Qualified people are here to do the heavy lifting

Three Friday Poems from our Archive for you, from Kate Hendry, Natalie Shaw and Matthew Paul.

We chose ‘Lost at the Western General’ by Kate Hendry to be our Friday Poem on 25/03/2022 partly because its subject matter resonates so powerfully with many women, and partly because the form and language of the poem reflects and carries the content so well. It’s written in tight couplets, appropriate for a couple under stress. The language is precise, the line endings – slightly abrupt – create a sense of disconnect. The overwhelming impression is one of control, of just being able to hold down rising panic, of just managing to deal with unpleasant memories. We think it’s a very accomplished, astute, and profoundly compassionate poem, and we’re very happy to have it.

Lost at the Western General

by Kate Hendry

It only happened once, at night —
the ward we needed wasn’t listed

on any signs and there was no one
in the Covid-empty corridors to ask.

Finally, I recognised the stairs
I’d descended after surgery

and so we found ourselves
by mistake, in ward six,

where I’d had my mastectomy
and I showed you the dayroom where

I’d waited, all morning, with ringing
phones and abandoned bags

of women taken before me,
and the toilet where I took

a pregnancy test — me, at 50?! —
and held my sweating breast

for the last time, and the quiet room
where I rang you afterwards.

No one saw us or stopped us.
I couldn’t remember

which of the green double doors
led to the theatre where the surgeon

removed my breast but by then
we were out the other side

and you delivered me to the night nurse
in the cancer assessment unit

and she led me to a bed
with my name already written

above it and said she’d look after me
and that you must go home.

Kate Hendry is a poet and teacher. Her work has been widely published in magazines such as PN Review, The North, The Rialto, and Mslexia. Her first collection, The Lost Original, was published by HappenStance Press, and her latest collection, MX SIMP (Mariscat, 2023) was shortlisted for the Michael Marks Awards Poetry Pamphlets – read Clare Best’s review of MX SIMP here. Her website is here.

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What’s Natalie Shaw’s poem ‘Not my children, not my rats’ about? It has an Orwellian feel. We know that the thought police are never the nice guys, so the narrator’s revision doesn’t convince, despite – or more probably because of – the repeat of “perfectly lovable”. Shaw often plays with the surreal and the surprising, and her work is often funny (see that “cataloguing abilities”!) but this is much more than a quirky, amusing poem. It’s dark. It’s a warning. It’s doing exactly what poetry is supposed to do. That’s why we chose it to be our Friday Poem on 18/10/2024.

Not my children, not my rats

by Natalie Shaw

I have revised my views on the thought police:
actually, they are perfectly lovable guys,

perfectly lovable guys just trying
to do their best; not everyone

has the patience or cataloguing abilities
for this challenging work, particularly

during dark times when it is a difficult job
to see even vaguely what is going on. I have always been quick

to judge; now I realise it is a real luxury
that qualified people are here to do the heavy lifting.

Natalie Shaw has been described as “a fake, a fraud and a phoney”. She has two pamphlets, oh be quiet (Against the Grain Press, 2020) and Dirty Martini ( Broken Sleep Books, 2023). Her poem ‘I know you only invited me in for a coffee, but‘ was commended in the 2018 National Poetry Competition. Read her Friday Poem piece on ‘Maybe; maybe not’ by Denise Riley, our review of oh be quiet by Hilary Menos or our review of Dirty Martini by Isabelle Thompson.

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You can almost touch the stiff permanent waves of the ladies in their silk and taffeta gowns and the Brylcreemed hair of the men in dinner suits as they lounge and smoke. Matthew Paul’s poem ‘Pathé News Visits the Ace of Spades’ beautifully evokes the atmosphere of the roadhouse, a country club style establishment built along arterial roads in and out of London in the inter-war years, where people liberated by motorcar ownership could meet for entertainment and dancing. In the black and white newsreels of the time these clubs were portrayed as sophisticated and glamorous but Matthew Paul’s poem focuses on the seedier side, offering us a peek at the louche lowlifes, glitzy girls and slick entertainers of the 1920s and 30s. His poem is lavish, detailed and lots of fun, and we revel in it – it was our Friday Poem on 15/12/2021.

Pathé News Visits the Ace of Spades

by Matthew Paul

Hook, Surrey, 1933

The crew don’t capture Noël and Ivor snorting cocaine
off the black-marble bar; the gargoyles they actually film
are me and my pals: Marcel waves and louche rum coves
high-balled to the eyeballs, soft-shoe-shuffling to the silver
syncopation of Percy Chandler and his rinky-dink band,
trowelling a long, smooth intro to Al Bowlly, who croons
like a trout. The camera pans across the diners and lingers
on that cad Mosley’s double, hiding his face with a plate,

a trice too late. Clad in top-hat and tails, and spying
for Japan, the Colonel Master of Sempill swallow-dives
from the highest board, to frolic among ‘Spadettes’
in the ace-shaped outdoor pool. Norman Long, a comic
off the wireless, corpses at his own punchlines, before

he delivers them. The Southern Sisters — Vera, Sybille
and Betty — harmonise ‘It Don’t Mean a Thing If It Ain’t
Got That Swing’. All of us blootered punters, grinning
like ventriloquist dummies, cheer as if Larwood’s snared
Bradman for a golden duck. Bill-toppers Gerlys and Lysia,
‘Continental artistic dancers’, provide a sensational
climax to proceedings: Lysia raised aloft, like an angel,
fully fanning-out her knife-pleated, black-leather skirt.

Still swooning afterwards, we whip my new Alvis Firefly
up the by-pass to party till noon in Lancaster Mansions,
at Putney Bridge; more champers and — oh, hot digetty! —
more Duke Ellington stompers: ‘East St Louis Toodle-Oo’,
‘Doin’ the New Lowdown’, ‘Jig Walk’, ‘Diga Diga Doo’ …

Matthew Paul lives in Rotherham and worked for many years in local authority children’s services. His first collection, The Evening Entertainment, was published by Eyewear in 2017 and his second collection, The Last Corinthians, was published by Crooked Spire Press in 2025. He is also the author of two haiku collections, The Regulars (2006) and The Lammas Lands (2015), and co-writer/editor (with John Barlow) of Wing Beats: British Birds in Haiku (2008), all published by Snapshot Press. Matthew Paul’s blog is here.

Matthew also writes and reviews for The Friday Poem – read his long-form pieces on Ted Walker, Patricia Beer, poems featuring bowls, and the English haiku, or his reviews of Lemonade in the Armenian Quarter by Sarah Mnatzaganian (Against the Grain, 2022), Lanyard by Peter Sansom (Carcanet, 2022), Fool by Greta Stoddart (Bloodaxe, 2022), Selected Poems 1983–2023 by Ian Parks (Calder Valley Poetry, 2023), New and Selected Poems by Cliff Yates (Smith|Doorstop, 2023), Instead of an Alibi by Geoff Hattersley (Broken Sleep Books, 2023), A Land Between Borders by Mike Barlow (Templar Poetry, 2023), STRIKE by Sarah Wimbush (Stairwell Books, 2024), The Hawthorn Bride by Victoria Gatehouse (Indigo Dreams Publishing, 2024), and The Ayrshire Nestling by Gerry Cambridge (Tringa Press, 2024), ‘Lapwing’ by Hannah Copley (Liverpool University Press, 2024), ‘Summers Are Other’ by Andrew Neilson (Rack Press, 2025), and ‘Everything is Present’ by Anna Woodford (Salt, 2025).

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Vital Statistics: The Friday Poem is run by four people – Hilary Menos (Editor), Helena Nelson (Consulting Editor), Bruno Cooke (Spoken Word Editor) and Andy Brodie (Web Editor), with contributions from a team of reviewers and writers.

Until recently we maintained the Friday Poem website (thefridaypoemdotcom) as an archive of 700 posts published between 2021 and 2024 (including most of the original Friday poems) but following a hack in late April we decided to take this down. We’ll be republishing some of these posts – Friday Poems, features and reviews – here on Substack.

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