Sue VickermanSend a message to

Sue Vickerman

Sue Vickerman

I got to know my lovely poet friend Jean when, soon after moving to Settle, I started cadging a monthly lift with her to the famed Brewery Group poetry workshop in Kendal. As fellow poets in the village we have spent many hours over the years, whether in groups or 1:1 in her house or mine, workshopping each other's poems. A special memory is when we set off as two couples in one car to Orkney, with a stop in Aberdeen: me and my ex, and Jean and Barbara. That was amazing. Once on the island we stayed in different places - a friend of my girlfriend and I had found a bothy right on the beach where Jean and Barbara could stay. It was idyllic. We stayed with our Orkney friend in a converted butcher's shop-turned-mini Arts venue. Hence Jean and I were able to give a poetry reading in Orkney with a small audience crowded in. Brilliant. It was one of a number of poetry readings we have done together all over the place over the years, some under the umbrella of a women's group 'The Word Birds'. Sheffield stands out. So Jean was on the spot when my relationship fell apart - it was in her car, having that lift to the Brewery workshop, where I first poured it out. We got very close around that time (long ago now) and on the foundations of our poetry alliance, a very special and lasting friendship deepened. Thank goodness, Jean wilfully battled her way out of hospital and back to her home a few days before lockdown so that she could spend her last weeks in her bungalow. This was only made possible due to the generous offer of Rebecca - the wonderful angel who had got to know Jean and Barbara through doing their garden - to move into Jean's bungalow with her so that she would be permitted to be at home. Jean physically deteriorated, needing more and more care, and eventually, once bedridden, the hospital bed was duly delivered into the bungalow's sunny living room and set up before the French windows looking onto the April garden. On many of Jean's last days it was warm enough for those doors to be thrown open. I had been busy and a bit out of touch. Now, in this strange lockdown world, with no family able to come and be with Jean, I started to go most days to hold Jean's hand and chat, entering by the French windows and social distancing from Rebecca, while Jean's speech and then, probably, sight, gradually left her. A very special evolution in our relationship; she couldn't retort to any opinions I expressed, so I could get away with anything! As well as holding her hand, whether she liked it or not! It was a strange but lovely funeral with July the vicar, two nephews who bravely drove a long distance to be there after all, and Sita, who was there partly to represent Barbara who was of course in Gargrave in the nursing home. It was really sad that Rebecca, Jean's angel, had immediately gone home to - at last - isolate herself after Jean had died, due to all the risk she had been under from the daily visits of palliative carers, district nurses - and me! (Rebecca's own health issues meant that she ought in fact to have been shielding). So four of us plus funeral directors stood about like chess pieces at a distance from each other and from the plot at the Rathmell natural burial ground, while Julie's vestments at the graveside billowed in the stiff breeze. Jean was in a basket that had lovely associations with groceries and bicycles rather than death, and the sky was blue, and the view breathtaking. In the year or two beforehand, and even during Jean's decline due to all the health issues, Jean was working hell-for-leather on a poetry collection. I knew of this, and she had asked me ages beforehand if I would look at this big wad of poems and help her decide what was what. Then this project sank into the background. A couple of days before Jean died, the wonderful Rebecca put a thick folder into my hands that she had found in Jean's study. This was It. I checked around Jean's poetry friends to see if anyone else had been more in touch with Jean than I had over this collection and in the end, with the say-so of others, I have taken it upon myself to edit this wad into a manuscript. It will be shared with fellow poets for proofreading and reviews before it is published by Naked Eye Publishing in time for a launch party and reading at Settle Meeting House on SATURDAY 26th JUNE 2021: please note in your diaries! It has been a privilege and an eye-opener to carry out this task. I had thought that Jean had been rummaging out all her old stuff from over the years and 'doing them up'. It turns out that these poems are fresh and new. Some are absolute stonkers that leave you startled or breathless. This is far and away her best collection, and I am really excited about its publication. Discussion is still underway with family about which cause should benefit from the proceeds of any sales, the main thought being, that it will be something local and literary that was important to Jean. Lovely, special Jean. She gave me all sorts of hilarious life-advice. She sort of "stood at the back". You even see it in photos. I liked her politics. She absolutely detested class division, and having taught with Claris and Barbara in Ghana in a school which is nowadays staffed by Ghanaian women, was highly aware of our colonial past and would have been very engaged with Black Lives Matter. What more can I say. I'm squeezing your hand, Jean.

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