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Beata
Duncan 1921 - 2015
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A
posthumous collection of Beata Duncan's poems, Berlin
Blues,
was
published in 2017 by Green
Bottle Press.
"a reverie for the Berlin of the 1920s, the city of her birth. With deceptive
simplicity she recreates her extraordinary home life and the dynamic cultural
and political world of the Weimar decade before her emigration to England
in 1934.'
The collection has had an enthusiastic response
from those who knew her published work,
with several successful public performances and readings by her family."
Stephen
Duncan
Christopher Reid:
"an inspired idea....to show her to the world
through poems about those distant Berlin days"
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previously published in The
New Statesman,
in collection, Apple Harvest,
2000
Hearing Eye, ISBN 1-870841-72-7
The Lovely Butcheress
Dear Cath, I am sitting
by the fire
with
my coat on,
drinking
tea out of your mug;
just
back from the Arts Centre and
'The
Spirit of Berlin in the Twenties'.
You
said Richard Ziegler
would
be worth a visit.
He
painted a lot of women
with
high cheekbones and big velvet eyes;
housewives
with low hats and fur collars
(like
that photo of gran
teaching
mum to ride a bike),
prostitutes
in scanty clothes.
The
one that really got to me
is
called 'Die Schoene Metzgerin' —
The
lovely butcheress:
a
pantry with the carcass of a boar
and
a stout young woman,
naked
except for stockings and shoes,
belly
touching the pig's.
Her
features are very fine:
straight
nose, full lips, long lashes.
She
is raising the penis from dead entrails
and
touching it with the tip of a knife,
a
look of utter contentment on her face —
or
'satisfaction' would be the better word.
The
colours are mostly warm:
pink
for the two bodies,
rich
brown stockings and cottage loaf hair;
dabs
of red for her mouth
and
the pig's clotted blood.
But
her heels are black and square
on
checkered floor tiles,
the
grey hooks through his trotters
tone
in with her gleaming knife.
What
is he saying in that painting?
I
went back again and again—
what,
for God's sake,
does
that say about me?
The
gallery was almost empty,
only
an old man looking at the women,
and
I didn't meet anyone
on
my way home.
I
bought a catalogue for you —
please
come back soon!
Beata Duncan
Note:
'The Spirit of Berlin in the Twenties' was an exhibition
of Richard Ziegler's work at the Camden Arts Centre. The
painting 'Die Schoene Metzgerin' is at the V&A.
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