‘Wool and Iron’

Horia Pop is a French and Romanian artist. He writes and shoots pictures and movies. His writings and photos have been published in America. His next stage is to find a producer to help him finance his road-movie script.

Wool and Iron

It starts with the Rough Fell and Lonk sheep who nose and tug at the thin soil

of the Colne Valley and finishes at the nap-raised slice of the croppers’ shears.

First, the fleece is delivered to the weaver’s cottage, where crushed onion skins,

red cabbage, and nettles dye it into shades between dry earth and shallow sky.

Wool is a galaxy of invisible systems, threads, clumps and connections

lapping and overlapping in the fuzzy pin pricks of infinite give and take.

Children pick and combe the mess, working the fabric between sets of dark teeth

and straightening the sticky chaos, then, in the wide light of bedroom windows, 

yarn is whispered from the fleece by the fingers of veteran spinners working 

the treadles until a beginning and an end are calmed from the soft storm of fibers.

Feed and tension. A nest of wool is pulled into rows of coloured spindles.

Feet answer hands in the turn of the spinning wheel, limbs in silky rhythm.

Then it happens, something from nothing as warp and weft criss cross into cloth.

The hand loom speaks a hundred strung threads fixing a warm solidity

its tongue the flying shuttle sent back and forth, under and over, lap and weave

until material progresses at a rate of millimeters, surface and strength tied

into an expanding texture, pattern born from the deep time of dark hills

and the blues, greens and grays that wrap the light on the valley edges.

This is the cottage industry of cotton and wool, texture teased from air

and tricked into existence by the practiced hands of the West Riding.

Next the gentle smash of the fulling mill, where a water wheel hammers

wooden blocks at the cloth and it shrinks into a felt as thick as sunflowers.

Then to the tenterfield where it’s hung on hooks and stretched back to life

in the thousand shades of cloud that shift dawn to noon to dusk to black. 

And now to the croppers, who wrap a pair of iron shears around their waists

and muscle cloth to perfection without touching it. They persuade it smooth

by raising the nap, drawing out the hairs of threads with the prayer of a thistle

and then, heavy and exact, sweeping the blades low and close as if shaving

an earthy God with a razor of iron and bicep and complete focus.

It’s the croppers’ cut which prunes warm life from upland winds.

Sam Kemp is a poet and lecturer at Northeastern University London. He teaches creative writing to students from a range of disciplines and leads various modules on poetic craft and technique. He hosts the Radical Writing Podcast and is interested in psychogeography, nostalgia and motorcycle cafes. You can find his work in the Mechanics Institute Review, ANMLY, and Streetcake, and his chapbook, Maps to Arkham, is available with Nat1 Press. www.samkempoetry.com