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Moira Andrew was born and educated in Scotland. She trained and worked as a primary teacher and became a lecturer in education at Craigie College of Education, Ayr, where she was known as ‘the poetry lady’!
Moira moved to Bristol to take up a post as Head Teacher of a primary school.
In 1988, she remarried, moved to Cardiff as a full-time writer and poet-in-schools. Wrote best-selling educational books on creative writing and display for Belair Ltd. When her husband died she moved to Cornwall, joined the prestigious Falmouth Poetry Group and was their secretary for five years. She now lives in Somerset with her partner, concentrating on poetry for adults. She runs a flourishing poetry workshop.
Currently she has 94 books with her name on the cover, ranging from children’s reading books and anthologies to books for teachers and full-length poetry collections – and one novel, aimed at teenagers.
Poetry
138 x 216mm
36 pages
£8.99+ P&P UK
ISBN 978-1-912876-00-6
PUB: 07/01/2019
ORDER HERE
Geese and Daughters
Moira Andrew
“This outstanding new book of poems shows Moira Andrew at the peak of her poetic powers as she casts an unerring eye over contemporary life, relationships, love (and physical love), and nature. There is great tenderness here as she speaks with confidence and clarity in poem after poem that seems to materialise magically on the page. ‘Geese and Daughters’ is a treat, rich in language, easy on the ear, personal – yet filled with shared experience and honed to perfection.”
Wes Magee
Seven chairs
(From a drawing by P. Moore ’85)
They say
a Cyprus man
needs seven chairs.
He sits at ease
arms propped, legs splayed
supremely confident.
But he’s just using five,
I say. You haven’t looked!
So I count once more.
Two for his arms,
two for his legs,
one for his backside.
Five, I repeat
not knowing a lot
about Cypriot men – then,
I see! He leans his stick
on another chair
and most importantly,
places his coffee cup
on the seventh. No wonder
he looks so smug.
Retail therapy
I buy a long silky dress
a mix of muted blues and greens
with a flimsy turquoise top –
enough to rouse the princess
lurking somewhere deep
in trouser-wearing women
like me.
Mirrors, a pin number,
easy – unlike my first long frock
(from a London store) where
a woman with a mouthful of pins
fussed over me, my mother
supervising from a chair
in the corner.
A slim pink-striped
number it was, with silver threads,
really sophisticated for those days
not long after the war.
Eighteen,
a coming out (in its old sense)
a private dance in the Plaza,
(complete with five-piece band)
a black cab, boyfriends,
fizzy wine, Dad in dinner jacket,
me in sugar-pink.
The new dress
hangs in lonely elegance, waiting
for the saxophone, the muted trumpet
the wake-up kiss.
Telltale touch
His sleeping hand
on my thigh
is enough,
tells me
everything
I need to know,
speaks of trust,
of easy familiarity,
of lazy love-making
waiting in the wings.
Poems and songs
They say Poems are songs
without the holes …
I fill the gaps, singing
in my sleep, quite forgetting
I can’t sing for toffee.
In my head, I’m Piaf,
Ella, a morning blackbird
welcoming the sun –
after all, I know the words
to every jazz standard.
So I sing in dreamtime,
darn holes with my poems,
stitch seams in carefully-
chosen phrases, letting
no daylight in, just jazz
mostly in Bb, always in tune.
Evening hush
The sea draws its nets across the sand,
the sand a bunkhouse for secret creatures.
The rocks snuggle down in tippets of weed,
weed slithers and slumps into dreamtime.
The sun leans tired elbows on the hills,
the hills slip into wild purple pyjamas.
The wind, not ready for bed, tickles treetops,
treetops shrug, birds tuck heads beneath wings.
The moon reaches out to light her yellow lamp,
the lamp glows, a feeble flame in feather-grey dusk
The darkening clouds loom over lazy rivers,
rivers amble towards a last date with the sea.
The night quietens, whispers Sleep well,
and sleep brings its evening hush to the world.
Night swim
summer dark
we tip-toe barefoot
across pebbled shingle
gasp at the sea’s
first cool bite
walk into the waves
testing for depth
swim to a raft
anchored, rocking
in the gentle swell
treading water
we hold the looped rope
and laugh aloud
at the joy of being alive
bodies outlined
in green beads
of phosphorescence
making a magic mirror
of this long-ago
teenage summer
Geese and daughters
It’s preferable to raise geese than daughters
(Chinese proverb)
Geese? They strut
around the farmyard
sleek off-white
peering down
on their world from
haughty rooftop eyes.
Daughters? They kiss
you good-night from
wet pink mouths, dance
in your arms to jazz
on the radio, stamp
in red-cheeked fury.
They grow up, phone
to tell you stuff,
make sure you’re OK,
bake scones for you,
buy you flowers
for the kitchen table.
Give me daughters
any time. No doubt
geese are all very well
in their way, but
only those few who
lay golden eggs
merit a second thought.
