Start

By Alison Brackenbury

Dorothy Barnes, known to friends and family as Dot, was a cook during the Edwardian era. She passed on her recipes to her granddaughter, the poet Alison Brackenbury. In Aunt Margaret’s Pudding (Happenstance Press, £8), Brackenbury relives moments in the life of Dot through her recipes, which are reproduced alongside the poems. ‘Start’ is the first poem in the collection and the perfect introduction to the mix of food and verse to follow.

Page one: Aunt Margaret’s Pudding. Take half a pound of flour, three ounces lard (or butter), egg, milk, sugar, baking powder. Spread jam in basin, summer gleam. Poke fire! For ninety minutes, steam.

Dot took for granted custard seas, in which all puddings swam – yellow as straw, farmworkers food. In frost, the men tramped home. Moon glittered. No one knew how lard would line and leave their arteries hard.

When I came home and you worked late, our workshop gloomed with cold, I bought flour from the corner shop sacked cupboards for old bowls. Softly the mixture dropped. I too spooned Margaret’s hot jam sponge for you.

You can find a copy of Aunt Margaret’s Pudding by Alison Brackenbury at the Scottish Poetry Library, 5 Crichton’s Close, Edinburgh. For poetry enquiries, e-mail reception@spl.org.uk or visit www.scottishpoetrylibrary.org.uk