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Thelma Laycock is a poetry tutor and the founder of Gabriel magazine. Her work is widely published and has been translated into Hebrew, Italian, and Romanian. Her most recent collection is A Persistence of Colour (Indigo Dreams, 2011).
If, when you see a pearl, it is a lake under mist,
a drop of water, a point of brightness, a dot of fierce white light,
then you will recall Vermeer’s girl with her earring,
her blue and yellow scarf binding bright hair but not so bright
as the hair of Catharina, his wife, who owned the earring,
blonde hair with sherry-brown eyes, unusual, but not
remembered like her maid with that curious twist of her head,
and you may know Adele, may have sat with her and her
doctor husband at their smart flat, seen her shake down her dark hair,
putting on her scarlet gypsy dress to go out and afterwards you
may have sat with them on their balcony in the early hours sipping
red wine and she might have told you how years ago as her
night shift raced towards morning she was asked to fold clothes
in a darkened room, brushed back Diana’s bright hair, removed
one earring like the Seine under mist, a drop of water, a point of
brightness, a dot of fierce white light, that she had raised it to her
lips and dropped it on to a silver tray; perhaps she told you that now
in moments of quiet she still hears the little sound it made.
in collection, A Persistence of Colour, 2011, Indigo Dreams.
Publications:
collection, A Persistence of Colour, 2011, Indigo Dreams, £5.99. ISBN 978-1-907401-49-7;
pamphlet collection, Chameleon Days, 2007, Feather Press, £3.50 (sold in aid of Lakota Link), ISBN 978-1-84175-277-8
tel: number 01132 789256
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