Kith

By Jo Bell

Love, sex, boats and friendship. And yet Jo Bell's second poetry collection, Kith, is about so much more, as these bold and generous poems interweave bigger questions of place, identity and community and what these mean to us, here and now.
Delighting in the belting, beautiful turn-of-phrase, Jo Bell's poems are lyrical and joyous, but always precise and clear as birdsong. They take us the long way home, plot histories along the route of backwaters, and are occasionally diverted for a roll in the hay; hearts are broken and boats are dry-docked. There will be tears, but there will also be love, safe harbours, and the company of wise and faithful kith.
Jo Bell - archaeologist, boat dweller and erstwhile director of National Poetry Day - is a poetry pundit and deviser of online poetry community 52. Winner in 2014 of the Charles Causley prize and Manchester Cathedral prize, and placed in the Bridport, Wigtown, and Ballymaloe international competitions, she has had a fortunate year. She is currently building new projects with the writer Tania Hershman and poet Michael Symmons Roberts. Kith is her second collection of poems.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Nine Arches Press
• Release date: Aug 26, 2015
• ISBN: 9781911027003

Jo Bell

Jo Bell was born in Sheffield and grew up on the fringes of the Derbyshire Peak District, leaving school just after the Miners’ Strike. She became an industrial archaeologist, specialising in coal and lead mines. A winner of the Charles Causley Prize and the Manchester Cathedral Prize, she was the first Canal Laureate for the UK appointed by the Poetry Society and the Canal & River Trust. She lives on a narrowboat on the English waterways. Kith (Nine Arches Press) is Jo Bell’s second collection of poems.

Book preview

KITH

Kith

Jo Bell

ISBN: 9781911027003

Copyright © Jo Bell, 2015

Cover artwork ‘Autumn Night’ © Heather Duncan.

www.heatherduncan.co.uk

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced, stored or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, recorded or mechanical, without the prior written permission of the publisher.

Jo Bell has asserted her right under Section 77 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 to be identified as the author of this work.

First published April 2015 by:

Nine Arches Press

PO Box 6269

Rugby

CV21 9NL

United Kingdom

www.ninearchespress.com

Printed in Britain by:

The Russell Press Ltd.

Ebook conversion by leeds-ebooks.co.uk

KITH

Jo Bell

LOGO.jpeg

Some will tell you that you are mad, and nearly all will say, ‘What is the use?’ For we are a nation of shopkeepers, and no shopkeeper will look at research which does not promise him a return within a year. And so you will sledge nearly alone, but those with whom you sledge will not be shopkeepers: that is worth a good deal.

– Apsley Cherry-Garrard, The Worst Journey in the World

Contents

Crates

Taken

Like love

Lately

Shame

I have not asked for this

Cuntstruck

Talking to myself

Enough deathbed talk:

Fig roll

Muse

No Seafarer

Given

Springtime at the boatyard

Breaker’s yard

Tied up

Tixall Wide

Frozen in

How to live on a narrow boat

My country

Kingfisher

Oiks

Still life

Boat in dry dock

Lifted

A crossing

Severn, from Purton

The archaeologist of rivers

Eve naming the birds

Infallible

Gloriana

A nightingale for Gilbert White

Mallaig

From here on up all the paths are informal

Excavation

Small finds

Silbury Hill

Mute

My Schiehallion

Waiting in Starbucks for Max

Raising the roof for Kirsty

Birdsong at the Rec

Beginnings

First, cause no harm

Fair play

February 21st

Shibboleth

Your Helens and my Jonathans

Mowing

Worship

Whales

The End

A diet rich in birdsong

Rooks over Avebury

Begin

Society of Friends

Kith

I will lift up mine eyes to

Reviews for Kith

[ma_washigeri · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Sorry to see this going back to the library. Love the canal boats and archeology. I have a cousin lives on a narrowboat so I can feel a connection. However I think that in the absence of this connection I would have found some other one as reading the book brings her voice close.