‘Dirty Laundry’ deals with nostalgia, memory, and the passage of time, but if I were to sum it up in one word, I’d say – hiraeth, a word any Welsh expat knows well.
Dirty Laundry
My Nana knew Shirley Bassey
She’d come into the shop where Nan worked
To buy sliced ham
And talk about the rugby
Or the filthy Welsh weather
Like all the other customers
We’d moved to Porthcawl when I was five
And each Sunday my Nana would visit
Regaling my Mam about the goings on in Tiger Bay
To my mind it sounded as magical as Narnia
Filled with bugs the size of sospan lids
And heat hazes that larded your skin
I imagined running into the green sea
And hearing in the whispering of the waves
Tales of the sadness of mermaids
And the secrets of pirates
Whose bones season the waters of Wales
Like ham hocks in cawl
I got older and on a Sunday we’d visit Nana
Her body had given up the ghost
But her mind was still as sharp as the wind
If the dirty air had blocked the sun
And freckled our faces with smut
Mam would tell her, ‘Can’t hang the wash today’
Older still I left for a land without washing lines
A place where the sea is soft and flat
And the only secrets are mine
Nana is long gone but Shirley is a Dame at 87
And I know she’d have loved that
If I close my eyes I imagine them chopsing
And the sound is like a wave washing away the dark
This poem has a lovely style of form, with each stanza measuring exactly six lines until the final stanza, which is seven lines. What was the inspiration behind this style?
I wrote ‘Dirty Laundry’ after I saw a submission call in Poetry Wales for poems about Tiger Bay. I was immediately reminded of my Nana, who insisted she’d known Shirley Bassey, Tiger Bay’s most famous resident. My father, a Cardiff transplant from Llanharan, always joked that everyone who lived in Cardiff boasted about knowing Shirley, and Nana, my mother’s grandmother, would get all huffy and regale us with stories about when Shirley came into the shop where she worked.
Regarding the line count in each stanza, it was a deliberate choice to have six lines to affect how the poem looks on the page and hopefully create an ebb and flow a bit like laundry billowing on a line. However, the lines vary in length, which I hope contributes to a rhythm that is more conversational in tone. In the first four stanzas, the line breaks often occur at natural pauses, as I wanted to emphasize the ‘storytelling’ nature of the poem. It would be how I would tell someone about my memories of my Nana. The last stanza is more about self-reflection and how my upbringing is integral to my identity.
There are so many colloquial words and phrases throughout this piece that feel distinctly Welsh, so much so that the accent jumps off the page. My favourite example in this piece being that of ‘sospan lids’. What was the selection process like for these words and, subsequently, deciding on how exactly to spell them?
To be honest, these words are words I still use! My children are always teasing me about how I say ‘saucepan’ or ‘tooth’ the ‘Welsh way.’ I’ve spent so much of my life away from Wales – I moved to London in 1987 and was very lucky to live in Hong Kong and Singapore before settling in Connecticut in the US. I’m still surprised if someone asks me if I’m Welsh once they’ve heard me speak, as I think I’ve lost my accent. In ‘Dirty Laundry,’ I chose colloquial language for authenticity and to anchor the poem in a specific time and place. With ‘sospan’ in particular, I love how it sounds in Welsh, but it is also so similar to the English word that any reader would understand the reference, especially when paired with lid.
This piece reads like a Eulogy, not only for your Nana, but also for Wales as a whole, and the love and melancholy of where you grew up. Now that you’re living in America, what are some of the things you miss the most about Wales?
Thank you for saying that. As I mentioned previously, I left Wales in the late eighties, although I visited my family frequently. Sadly, I have no family left in Wales, so I last visited about a decade ago. Then, last year, a close friend invited me to her son’s wedding in Bridgend. I was on the phone trying to make a hair appointment for the morning of the wedding, and the receptionist called me ‘lovely’ about three times during the conversation. My son, who was in the room, noticed I was crying and asked me why. When I told him it was because the lady on the phone was calling me ‘lovely’, you can imagine his reaction. I miss many things about Wales -the beauty of the place, the wild coast where I grew up, and a decent cup of tea (although now I can order PG Tips on Amazon, it’s no longer such a problem). Still, when I arrived in Wales for the wedding, I realized the thing I had missed most was being surrounded by people who sounded like me.
Living away all these years has made me reflect on my Welshness, how it shaped my thinking, my love of language, and my politics.
‘Dirty Laundry’ deals with nostalgia, memory, and the passage of time, but if I were to sum it up in one word, I’d say – hiraeth, a word any Welsh expat knows well.
Adele Evershed
Adele Evershed (she/her) is a Welsh writer. Some of the places her work has been published include Grey Sparrow Journal, Anti Heroin Chic, Gyroscope, and Janus Lit. She has two poetry collections, Turbulence in Small Spaces (Finishing Line Press) and The Brink of Silence (Bottlecap Press). Adele has published a novella in flash, Wannabe (Alien Buddha Press) and a short story collection; Suffer/Rage (Dark Myth Publications).
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