Shelling Peas with My Grandmother in the Gorgiolands

By Sarah Wimbush

In Shelling Peas with My Grandmother in the Gorgiolands Sarah Wimbush journeys through myth and memory with poetry rooted in Yorkshire. From fireside tales of Romany Gypsies and Travellers, through pit villages and the haunt of The Miners’ Strike, to the subliminal of the everyday – including poems about typists, pencil sharpeners and learning to drive in a Ford Capri. This highly accomplished debut collection explores what it means to belong, what it means to be on the margins. This is poetry written in praise of family and community and those qualities which make us human: love, language and, most of all, resilience. Sarah Wimbush is a Leeds poet who hails from Doncaster. She has published two pamphlets, Bloodlines (2020), winner of the Mslexia/PBS Poetry Pamphlet Competition 2019, which was also shortlisted in the Michael Marks Awards, and The Last Dinosaur in Doncaster (Smith|Doorstop, 2021), a winner of the Poetry Business Book and Pamphlet Competition in 2020. Shelling Peas with My Grandmother in the Gorgiolands is her first book-length collection.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Bloodaxe Books
• Release date: May 26, 2022
• ISBN: 9781780376172

Book preview

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SARAH WIMBUSH

Shelling Peas with My Grandmother in the Gorgiolands

In Shelling Peas with My Grandmother in the Gorgiolands Sarah Wimbush journeys through myth and memory with poetry rooted in Yorkshire. From fireside tales of Romany Gypsies and Travellers, through pit villages and the haunt of The Miners’ Strike, to the subliminal of the everyday – including poems about typists, pencil sharpeners and learning to drive in a Ford Capri. This highly accomplished debut collection explores what it means to belong, what it means to be on the margins. This is poetry written in praise of family and community and those qualities which make us human: love, language and, most of all, resilience.

Responses to Bloodlines:

‘There is a Romany saying, We are all one: all who are with us are ourselves: Sarah Wimbush’s collection draws us into the world of Travellers with linguistic panache and delight.’ – David Morley

‘A thrilling debut that kept me outdoors in the grassy world of communal lives. I love the formal dazzle and linguistic dare that spoke of defiance, survival and utter joy.’ – Daljit Nagra

Responses to The Last Dinosaur in Doncaster:

‘A vivid love poem to the changing landscape of South Yorkshire and its residents. The poet suggests the teeming life of the place which language which rolls along on its own lively music and images that sing.’ – Imtiaz Dharker

‘The writing felt local and universal like much good writing does, saying new things about old subjects like The Miner’s Strike and growing up, and there was a powerful anger in the poems that didn’t overwhelm them but fuelled the ordinary.’ – Ian McMillan

Cover painting: Shelling Peas (2009) by Lucy Doyle

FROM HER PASTORAL COLLECTION, 2009, THE DOORWAY GALLERY, DUBLIN

OIL ON CANVAS, 91 x 76cm2

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SARAH WIMBUSH

Shelling Peas

with My Grandmother

in the Gorgiolands

5

for Claire and Jess

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CONTENTS

TITLE PAGE

DEDICATION

I

House

White Cottage

Shelling Peas with My Grandmother in the Gorgiolands

Mother Tongue

Dukkering

Carroty Kate

Gran Violet Applies a Poultice

Gal

The Hedgehog’s Tale

John Thomas

Pitched early mornin’ at encampment o’ Gypsy king Esau Smith

Scrapping at Marshall’s Engineering, Gainsborough

I can see Sandbeck Hall

Them Dunstan Kids

Our Jud

Threshin’

Straw Ticks

Bedsheet

Meat Puddin’

Laneham Ferry

The Bittern

The Calling Basket

A Sund’y in Worksop

Late Afternoon by a Hedge

Census 1911

Earring

The Ring

Walking Girl

The Astronaut Who Came to Tea

In the Library

Gifts

Bloodlines8

II

Pilgrim Queens

Things My Mother Taught Me

Inside Lingerie

2:15 at Doncaster

The Pencil Sharpener

Giant Leaping

I learned to drive in a metallic blue Ford Capri

Visiting My Aunt on Her Birthday, 1st September 1979

Uncle Reg

Between Mary Berry’s Baking Bible and My Class Enjoys Cooking

Rebel

A Spring Morning

Vixen

Pompocali

Trip to the National Portrait Gallery, with the wife

The Powder-monkey’s Apprentice

Peasholm Park

Blood Sugar

William Shaw is lowered down the shaft

Hillards

STOP!

Rosso Youthy 1984

Near Extinction

Markham Main

The York, Edlington

The Lost

Our Language

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

COPYRIGHT

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I

10

11

House

The first time

I went into a house

there were so many rooms.

Each one so big.

Each one so high.

Each with a door.

And in the middle of them all,

planks leading up to a framed sky.

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White Cottage

When you finally took a house, it was white.

That houseland house,