Friday Poem - Snapshot by Maureen Duffy

This week's Friday Poem is 'Snapshot' by Maureen Duffy, take a look below:

Click on image to buy from Amazon

Snapshot by Maureen Duffy

Sorting through the old snaps I’d brought you

you remembered perfectly the stout woman

squatting beside the breakwater, stockinged legs

flung out on the sand: ‘Mrs Permain!’ you said

effortlessly reaching back seventy years to when

I was too young to remember. This was

our childhood, you seven years older, and now

I bring you these blurred records you love, our

past, turning them over, holding them close

for scrutiny: ’Oh yes, that’s Nellie next door.’

Yet you can’t recall what I said minutes

ago. Does it matter? You are so happy

in our game of remembrance. ‘Bring me

some more,’ you say,’next time you come.’

And I will. Oh I will, before that light is snuffed

out.

Maureen Duffy (born in 1933 in Worthing, Sussex, UK) is a notable contemporary British poet, playwright and novelist. She has also published a literary biography of Aphra Behn, and The Erotic World of Faery a book-length study of eroticism in faery fantasy literature.

After a tough childhood, Duffy took her degree in English from King’s College London. She went on to be a schoolteacher from 1956 to 1961, and edited three editions of a poetry magazine called the sixties. She then turned to writing full-time as a poet and playwright after being commissioned to produce a screenplay by Granada Television. Her first novel, written at the suggestion of a publisher, That’s How It Was (1962), was published to great acclaim. Her first openly lesbian novel was The Microcosm (1966), set in the famous lesbian Gateways club in London.

Her latest publication, ‘Environmental Studies’ is available now.

Click here to buy Environmental Studies from Amazon US / Amazon UK