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Levelling Up<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n by Jenny Mitchell, with image by Martin Gollan<\/em><\/p>\n They will not show this on the evening news \u2013 Spit flies out of his mouth, pollutes the air, The PM sees her then, mouths Bacchanal<\/em>, Our PM starts a waddling dance, nods his head, The PM joins in with this call, offers her ten Ten people and the PM break the law \u2013 a bacchanal Here’s the link to<\/em>\u00a0How Being a Girl Poet Saved My Life<\/a>,\u00a0an extract from an article by Jenny Mitchell, first commissioned and published by Poetry Wales<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n And you can hear Jenny reading a poem from her latest award-winning book, <\/em>Map of a Plantation<\/a>, in a short and very moving film here.<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Levelling Up by Jenny Mitchell, with image by Martin Gollan They will not show this on the evening news \u2013 our mother kneeling down at Number Ten…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":575,"featured_media":14677,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1660],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-14680","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-poetry-2"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14680","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/575"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=14680"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/14680\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/14677"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=14680"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=14680"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.gfdesign.co.uk\/culture\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=14680"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
our mother kneeling down at Number Ten \u2013
a place of work and routine bacchanals \u2013
to scrub red wine stains from the office carpet.
As vomit hits the wall above her head,
the PM wipes his chin, glass held in the air.<\/p>\n
with yet another garbled toast to A new<\/em>
day<\/em> \u2013 just like the old, him standing at the head,
to help his chosen people keep control. Ten
men and women dance around the carpet,
close to mother\u2019s arm, to cheer the bacchanal.<\/p>\n
shouting that A cleaner\u2019s head is full of air!<\/em>
He explains the word, feet spread on the carpet,
followed by You\u2019ve missed a spot, old girl<\/em>. New
crates of wine are plonked onto the table, ten
bottles still with dregs, music coming to a head.<\/p>\n
wine spilling from the glass to toast the bacchanal
as he sings out of tune The Winner Takes It All<\/em>, ten
times, louder-still as Abba fades into the fetid air.
Mother tries to crawl away but cat-calls are renewed
for her to polish shoes, kneeling on the carpet.<\/p>\n
pounds to lick his leather clean. He shouts The carpet<\/em>
has to be made new<\/em>, aims a kick close to her head,
falling in a heap, demanding to be helped. The air
is filled with threats they won\u2019t show on the news,
even when we know about the many bacchanals.<\/p>\n
for the law-makers, sore-headed the next day, air
rank with sick still on a carpet mother must renew.<\/p>\n