The Remedies ~ Katharine Towers

You might remember that I had a moment of great fortune in one of the town's charity shops backalong. Someone had donated their entire collection of poetry books and I might have been the first in the door, who knows, but I scooped up a few gems for 50p each, poets I'd always meant to explore, along with a few new names that had drifted onto my radar.

I started my reading of this bounty with The Remedies by Katharine Towers and it resonated with me from the first page and the first lines of the first poem The Roses

Because my father will not stand again
beneath these swags of Himalayan Musk
nor  stare for hours to see which stems are safe

and which need tying back...

When the Tinker first moved in with us here, Susan Hill, who had published his memoir, bought us both a rose to celebrate the moment. It was a lovely thought and my dad spent several days deciding which one he would like. He eventually chose Highgrove for its royal connotations, and the fact that the Duke of Edinburgh had written the introduction for his book, something of which he was inordinately proud. Highgrove and my choice Lady Sylvia, duly arrived and were planted with much ceremony and mychorizzal powder to help the roots. Highgrove launched itself up the wall at Olympian speed, (Lady Sylvia was much more sedate) but my dad would spend hours coaxing it along, tying in the right direction and it flourished. A profusion of deep red flowers year on year since, and every time I go to tidy up I find a little piece of the wire he used.

Isn't this one of the great gifts of poetry, its congruence with experience.

From the title alone there is enough guidance for what may be to come. Remedies with their connotations of healing, solution and resolution, ways of making better and when I checked official definitions they added to the meaning with words like treatment and cure, redress for a wrong and recovery of a right.

There is a method and an order to the poems, one handing over the baton to the next. So Beautiful it Must be True explores the idea of a single note played perfectly, the next poem Tinnitus  when those notes are not quite so perfect...

'If only it were church bells
or the early morning chanting 
of choir boys in Latin.

You could even learn to love
your own inner sea -
swishing through the ossicles,

but not this round-the-clock
back-chat of an irritated nerve
that doesn't know it's time to shut up.

Perhaps the one connection that hadn't occurred to me was that of the Bach Flower Remedies.

I'll admit to buying the odd bottle of Rescue Remedy in the past, and thinking I maybe needed more than the standard few drops as I headed into court to give evidence in a child protection case, but beyond that I knew nothing about them so researching this has been fascinating.

Based on remedies created by Dr Bach in the 1930s, and apparently consisting of 50:50 water and brandy (50-80 proof) whilst the dilution means only a single molecule of the flower essence may remain. It is argued by many that the efficacy is purely that of a placebo, together with the benefits of a moment or two of calming introspection on an emotional state, and EU law changed the classification of the remedies to one of 'nutritional supplement'  thus ending medicinal claims, but many people know and believe differently and I wouldn't dream of denying that belief. If it helps, use it.

Katharine Towers explores each flower remedy... Aspen,Water Violet, Early Gentian, Willow, Cherry Plum and several more via the voice of the plant itself and the condition attributed to its efficacy.

Here's Hornbeam - a remedy for apathy

A rumbling in the bones
but I'm too tired for spring.
All winter I have been
as good as dead...

Treating like with like came to mind as human foibles are imposed on the plants, mental torture, pride, self-pity, hatred, jealousy, aimlessness, impatience, and the effect created by Katharine Towers is both haunting and salutary in itself; a chance to step back and ponder the human condition.

As the collection moves towards it conclusion there is Bluebells

'In the way that we cannot be other
than ourselves even in the deep of winter
these woods where bluebells grow

are always bluebell woods...

and I had to agree...our woods only have one name..

And a final poem 'for example' ,with its simple antidote to a fear of dying, somehow rounds off the collection quietly, thoughtfully and perfectly.

What a brilliant and unexpected find The Remedies has been, and reading it again now to write this post I am reminded of poetry as the greatest gift that keeps on giving.

If there is one sadness, and it's a great and miserable one, it is that this very same shop suffered a catastrophic flood a few months ago and the entire stock, including many more poetry books, a superb fiction section along with a fantastic collection of vinyl records, was lost, so I'm very relieved I gave my selection a  home when I did.

If you know The Remedies, or Katharine Towers' poetry I would love to know your thoughts...

Also news of any more good poetry collections that have caught your attention lately...

And Flower Remedies, what's your verdict...