Ruth Bidgood Chosen Poems

       Ruth Bidgood: Chosen Poems was published in March 2024 by Shoestring Press, two years after Ruth died.. Even in her native Wales, she is less well-known than she deserves, as she was never a flashy or self-promoting poet. Her great subjects were the  ‘green desert’ of mid-Wales and the borders and the people who lived there, past and present:

Trudging through rain along the windy hill

to pull a snarled-up lamb, whistle the dogs

to their flat-out looping of the ewes,

he nursed the notion of Australia …..

                                                                       (‘Emu’s Egg’)

I knew Ruth for several years and have selected some sixty of her finest poems for this book, which includes a memoir of her life, written with the help of her family.

       She didn’t want to be described as a ‘woman poet’.  However I think this short and piercing poem, ‘Stateless’, is very definitely written from a woman’s perspective:

STATELESS

In some nissen-hut of my mind

I have a stacked bed-roll, wooden chair,

suitcase plastered with peeling labels,

and a cheap clock measuring lethargic days.

I have no papers.  Sometimes I am offered

forged ones, at too high a price.

Now you come, promising real

identity cards.  Forgive me if till they arrive

I think it too early to rejoice.