I listened to a discussion recently about family and poetry, and how family is depicted in its many different guises in poetry. No two families are alike, especially these days. There are so many units that come under the term ‘family’, conventional, nuclear, one parent, same-sex, happy, unhappy, and many more. A lot has been written over the years about family, but one of the quotes I like is from Leo Tolstoy. In his opening line of Anna Karenina, he says, “ Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.”

Below are a few of the poems I heard in the discussion, and some of my own personal favorite too. Some are happy, some funny, some very sad, such is the nature of ‘family’.

GENETICS  by Sinead Morrissey.

My father’s in my fingers, but my mother’s in my palms.
I lift them up and look at them with pleasure –
I know my parents made me by my hands.They may have been repelled to separate lands,
to separate hemispheres, may sleep with other lovers,
but in me they touch where fingers link to palms.With nothing left of their togetherness but friends
who quarry for their image by a river,
at least I know their marriage by my hands.I shape a chapel where a steeple stands.
And when I turn it over,
my father’s by my fingers, my mother’s by my palms
Demure before a priest reciting psalms.
My body is their marriage register.
I re-enact their wedding with my hands.So take me with you, take up the skin’s demands
for mirroring in bodies of the future.
I’ll bequeath my fingers, if you bequeath your palms.
We know our parents make us by our hands.

I really like this next poem!

Marks by Linda Paston

My husband gives me an A
for last night’s supper,
an incomplete for my ironing,
a B plus in bed.
My son says I am average,
an average mother, but if
I put my mind to it
I could improve.
My daughter believes
in Pass/Fail and tells me
I pass. Wait ’til they learn
I’m dropping out.

THE PATTERN by Paula Meehan.

Little has come down to me of hers,
a sewing machine, a wedding band,
a clutch of photos, the sting of her hand
across my face in one of our wars

when we had grown bitter and apart.
Some say that’s the fate of the eldest daughter.
I wish now she’d lasted till after
I’d grown up. We might have made a new start

as women without tags like “mother, wife,
sister, daughter,” taken our chance from there.
At forty-two she headed for god knows where.
I’ve never gone back to visit her grave.

First she’d scrub the floor with Sunlight soap,
an armreach at a time. When her knees grew sore
she’d break for a cup of tea, then start again
at the door with lavender polish. The smell
would percolate back through the flat to us,
her brood banished to the bedroom.

As she buffed the wax to a high shine
did she catch her own face coming clear?
Did her mirror tell what mine tells me?
I have her shrug and go in
knowing history has brought her to her knees.

She’d call us in and let us skate around
in our socks. We’d grow solemn as plants
in an intricate orbit about her.

She bending over crimson cloth,
the younger kids are long in bed.
Late summer, cold enough for a fire,
she works by fading light
to remake an old dress for me.
It’s first day back at school tomorrow.

“Pure lambswool – Plenty of wear in it yet.
You know I wore this when I went out with your Da.
I was supposed to be down in a friend’s house,
your Granda caught us at the corner.
He dragged me in by the hair – it was long as yours then -
in front of the whole street.
He called your Da every name under the sun,
cornerboy, lout; I needn’t tell you
what he called me. He shoved my whole head
under the kitchen tap, took a scrubbing brush
and carbolic soap and in ice-cold water he scrubbed
every spick of lipstick and mascara off my face.
Christ but he was a right tyrant, your Granda.
It’ll be over my dead body anyone harms a hair of your head.”

She must have stayed up half the night
to finish the dress. I found it airing at the fire,
three new copybooks on the table and a bright
bronze nib, St. Christopher strung on a silver wire,

as if I were embarking on a perilous journey
to uncharted realms. I wore that dress
with little grace. To me it spelt poverty,
the stigma of the second hand. I grew enough to pass

it on by Christmas to the next in line. I was sizing
up the world beyond our flat patch by patch
daily after school, and fitting each surprising
city street to city square to diamond. I’d watch

the Liffey for hours pulsing to the sea
and the coming and going of ships,
certain that one day it would carry me
to Zanzibar, Bombay, the Land of the Ethiops.

There’s a photo of her taken in the Phoenix Park
alone on a bench surrounded by roses
as if she had been born to formal gardens.
She stares out as if unaware
that any human hand held the camera, wrapped
entirely in her own shadow, the world beyond her
already a dream, already lost. She’s
eight months pregnant. Her last child.

Her steel needles sparked and clacked,
the only other sound a settling coal
or her sporadic mutter
at a hard place in the pattern.
She favored sensible shades:
Moss Green, Mustard, Beige.

I dreamt a robe of a color
so pure it became a word.

Sometimes I’d have to kneel
an hour before her by the fire,
a skein around my outstretched hands,
while she rolled wool into balls.
If I swam like a kite too high
amongst the shadows on the ceiling
or flew like a fish in the pools
of pulsing light, she’d reel me firmly
home, she’d land me at her knees. Tongues of flame in her dark eye
she’d say, “One of these days I must
teach you to follow a pattern.”

– Paula Meehan, born 1955 Dublin

From Clearences by Seamus Heaney.

When all the others were away at Mass
I was all hers as we peeled potatoes.
They broke the silence, let fall one by one
Like solder weeping off the soldering iron:
Cold comforts set between us, things to share
Gleaming in a bucket of clean water.
And again let fall. Little pleasant splashes
From each other’s work would bring us to our senses.

So while the parish priest at her bedside
Went hammer and tongs at the prayers for the dying
And some were responding and some crying
I remembered her head bent towards my head,
Her breath in mine, our fluent dipping knives–
Never closer the whole rest of our lives.

Madman, by Paul Durcan.

“There’s a mad man on every street, unfortunately the mad man on our street was my father.

HAPPINESS by Carl Sandburg.

I ASKED the professors who teach the meaning of life to tell
me what is happiness.
And I went to famous executives who boss the work of
thousands of men.
They all shook their heads and gave me a smile as though
I was trying to fool with them
And then one Sunday afternoon I wandered out along
the Desplaines river
And I saw a crowd of Hungarians under the trees with
their women and children and a keg of beer and an
accordion.

A ballad of Home  by Eavan Boland.

How we kissed
In our half built house
It was slightly timbered,
A bit bricked, on stilts

and we were newly married.
We drove out at dusk
and picked our way to safety
through flint and grit and brick.

Like water through a porthole,
the sky poured in.
We sat on one step
making estimations

And hugged until the watchman
called and cursed and swung
his waterproof torch
Into our calculations.

Ten years on:
you wouldn’t find now
an inch of spare ground.
Children in their cots,

books, a cat, plants
Strain the walls patience
and the last ounce of space.
And still every night

It all seems so sound.
But love why wouldn’t it?
This house was built on our embrace
and there are worse foundations.

Red Roses By Anne Sexton.
Tommy is three and when he’s bad
his mother dances with him.
She puts on the record,
“Red Roses for a Blue Lady”
and throws him across the room.
Mind you,
she never laid a hand on him.
He gets red roses in different places,
the head, that time he was as sleepy as a river,
the back, that time he was a broken scarecrow,
the arm like a diamond had bitten it,
the leg, twisted like a licorice stick,
all the dance they did together,
Blue Lady and Tommy.
You fell, she said, just remember you fell.
I fell, is all he told the doctors
in the big hospital. A nice lady came
and asked him questions but because
he didn’t want to be sent away he said, I fell.
He never said anything else although he could talk fine.
He never told about the music
or how she’d sing and shout
holding him up and throwing him.

He pretends he is her ball.
He tries to fold up and bounce
but he squashes like fruit.
For he loves Blue Lady and the spots
of red roses he gives her

Poem by Simon Armitage.

And if it snowed and snow covered the drive
he took a spade and tossed it to one side.
And always tucked his daughter up at night
And slippered her the one time that she lied.
And every week he tipped up half his wage.
And what he didn’t spend each week he saved.
And praised his wife for every meal she made.
And once, for laughing, punched her in the face.

And for his mum he hired a private nurse.
And every Sunday taxied her to church.
And he blubbed when she went from bad to worse.
And twice he lifted ten quid from her purse.

Here’s how they rated him when they looked back:
sometimes he did this, sometimes he did that.