The Shrew

It isn’t the one performance I’ve seen,
open air, gender-swapped, abridged,
that comes back to me
as I read it for the first time
in twenty-one years,
well as I remember that,
at Fountains Abbey, the day after
my final exam. Sly was Scottish,
they messed up the ending,
Bianca disappeared as the actress
was playing Petruchio as well.

Nor is it Burton and Taylor,
though I can just picture them now.

Katherina’s voice for me
will always be that of Margaret Leighton
on the Harper Collins recording
I had on two white cassettes
and wish now I had kept,
or got it on CD instead.

Go get thee gone,
thou false deluding slave
was the only line I thought I remembered,
as it’s printed on a postcard
I use as a bookmark
in my book of Brontë poems.

It turns out there are hardly
any lines I have forgotten.

Peter J Donnelly

Eighteen Lines that mention the Eighteenth

As I re-read Shakespeare’s sonnets
I’m reminded I last read them
nine years ago in a B&B in Bristol.
Was it the hardback book itself
that made it come back to me?
A free gift with the Daily Express
though given to me for my birthday, I think.
I don’t know why I read them then
or how I remember I did
as I didn’t take in a word except
‘Shall I compare thee to a summer’s day?’
though I can see the room, more like a bedsit,
where I drunk Scotch and water from a tooth mug –
not too much, as I recall the next morning.
Tea and toast at the dressing table,
coffee in the docklands,
finding Christmas Steps
like finding hidden treasure.

Peter J Donnelly

Bio and Links

Peter J Donnelly
lives in York where he works as a hospital secretary. He has degrees in English Literature and Creative Writing from Lampeter University. He has been published in various magazines and anthologies including Obsessed With Pipework, Dreich, Atrium, Southlight, One Hand Clapping, High Window, Black Nore Review, Ink Sweat and Tears and Fragmented Voices. He came second in the Ripon Poetry Festival competition and the Buzzwords open poetry competition. His first chapbook ‘The Second of August’ has recently been published by Alien Buddha Press.