Valerie Bence's latest poetry pamphlet is a testament to ordinary lives,
and a meditation on grandmothers. Part memoir, part family history,
Overlap is a series of vivid vignettes from the poet's childhood,
courtship, motherhood and grandmotherhood, spanning the 20th and 21st
centuries.
Winifred and Harriet are at the heart of this book: Bence's
grandmothers, whose hardy, steadfast lives she comes to reflect on as
she too becomes a grandmother, in very different times. Stranded from
her family in the Covid-19 pandemic, the poet conjures up their ghosts,
walks in their footsteps and - sometimes - feels herself become them.
We mash tealeaves and bran for the rabbit,
the sweet aroma fogging her glasses,
and every day, for five shillings a week,
she scrubs bloody butcher's aprons.
We take the clean ones back on the bus,
until the day she faints outside Boots in the rain,
sliding down the wall like in a cartoon,
her wartime hat slipping over her eyes.
