Full of period detail and social insight, ‘Catfight, Kingston Modern, 1963’ (a poem published in This Island City: Portsmouth in Poetry (Southsea: Spinnaker Press, 2010), p. 93) recalls an incident during Lynda O’Neill’s time at the secondary modern school in St Mary’s Road. It is reproduced here with the kind permission of the author.

Catfight, Kingston Modern, 1963

Outside the secondary modern gate
Persil nets twitch behind Edwardian windows.

A festering grievance reveals itself:
the acned boyfriend tempted away,
nickname too true to bear.

Now the grisly gavotte: a check branded,
an inky fitsful of backcombed hair, scratches,
sole marks on a white ankle sock

The protagonists blink tears,
hoick up grey pleated skirts,
shoulder Woolworths satchels, hatch excuses
for a hand-knitted sleeve stretched for ever.
Rubbing bruises, each claims victory.

Ten voyeurs dissolve into the darkening street,
remember the Headmistresses’s vowels
more suited to a country boarding school:
‘Gels who watch these unedifying spectacles
face certain detention.’

Other Portsmouth poems by O’Neill included in this map are ‘Our Street’, ‘The Hundred Mile Walk’, ‘Dinnertime’, and ‘Where Nan Lived’.

Lynda O’Neill was born and brought up in Portsmouth, where many of her poems are based. O’Neill had a happy working-class childhood with the freedom typical of the period. She failed the 11-plus and attended Kingston Modern School for Girls (now The Portsmouth Academy). During her last two years she learnt shorthand and typing, skills which were in high demand in the post-war period.

After the age of sixteen she worked for Portsmouth City Council and Portsmouth City Police, and when she moved to Winchester in 1973, she worked for Hampshire Fire Brigade. After having two children, she worked for Hampshire County Council, and her last job was with Winchester City Council, where she held the historic distinction of being made redundant as the last remaining member of its typing pool. These jobs provided O’Neill with interest, amusement, and several longstanding friendships.

In the eighties, a colleague suggested she try a Creative Writing course and O’Neill’s literary ambitions began. For some years she attended a local arts centre with three different tutors and discovered an aptitude for poetry. An abiding fascination with behaviour, community, and lifestyles means that O’Neill’s poetry abounds with fascinating and striking people. Her subjects include family life, childhood, school, and marriage, as well as her experiences of package holidays and not having had a swinging sixties. Her verse is rich, vivid, and precise, its backward glance affectionate but never nostalgic, forensic but never cynical.

Two of O’Neill’s poems were published in the anthology, The Ticking Crocodile (Blinking Eye, 2004), judged by Linda France, and five poems in the anthology This Island City: Portsmouth in Poetry (Spinnaker Press, 2010). Her work has been published in Poetry Nottingham International, Iota, The New Writer, and several times in South Poetry Magazine. She has acted as co-judge for the latter three times, is one of its regular reviewers, and was the profiled poet in South 42.

O’Neill won first prize in the Mere (Dorset) poetry competition in 2001 and Hampshire County Council’s ‘Words and Walks’ competition in 2009. She has been placed in competitions judged by illustrious poets Alison Chisholm, U. A. Fanthorpe, Selima Hill, Carole Satyamurti, Ian McMillan, and Matthew Sweeney.

O’Neill belongs to a network of older women poets, Second Light, and regularly attends their workshops and annual residential courses. She is also a founding member of the North Hampshire Stanza Group and a regular reader at Loose Muse, held at Winchester Library. She has for some years attended a monthly workshop of Hampshire poets who offer encouragement, constructive criticism, and a literary community.

If you have any comments, corrections, or suggestions in relation to the map please contact Dr Mark Frost, English Department, University of Portsmouth: mark.frost@port.ac.uk