It’s Tuesday, and the dVerse Poets Pub is open with hot soup, freshly baked bread and a range of beverages from our well-stocked bar, as well as a selection of delicious poetry.  I’m Kim from writinginnorthnorfolk.com, your host for this week’s Poetics.

Back in the summer, I discovered a wonderful poem that I thought would make a great Poetics prompt, but I decided to save it for a more appropriate time of year – and that time has come. It’s a poem by Frances Horovitz, entitled ‘New Year Snow’:

New Year Snow

For three days we waited,
a bowl of dull quartz for sky.
At night the valley dreamed of snow,
lost Christmas angels with dark-white wings
flailing the hills.
I dreamed a poem, perfect
as the first five-pointed flake
that melted at dawn:
a Janus-time
to peer back at guttering dark days,
trajectories of the spent year.
And then snow fell.
Within an hour, a world immaculate
as January’s new-hung page.
We breathe the radiant air like men new-born.
The children rush before us.
As in a dream of snow
we track through crystal fields
to the green horizon
and the sun’s reflected rose.

I was attracted to this poem because it reminded me of Sarah Connor, our poet friend, whom we lost to cancer last year. They were both British poets, their style of writing is eerily comparable, and they wrote about similar topics and themes. They also both died of cancer.

Frances Margaret Horovitz was an English poet and broadcaster, who wrote under the surname of her first husband. She was born in London in 1938, studied English and Drama at Bristol University and at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Art in London, and was a reader and presenter for the BBC, known for her careful preparation and quality of delivery.

Frances married two poets: Michael Horovitz in 1964 and Roger Garfitt just before her death in 1983.

In 1971, having just given birth to her son Adam, also a poet, Frances and her family moved to a remote part of the Slad valley in Gloucestershire, which became the inspiration for many of the poems in her third collection Water Over Stone, published in 1980, which included ‘New Year Snow’. She remained in Slad Valley until the end of 1980, after which she and Adam moved to join Roger Garfitt in Sunderland, where she was eventually diagnosed with skin cancer in her left ear. Operations and other treatments failed to stop its spread, and she died in the Royal Marsden hospital at the age of 45.

In ‘New Year Snow’, I love the way Horovitz evokes the feeling of a snowy landscape and sets it firmly in the New Year, particularly in the lines:

At night the valley dreamed of snow,
lost Christmas angels with dark-white wings
flailing the hills

and then zooms in from the wideness of the valley to the ‘first five-pointed flake’ before delivering the snow in the four-line sentence ‘And then snow fell’.

And she uses a simple but effective simile to describe ‘a world immaculate as January’s new-hung page’, evoking a sense of renewal and anticipation of the year ahead.

The inclusive pronoun ‘we’ pulls us into the final scene, has us breathing ‘radiant air like men new-born’ and seeing the children rushing before us, the ‘crystal fields’ and ‘sun’s reflected rose’.

Whether you live in a place where there is lots of snow or where there is never snow, whether you love it or hate it, I would like you to write about snow as you see, feel or imagine it, in any form you wish, using clear imagery as crisp as fresh-fallen snow.

If you are new to dVerse and/or Poetics, here’s how to join in:

• Write a poem in response to the challenge.
• Enter a link directly to your poem and your name by clicking Mr Linky below.
• There you will find links to other poets, and more will join, so check back for their poems.
• Read and comment on other poets’ work – we all come here to have our poems appreciated.
• Please link back to dVerse from your site/blog.