Lynda O’Neill’s ‘Dinnertime’, a vibrant evocation of the noise and busyness of Portsmouth dockyards in the post-war era was published in This Island City: Portsmouth in Poetry (Southsea: Spinnaker Press, 2010), p.170. Its vivid and appropriate use of piscine imagery and focus on eating is at the heart of its power. Although it centres on the dockyards and Queen Street, it makes reference to a host of other locations in the city, including a number of districts and Commercial Road

The first stanza refers to mudlarks, those who dive or search for coins and other valuables in the mud of the harbour. John Sedden’s 2005 novel Mudlark focuses on two young Pompey mudlarks in 1914.

The poem is reproduced her with the kind permission of the author.

Dinnertime

The klaxon sounds at noon
and they stream in two shoals,
eighteen inches apart on sit-up-and-beg-Raleighs
through the Dockyard Gates into Queen Street
or past the Keppel’s Head, the tattoo parlour.
They see a dozen gap-toothed Mudlarks
up to their grey flannel shorts in sludge,
scrabbling for coppers, the gleam of a sixpence.

Peaked caps over short-back-and-sides,
Wide trousers cycle-clipped to their ankles,
Their grubby macs flap in the Solent wind.

Like salmon, they push upstream to
Fratton or Southsea, the far reaches of Copnor,
glad not to be unsnapping an Oxo tin of
cheese and Branston sarnies like their mates from
Hilsea or Paulsgrove, too far to cycle home.

Stomachs gnaw on a memory of the breakfast fry-up;
they salivate for Shepherd’s Pie
or yesterday’s beef, cold today with Piccalilli,
bubble and squeak fried in dripping,
then apple crumble and Birds custard,
a mug of Co-op Ninety-nine.

They swerve in formation onto Commercial Road,
fuelled by the waft of steak and kidney from doorways.
These plumbers, coppersmiths, chippies and sparks
pedal inexorably towards a pension
after the apprenticeship Dad said
would set them up for life.

Other Portsmouth poems by O’Neill included in this map are ‘Our Street’, ‘The Hundred Mile Walk’, ‘Catfight, Kingston Modern’, 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