Poem
Fleur Adcock
Spuggies
Spuggies
Spuggies
The spuggies are back –
a word I lifted from Basil Bunting
and was never entirely sure how to pronounce,
having only seen it in print, in Briggflatts,
and at the time had little cause to adopt
with the London sparrow in extinction;
but now three are cheeping in my lilacs.
The other word I learned from Basil Bunting
he spoke aloud, the last time I met him:
‘bleb’, meaning condom – as used, he said
(to his severe disapprobation)
by 12-year-old girls on the Tyne & Wear
housing estate where we were calling on him.
I think they asked him if he had any.
a word I lifted from Basil Bunting
and was never entirely sure how to pronounce,
having only seen it in print, in Briggflatts,
and at the time had little cause to adopt
with the London sparrow in extinction;
but now three are cheeping in my lilacs.
The other word I learned from Basil Bunting
he spoke aloud, the last time I met him:
‘bleb’, meaning condom – as used, he said
(to his severe disapprobation)
by 12-year-old girls on the Tyne & Wear
housing estate where we were calling on him.
I think they asked him if he had any.
© 2012, Fleur Adcock
From: Glass Wings
Publisher: Bloodaxe, Newcastle
From: Glass Wings
Publisher: Bloodaxe, Newcastle
Fleur Adcock
(New Zealand, 1934)
Fleur Adcock has been one of the most influential poets in Britain in the past thirty years. Her deceptively quiet poems collect detail about the world in much the same way as a child collects insects in boxes – something a young Fleur Adcock also did. Emigrating to England from New Zealand in 1963, she wrote poems about the process of belonging and about the life of the place. Since then she h...
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Spuggies
The spuggies are back –
a word I lifted from Basil Bunting
and was never entirely sure how to pronounce,
having only seen it in print, in Briggflatts,
and at the time had little cause to adopt
with the London sparrow in extinction;
but now three are cheeping in my lilacs.
The other word I learned from Basil Bunting
he spoke aloud, the last time I met him:
‘bleb’, meaning condom – as used, he said
(to his severe disapprobation)
by 12-year-old girls on the Tyne & Wear
housing estate where we were calling on him.
I think they asked him if he had any.
a word I lifted from Basil Bunting
and was never entirely sure how to pronounce,
having only seen it in print, in Briggflatts,
and at the time had little cause to adopt
with the London sparrow in extinction;
but now three are cheeping in my lilacs.
The other word I learned from Basil Bunting
he spoke aloud, the last time I met him:
‘bleb’, meaning condom – as used, he said
(to his severe disapprobation)
by 12-year-old girls on the Tyne & Wear
housing estate where we were calling on him.
I think they asked him if he had any.
From: Glass Wings
Spuggies
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