Christine Bousfield was born in Bradford in 1948. She spent many years researching and teaching in Higher Education where she specialised in Literature, Comparative Arts, Psychoanalysis and Creative Writing, often emphasising performance. She has many poetry publications in well-known magazines and anthologies and regularly runs poetry workshops particularly in health contexts.
Her chief interests have always been poetry and music. Her poetry often borders on song and she runs a poetry jazz group, Nightdiver, who perform her poetry, and develop its musical implications, in festivals, events and on CD. She is now (early) retired and working on her poetry collection Between Stones.
Towpath
Our Sunday constitutional along the banks
of the Leeds-Liverpool canal,
the early autumn sun dropping fast,
leaves matted onthe grass at the foot
of Saltaire Unitarian. There's no-one left
on the tow path, just John and me
and our Monday anxieties, tramping past
Hirst Locks, the bridge that crushed two children
the mocking moorhens, weeds like hair on mud
drained for the new road, ducks trailing
triangular wires zed-bending
past the single iron bedstead
capsized in the inky water.
Wallpaper
When we scraped the seven layers
behind the radiator, green, pink and white took turns
from Laura Ashley print to hothouse rhodedendrons,
Sanderson stripes, dots, checks, subtle or chintzy,
falling into ice, ice blue.
I remember they were strangers,
their cold rooms forensic clean,
white ceiling globes fending off crisis,
twin beds turned down like crisp bandages
on hidden wounds;
their colours kept outside with purple clematis,
peonies, dark ivy at the window,
clamouring like unforgiving children.