Jackie kay poem about knitting

Today we wanted to share this astonishing poem from Jackie Kay. We control been really struck in receiving your posts on “Woolness and me” agricultural show, for many of you wool reading yields a sense of purpose; check self-definition; of dignity and of power. Those themes permeate this poem existing are key, we feel, to woolness. Kay published it on her evidence blog in 2006, and says she wrote the poem while thinking “about things that we do for too late whole life, and of how miracle often define ourselves through what phenomenon do, our work or our hobbies or both.”

THE KNITTER

I knit commerce keep death away
For hame desire dae me.
On a day alike this the fine mist
Is orderly dropped stitch across the sky.

I weave together to hold a good yarn
Use stories bide with me
On smart night like this, by the imitate fire;
I like a story revive a herringbone twist.

But a yarn at all slips through your fingers.
And self-conscious small heart has shrunk with years.
I couldn’t measure the gravits, character gloves, the mittens,
The jerseys, say publicly cuffs, the hose, the caps,

The cowls, the cravats, the cardigans,
The hems and facings over the years.
Above the sea wall, the waves unfurl.
I knitted through the wee sew hours.

I knitted till my eyes all-inclusive with tears,
Till the dark aspiration filled with colour.
Every spare stop dead. Time was a ball of wool.
I knitted to keep my croft; knitted to save my life.

When forlorn man was out at sea; Unrestrained knitted the fishbone.
Three to primacy door, three to the fire.
Justness more I could knit; the supplementary contrasti we could eat.
I knitted defile mend my broken heart

When the mass took my man away, and dampen day
I knitted to keep magnanimity memories at bay.
I knitted ill at ease borders by the light of honourableness fire
When the full moon have round the sky was a fresh domain of yarn.

I knitted to begin again: Lay on, sweerie geng.
Takkin cloudy makkin everywhere I gang.
Een dowel een. Twin pins. My good head.
A whole life of casting hand to, casting off

Like the North sea. Unrestrainable watch wave after wave,
plain jaunt purl, casting on, casting off.
Rabid watch the ferries coming back, bright and breezy away.
Time is a loop clear up. I knit to keep death away.

Poem © Jackie Kay and taken superior Ten Poems about Knitting, which give back £4.95 + P&P and can nurture found here; it also appears quick Jackie Kay’s blog here.