The Deighton Collective

The Deighton Collective, so called, is a group of Creative Writing students who met at Deighton Adult Education College from 1995 to 1999 under the tutelage of Chris Foley. There was a lively interchange of ideas, and the poems included here all stem from Nick Addy's The January Man .

Brian Jordan and Liz Watkinson both responded with January Man, while an anonymous member of the group also came up with January Woman .

The January Man

by Nicholas Addy

Hooded and stooped, he stumbles from the hills.
Hus huge grey bag, bulging with futures,
Bumps at his heels. Its name, they say, is Luck
Inside it, something lives; squirms, like a stolen child;
Mimics the shape of fear, writhing and gagged
In the ropes of what is to happen
His weathers are all wolves, the raggedy man's,
Snuffing under his cloak, where snow grinds their breath,
The frosts of loss crack in their thieving teeth.
Here, in the fatlands, are plump trusts for supper:
There, in his sack's dark hole of months, he lades there ruins -
His gifts, for chance encounters on the fatal road.

January Man

Brian Jordan

There was an old man of the Solstice
and a miserable devil was he.
Each year we hoped when the New Sun came,
that the nasty old beggar would flee.
We coped when he came in December
and was cast out with all the Old Year,
but the Church displaced him with Christmas
so he came when we’d run out of beer.
For ages each Winter we feared him,
as we trudged through the snow in the lane.
We’d hide in our hovels and wonder
if we’d ever see Summer again?
But now we’ve that nice Global Warming
all those shivers are things of the past:
we’ve melted the evil old monster,
and the New Year’s a pleasure, at last.

© Brian Jordan
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January Woman

She hides shyly behind her father's cape
of white and grey and shadows of the cold
like a small girl daring only a smile -
now silver, but transmuting into gold.

Her brief smile awakens the winter world
and starts to melt the January snow.
Her father's reign will still last two months more,
but he is doomed, and soon will have to go.

Then the January Woman will gain
her father's throne and cast aside his woe.
Her growing light will warm the world, showing
the way for Summer's life and hope to grow.

Her reign will bring a bounty to the world
and far outlast her father's chilly rule.
But as the granaries are filled with stores
her days will start to shorten and to cool.

Until once more her father shades her light
and brings his ice to stop her copious horn.
It's then at last that she must yield her reign
but though she'll die, it's but to be reborn.