Dr Greta Sykes – A Song For Loess

Profile Dr Greta Sykes Live Encounters Poetry & Writing 8th Anniversary December 2017

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A Song For Loess, poems by Dr Greta Sykes

Poet, writer and artist Greta Sykes has published her work in many anthologies. She is a member of London Voices Poetry Group and also produces art work for them. Her new volume of poetry called ‘The Shipping News and Other Poems’ came out in August 2016. The German translation of her book ‘Under charred skies’ has now been published in Germany under the title ‘Unter verbranntem Himmel’ by Eulenspiegel Verlag. She is the chair of the Socialist History Society and has organised joint poetry events for them at the Poetry Café. She is a trained child psychologist and has taught at the Institute of Education, London University, where she is now an associate researcher. Her Particular focus is now on women’s emancipation and antiquity. Twitter: @g4gaia.      Facebook.com/greta.sykes.      German Wikipedia: Greta Sykes.


A song to Loess

In the ‘little Brockhaus’ encyclopaedia
On the page with Lorca and Lorelei
Stands the word loess,
The yellowish fine beads of silicate,
lime and clay.

It lies here in Berlin, in Hamburg,
The north German plane,
Deeply anchored into the warm earth
In vertical walls of geology
For aeons of time,
Sifted and shifted into the fabric
Of  the earth’s mantle
Since ice ages reigned,
Blown by the freezing winds.

For so many years I have wandered
On the grounded, thin and rich
yellow sands made of loess
From the icy age of the planet,
It has become loess in my heart.

Sand of Loess in my childhood shoes,
Sand on my wanderer’s clothes
After a night of love
On the beach by the shore,
Sand of Loess in my pockets, discovered
Years later, a trace of memory
Like a wound of tears in my eyes.

Sand of memories,
Sand  of things remembered,
Things understood,
Sand of my soul, my belonging.


Fathomless sky

Fathomless sky – perhaps heaven-
Below tiny humans
And other creatures with a will to live,
Some caught in storms
While fishes watch.
Fathomless sky
With a lust for disturbance, turbulence
Circulation of winds and rain
From overheating oceans,
Perhaps hell.
Fathomless sky,
Perhaps heaven,
If you believe nature’s geometry,
Her symmetry, logic and reasoning.


© Dr Greta Sykes