Juliette Morton
Courage
Suppose there was a tree
that did not burn,
but instead contained a fire
that lit the taper of our hopes.
Catkin havoc gives a clue -
red flames thrown to the mud
toys in a bedroom
a time of different measure.
Suppose this tree were prone to feel
itself a fish, flashing scales in water.
A full-throated bird
meeting sky with song
at the branch of dusk, its burr
a meteor of celestial light
a trail through
trunk fissures.
Suppose this tree black poplar,
native of our unbound minds,
unmoved by difference
between land and flood.
A match struck on longing.
About the poem
This poem was written for my poetry residency at Lake 32, Cotswold Water Park. The black poplar (Populus Nigra) is one of Britain’s most ancient timber trees. It is also one of our rarest and the Park is one of the tree’s last strongholds. In March I walked the boundary of Lake 32 and found the black poplar’s red (male) catkins – known as devil’s fingers – cast around the grass. Fewer than five hundred female Black Poplars are thought to remain in the UK, less than one percent of the total. Three hundred and fifty individual trees have been identified at the Park so far and sixty percent of those are female, making it a nationally important population that could help to conserve the species.
Bio
JLM Morton is a poet and hybrid writer interested in the interplay between language, sound, musicality and visual culture. In between demands from her kids for high calorie snacks and wrenching another toy from the jaws of the dog, she writes. Some of this has been published recently in the likes of Poetry Birmingham Literary Journal, Riggwelter, Magma, Poethead, Atrium, The Lake, Good Dadhood and Streetcake. Juliette was runner up in the Goldsmith's Pat Kavanagh Prize, placed second in the 2019 Stroud Book Festival Poetry Competition. In 2020, she’s had wins with the People’s Poetry Podcast and International Dylan Thomas Day competitions. She’s been invited to read / forced her way in to various poetry nights and festivals including Ledbury Poetry Festival and Stroud's Wool & Water Festival and last year the Places of Poetry project made a beautiful film of her poem ‘Stroudwater Navigation.’ JLM Morton is Poet in Residence throughout 2020 at Waterland (Cotswold Water Park), for which a poem is published each month of the year. Her first full pamphlet, Lake 32, is forthcoming from Yew Tree Press.
As a response to COVID-19, Juliette teamed up with artist Susie Hetherington on The Outposted Project. This began as an initiative bringing together thirty writers, artists, makers, performers and musicians from across the Five Valleys to map our collective, creative responses to isolation. This project is now nationwide, involving more than sixty artists.
Juliette recently founded Dialect, a new writer development network providing learning, sharing and publication opportunities for writers across Gloucestershire and the upper south west. This includes craft workshops for Stroud Book Festival and a writer in residence programme.
Instagram: @jlmmorton
Twitter: @JlmMorton
