This poem by South Australian Judy Dally stems from a six-month return to the UK at the tender age of eight. There, she read a lot of Bunty magazines, and stayed for a while in a house in Crowland – Croyland, to use its medieval name – an historic market town in the south Lincolnshire marches of equally historic East Anglia.
Footsteps
It was not the place
to read a gothic horror novel
before going to bed:
that narrow grey house
on South Street
in a tiny midlands town.
Jane Eyre reborn
in comic-strip form
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When I lay in that upstairs room
(behind the door that creaked)
I thought I heard
on the wintry air
the sound of Grace Poole’s footsteps
climbing the stairs.
Judy Dally is a past board member for the SA Writers’ Centre, a committee member and co-editor for Friendly Street Poetry Group. Her latest Friendly Street project was Reader 36, launched at Writers’ Week 2012. She is celebrating 25 consecutive years of publication in the Friendly Street Readers.
Readers’ original and unpublished poems up to 30 lines can be emailed, with postal address, to [email protected]. A poetry book will be awarded to each contributor.