3rd Prize – Barbara Klempka   (read poem)

Burling and Mending
(to help keep alive a textile skill memory)

Every day, Jean completes a marathon. seated in a factory.  Miles
of breast stroke in a worsted sea, as she checks for faults in the material

with the softness of her palms and fingertips – as if tracing Braille.
Alternated with flat hand jives, in time to the clanging weaving machines,

she marks the snags in the fifty four yard long woollen piece.
She notches the errors with beige, triangular, tailor’s chalk.

embossed with the name Hancock and two clasped hands, to save time
locating it later, so she can mend and finish off with hand sewing.

Knots and slubs, though, are unloosened and undone at once,
like a ‘Whoops, sorry’ instant apology for a mistake.  Under blinding overhead lights,

her sharp, pointed tweezers jab between tensed thumb and finger
to pluck at yarn and tease, leaving flaws repaired, in the shuttled threads.

Burling done, she pulls the material back, rowing style, to mend it, by picking up
threadbare sections on blunt stainless steel  needles, with matched

wool pulled from the end section.
the cold thimble protects her sweaty green dimpled finger,

looking as though it has been soaking in hot water.
The fault in the material is now invisible and smooth like the ocean after a storm.

She repeats the warping and wefting like noughts and crosses lines
overlapping breakage and other faults to produce quality rolls or pieces of 100%

pur wool, made in Yorkshire, until her mending is checked by the passer.
The long piece of cloth is folded to a pile, looking like a flat-pack of men’s grey business suits.