‘Since The New Flats’ by Portsmouth poet, Pauline Hawkesworth is included on the Portsmouth Literary Map with the kind permission of the author. Its central location is Southdown View, flats built to replace the bus depot on the corner of Military Road and London Road in northern Portsmouth. This poem intersects in subject matter with ‘Confusion’ and ‘Hilsea Southdown Bus Depot – a hiccup’, which can be found adjacent on the map. While those two poems focus on the collisions of past and present in the process of initial construction at the site, ‘Since The New Flats’ turn to another kind of collision. This is in one sense direct and physical – the impact of winds on the tall flats – but in another it is more subtly environmental, figuring the buildings as a disturbing and unwelcome agent in the landscape, disrupting the previously free movement of the winds. All of this is powerfully rendered via close attention to the changing ‘song’ or voice of the winds, figured as a shift from youth to adulthood.
’Since The New Flats’
Since the new flats were built
the song of the winds has changed
from teenager to adult.
Westerlies flying over Portsea Creek,
slam into the new flats windows,
squeeze as slips of paper onto kitchen tables,
write chaotic names – Hurricane Harry,
Tornado Chaser, Red Reggie.
These cross-country racers,
speed maniacs, high divers,
ask occupants who are you?
Through swaying sycamores and ash trees,
a sophisticated version arrives in our garden
broken into teasing flurries -
man winds, controlled, talking
in an evocatively low pitch,
lift my hair in friendly play.
Pauline Hawkesworth (b. 1943) was born in Portsmouth and lived with her parents and sister Marian in the corner shop of her grandmother in Laburnum Grove (where another Portsmouth author, Olivia Manning, also lived). The family moved to the suburb of Drayton in 1954. She left school at fifteen and worked as a telephonist for estate agents Young and White. She joined the WRNR and was stationed in the underground complex at Fort Southwick. Pauline married architect Rex Hawkesworth in 1961 and has two daughters Ruth and Lee.
Her first book, Dust and Dew (1969) was published by Mitre Press and reached universities both in the UK and USA. A short film about it was made by BBC South at the time. Her first published poem was in Script in 1971. Pauline has three further collections, from open competitions. These are Developing Green Films (1998, from the Redbeck Competition, judges Geoffrey Holloway and Patricia Pogson); Bracken Women in Lime Trees (2009), one of three winners for publication in book form by Indigo Dreams; and Life-Savers on All Sides (2017) Her poems are of place and the natural world, they inhabit the ‘twilight zone’, ‘a world beyond our senses’, and ‘transfigure the ordinary’. She has won and been placed in many competitions and has poems in many anthologies, her favourite being The Spirit of Wilfred Owen (2002). Hawkesworth also produced a booklet of poems entitled Marshland Ballad. In 2021, she won the Southport Writers’ Circle Open Poetry Competition. Pauline is President of Portsmouth Poetry Society.
Pauline broke the Portsmouth Schools 100 yards record as a junior, and was an active member of Portsmouth Atalanta Athletic Club. She was a Coach, Track and Field Judge, and administrator for many years. With her husband Rex, as lead coach, their athletes won over thirty Hampshire County titles, and two girls represented England at 400m. They have coached for over fifty years.
Pauline is secretary to Rex and his architectural practice, a member of St. Francis Church, has an allotment, and is extremely fond of dogs.
If you have any comments, queries, or suggestions about any of the map entries, please contact the Map Director, Mark Frost: mark.frost@port.ac.uk