Synkroniciti is excited to welcome back poet and visual artist Michele Noble from the UK with two thoughtful, haunting poems. “Attics, Burton Constable” is an eerie exploration of a stately home in Holderness, East Yorkshire, on the northeast coast of England, where the sea is eroding the coastline (an entire village has been lost). Burton Constable was home to a (once wealthy) Roman Catholic family who did not support Henry VIII when he founded the Church of England, but managed to avoid execution due to the remoteness of their estate. “The rustle of long skirts,/ whisk, at the edge of sight,/ through bedroom doors./ Behind the skirting boards,/ sharp rodent claws/ scratch and scrabble.” Michele paints a picture that has one foot in our time, with decay and rodent residents, and the other foot in a shadowy reflection of the past. In a masterful final two lines, she comes to the realization that people of today belong in neither vision. The alliteration is lovely, especially the use of the “sk” sound, which is evident in the passage quoted above, and the imagery quite evocative. The second poem was one of our “Haunting” contest finalists. “Catacomb” speaks of how the mind changes as we age: some things remaining etched in memory while others disappear. ” As I grow older/ the catacomb inside my brain/ spreads like a coral reef.” In Jungian fashion, she speaks of those who dwell in this interior space, “I am a construct/ crafted by them all/ developing still,” and ponders what happens to our inner world when we die. The imagery is apt and hopeful.
Read Michele’s insightful poems in Synkroniciti’s “Haunting” issue, Vol. 6, No. 4, available here: https://synkroniciti.com/the-magazine/purchase-individual-issues/.
My name is Michele Noble. I was born in wartime London. My father was away at war but he gave me a touch of blarney, the gift of the gab and my goofy teeth. Sadly I didn’t inherit my mother’s looks! My schooling was wonderful and I was lucky to be introduced to great literature and art at an early age. I trained as a visual artist and still show pictures but I have always devoured books.
I seriously began to write about 2007. Now I’m an old crone I’m working towards my first collection: Poetry memoirs about my life and times, comic and tragic, the characters I’ve met, and how the world has changed since I was born in 1943.
Oh, to be eighty again. Nevertheless. I look forward to experiencing your work.