.”

 

The old-fashioned way is to ask someone.

So when Fanny was lost she asked a lady walking her dog

if she knew the house she was looking for.

The lady replied “I’ve only lived here 37 years

and I don’t know where it is. Who lives there?”

“When I told her, she knew exactly where it was.”

 

Jo picked the wrong way at a crossroads

when she and Mum were on their way 

to Singing for the Brain.

Mum says “stop panicking, I’m O.K. 

I’m fine. You’d never make me 

feel uncomfortable.”

 

Dawn says getting lost on purpose,

picking a direction with no destination in mind,

is the most fun you can have on your own,

because she has a smart phone.

 

In the end we can all find our way, 

by asking a friendly person,

by the art of map-reading, 

or by asking the App 

“What Three Words.”

This tells us that where we sit

in Bouverie Hall 

is “perfumed testy spiders.”

That’s us!

Created by the Pewsey group on 20th September 2021