Thursday 2 February 2017

Poem inspired by Tapestry



I, Miss Lorina Bulwer

The words spill out,
Tumble over themselves.
They say, why am I here?

The rant goes on at length,
Suddenly lucid thoughts prevail
Slow and deliberate,
Speaking of people she has known
With Royal connections
The Maharajah of Kelvedon
Caught in a tapestry web

Dr Pinching from Essex was the bearer
Of the good news.
A properly shaped female
Not a eunuch or hermaphrodite
But Aphrodite!
Did her birth confuse them?
And send her to the workhouse?

Sister and brother sealed her fate,
Parental death bore her there
On sibling’s arms.
To that place where nothing lives
Except despair
And Turnbridge and Powell.
Lives preserved in linen and thread

Lives preserved in linen and thread.
Shame on famous families
Great names hide there,
Gurneys, Bulwers of Wood Dalling,
Did they know?
The plots are uncovered
One by one by this tortured soul.

It hurts me to read,
I feel sick and tired,
Reality holds her with a thin thread,
Fate sealed here, but she knows
Truth will appear one day.
For now, she hides it
In a cupboard to preserve.


Hilary Hanbury  January 2017

Lorina was an inmate in the lunatic wing of Great Yarmouth workhouse where she angrily embroidered her letters on trailing lengths of patchwork fabric, venting about being locked up and abandoned by friends and family. Her furious hand-stitched letters, painstakingly sewn together while she was incarcerated, have long fascinated me.

The tapestry was found long after her death over a hundred years ago and has recently been on display at a number of Norfolk Museums.

I am presently writing a novel inspired by her story.

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