The Foreword (continued)
The call of the sea pervades nearly all the poems and is often linked with the themes of beauty and nature, where descriptions of waves, light and colour recall paintings. An excellent example is:
The movement and rhythm remind one of the music of lapping and crushing waves, delighting eye and ear and evoking emotive response. This can be heard in the poems:
"I shall still love the sea" (p17)
"The Great Wave" (p40)
One can almost taste the salt, hear the seagulls, and feel the spray in:
"Can't catch me, Sea" (p18)
Love is closely linked with these seaside experiences, and Margaret Challis treats the theme of love with simple evocation of joyfulness, but also with separation and loss, seen mostly in the contrasting city poems.
"Laughter and Joy" (p6)
Some hint at the shortness of life:
Family love and heartache are treated in two poems here, the first where a son leaves his mother, and the other a sad experience of absent husband and father.
"'Bye then Son" (p31)
"The first time I saw him" (p21)
The city with its noise and dirt is contrasted mainly with the sea, but is linked with separation, loneliness, sickness and death. Between 1961 and 1964, Margaret Challis suffered a debilitating illness herself, but she was also a witness to weakness, pain, suffering and death in her work as a radiographer in London, Colchester and Clatterbridge (Birkenhead). London also meant separation from the love of her youth, later to become her husband, Terry Challis. In "Home", the rhythm of the train wheels beats in time with the heart's longing to return quickly to the fresh air of the seaside "Home".
Other city poems tell of the heartache and the hopeless task of the radiographer in the mid nineteen-sixties.
"Clatterbridge Radiography" (p14)
"Sonia" (p42)
"Julie" (p38)
A few poems are included for mere fun, linked with the lighter moments of her life in London. These describe the happy smile of a homeless refugee, Chinese friend, Lung Chung Yao, her slow but "different" three-wheel car, and the long, realistic, comical "conversations" in a fish and chip shop in South East London, where she worked in the evenings. Though amusing, these poems are all surrounded by material need.
"Such a happy fella'" (p24)
"Bond Minis" (p36)
"Fish and Chips, Sir?" (p27)
One very poignant poem is:
In a format of four five-line verses rhyming abcbb, and a shock three-line ending, we see a child's trust and innocence destroyed by the cruelty and injustice he sees around him. Cruelty, injustice and war are all themes treated by Margaret Challis, usually tied in some way with God's presence in an imperfect world. The threat of nuclear war and the development of nuclear weapons in the UK were never far from people's minds in the sixties, and the courage to speak up and to stand up for courage and peace was badly needed. Margaret Challis' courageous stand is reflected in her poems:
"Will England still be England?" (p10)
"How many times?" (p13)
Unfortunately, perhaps, for readers forty years on, the style is slightly dated with religious and classical terms like "e'er, forth, Thee," but there is a beautiful simplicity of rhythm and style which stand out for example in:
"The Great Wave" (p40)
"No pigeon I" (p41)
The use of senses, colour, imagery and alliteration, as well as clever rhyming and rhythm give these poems stylistic value. Examples of alliteration to imitate the gurgling, lapping, beating or crushing of the sea are found in: "brbrightness, breadth, brief" (p6) for short passing moments; "f fight, floating, flying " (p19) for the soft gentle wind in sea and air; "glglancing, glazed, glass"(p35) for the gurgling of the calm sea; "s ceaseless, ceased, surging, released ..." (p40) for the hissing water, and the onomatopeic "crushing and crashing" roar of the waves
Mostly the poems are simple, flowing straight from the heart.
Terry Challis and Margaret Munro were married in 1966, but tragedy followed a very happy year together, when she was killed on the road in August 1967 at the age of twenty-five. Terry is delighted to see her poems in print at last. This edition is being published by her brother, James Munro, in memory of her life and to honour the poems of her youth. The cover illustration is by Jean McCarthy, her sister. I am honoured as her twin sister to provide the explanatory foreword.
Mary Tordeur
