Egyptian pharaohs had aprons encrusted with jewels. Cretan fertility goddesses apparently wore aprons below bare breasts (see image below right). Masons still wear aprons – so do gardeners, cooks, barbers, shoemakers, medical workers. Down the centuries, and in all cultures, aprons have afforded protection, and they have been symbolic of work and status. As a…
Author: Clare Best
I am Clare Best – poet, writer, librettist, teacher of creative writing.
My first career was as a fine bookbinder. I've also worked as a bookseller, and for many years as an editor.
Poetry publications: Treasure Ground (HappenStance 2009), Excisions (Waterloo Press 2011), Breastless (Pighog Press 2011), CELL (Frogmore Press 2015), Springlines (Little Toller 2017), Each Other (Waterloo Press 2019), End of Season / Fine di stagione (Frogmore Press 2022), Beyond the Gate (Worple Press, 2023).
Memoir: The Missing List (Linen Press 2018).
Same ocean, different boats: loss and grief in the time of Corona
We are all reacting to the rapid changes in our lives, as social distancing and self-isolation, and then CV-19 lockdown, settle on us. People talk about stomachs churning, moods swinging, about not being able to focus, feeling a sense of unreality, a disconnect. Fatigue. We talk of not sleeping well, sleeping too much, feeling anger,…
Timepiece
My relationship with time (never a straightforward one, since I don’t really subscribe to linear time) becomes complex as I accrue within my memory and my body more and more evidence that time does, indeed, accumulate and pass. But as well as passing, time returns. Trees bud their leaves year by year, birthdays (of the…
Stepping over into 2020
Another threshold – and here we are counting what has gone before, guessing what might lie ahead. Moving away from, towards; over, across; out of, into. And taking stock: the media have told us what 2019 was about – the news stories, books and films have been rounded up. There isn’t, as yet, much real…
Knowing a place
When we moved to Suffolk last year, I had to begin to create a new map in my head. I’m still doing it. On most journeys I take, even now, I have only a vague idea, if any, of what is beyond the path or the road or the railway track I am following (‘There…
Motherhood, time and sandwiches
Our grown-up son is, for the moment, living alongside us in a small Studio that we converted from a garage a few months ago. The arrangement suits us all. He cycles to and from his two local jobs, he’s learning to drive, and as a musician he can make all the music he likes without…
Faces in photographs
Recently a friend sent me a short video of her baby grandson. I was struck all over again by how many fleeting expressions a small human being can rehearse in a few moments – in 30 seconds of moving image there were displays of intense pleasure, humour, astonishment, disgust, fear, anxiety, and again pleasure. The…
Breading in the New Year
I’m fond of the homely rituals that come with midwinter, Christmas and New Year. I especially love decorating the house, putting up and taking down the tree and rediscovering cinnamon angels and glass baubles with their tender, freighted memories of other Christmases shared with other people in other places. It’s a time of so many…
‘My mother with sweet peas’ – a poem for Baby Loss Awareness Week 2018
In the summer of 1952 my mother’s second son, Michael, died after contracting a gastro-intestinal infection. He was thirteen months old. All her life my mother carried that grief, virtually unable to speak it except to me. I am posting this poem for Baby Loss Awareness Week (9-15 October), in memory of Michael and in…
The art of unpacking
Synchronicity can be powerful. At the moment I’m unpacking after four moves in three years, and simultaneously I’m preparing to release my memoir The Missing List into the world on September 18th, with Linen Press. The Missing List, which has taken me years to write, tells the story of how I packed away my childhood and…
Clare Best 