Harriet Truscott

Life goes on three storeys below my flat, outside San Bartolomeo’s Church

 rattle chatter granite clatter
natter granite tattle chatter
traqueteo cotorreo
granny natter cleaner clatter
cotorreo traqueteo
rattleteo chatterreo

<The beggar woman arrives to stand a punctual shift of silence, hand outstretched>

 chatter clatter granite rattle
traqueteo charloteo
traqueteo tracking rattle
charloteo chatting natter
pitter patter los pasitos
pigeon flutter pajaritos

 <And now the drunk comes, holding a plastic box of lukewarm spaghetti, to blame the angels in hoarse shouts>

clatter patter pigeon rattle
traqueteo charloteo
tattered natter granite clatter
granny tracking pidgin chatter
los pasitos pajaritos
parlateo cotorreo

<A hearse manoeuvres through the narrow street.>

charloteo parlateo
traque granny racket teo 
coto granite patter rreo
rrattleteo clatterreo
pajaritos y pasitos 
endless racket will they pack it in

.

Harriet had this to say about her poem:

 This piece grew out of a poetry workshop on Soundscapes with Aoife Lyall, and her challenge to portray a place and its atmosphere entirely through sounds. I’ve never lived anywhere quite as distinctively noise-filled as a flat in the heart of the old town in Pontevedra, Spain, so that seemed the obvious location to explore. This poem forms part of a book-length work in progress, The Law of Memory, exploring my uneasy return to my grandmother’s region of Galicia, a place that she left during the Spanish Civil War