Patricia M Osborne

Please join me in congratulating poet, Helen Laycock, on the launch of her brand new poetry collection, Rapture. Helen shares snippets of inspiration.

Rapture

A flirtation with love between the covers

Helen Laycock

Love has long been a subject for poets. In fact, the oldest love poem is said to be The Love Song for Shu-Sin, written in 2000 BC for use in the sacred rites of fertility.

I never really thought of myself as a writer of love poetry, but, bit by bit, inspired by pictures, prompts and evocative places, I began to gather it, like stray flowers, until I had something that resembled a bouquet, and that became the collection RAPTURE, which is still smouldering off the press!

Love is a powerful emotion, and one most of us will have experienced in some way. Even the degree of grief suffered by a bereaved partner correlates to the depth of love they *have for that soulmate (and, yes, I use the present tense deliberately here; as John Galsworthy said, ‘Love has no age, no limit; and no death.’).

In ‘Unburn’, the final poem in the collection, I have tried to capture this futile yearning to bring back a loved one, be it even for a moment:

Writing about love through the medium of poetry is almost always a joyous and fulfilling undertaking, however. Finding metaphor can be a delicious sensory quest. I found myself pondering over such intricacies as breath, for example, and how goosebumps can trill across skin…

‘Night Breath’ is set in a jasmine-infused, moonlit scene, the woman depicted as

(Yes, I had fun with the spacing of those letters… )

In it, we see the power of touch as she subsequently

In general, the pace of the poems is unhurried. That moment of falling asleep is often alluded to, and the beach has more than once featured as the backdrop, capturing that sense of warmth as the sun sets against the lull of the rolling waves, themselves metaphors for body heat and emotion.

One of my favourite lines in ‘Embers’ is:

Rapture is a collection of poems with soft voices and very few sharp edges. Perhaps one of the most mellifluent is ‘Lagoon’, a thirteen-word poem:

Interspersed throughout are a scattering of quotations, my favourite of which is possibly ‘Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.’ Aristotle

I couldn’t have put it better myself, though I’ve had a good go!

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Helen Laycock returns to Patricia’s Pen on 14th February 2023 to chat about all her poetry books. Don’t miss it.