Jane Alyson Clarke

I’m very pleased to say that my poem “Combing” is in issue 15 of aswirl. You can buy issue 15 here and visit aswirl’s home page here. While the print version is handmade, digital copies are also available.

The poem itself was inspired by a few months spent living in the Cotswolds.

Because of the crop’s importance to ye olde English wool trade, there is teasel scattered throughout the area, along paths and riverbanks and in the thin tangles between farmed fields. I won’t wax too poetic about the situation because I basically just said to myself, “What the hell is this stuff doing everywhere?” and googled it.

I discovered that teasel was used to raise the nap on damp woollen cloth after it had gone through the fulling process. In other words, the pre-stomped or mechanically-hammered wool would be agitated with teasels to make it softer, and then the cloth trimmed to produce a finer finish.

So there you go: good grazing land; waterways; sheep; wool; teasel; poem.

The autumn edition of aswirl is out now.