‘The Small Fields’ by Portsmouth poet, Pauline Hawkesworth, was published in This Island City: Portsmouth in Poetry(2010), and is included here with the kind permission of the poet. With the quiet power typical of Hawkesworth’s work, the poem presents a simple scene charged with energy and meaning – an encounter (of an unnamed individual) with wild flowers and plants that mysteriously expands in significance as the differences between the human and environmental subjects diminish. ‘The Small Fields’ is a poem about belonging within, and identifying with, nature, but above all love for nature.

’The Small Fields’

Agrimony in the small fields
the footpath tracks the ditch
bordering the creek;

delicate yellow spears among fat swishes of blue sea-grasses,
each blade the owner of rich sea-shanties,

each individual stem has a name,
tiny clusters of small florets
breathe open.

Pollen swathes wrap round your face
this place breathes,
you want to go home, but the spears

beguile you, the grasses chant songs.
You are intoxicated by the sway of wind
throughout these small fields.

I think it might be the sun on yellow petals
that blinds your eyes to the footpath;
was there a footpath along this edge?

Somehow the thrum of the nearby creek
echoes in the soles of your feet.
You cannot leave now;

you are tightly-tethered as the gypsies’ horses
nibbling sweet grasses.

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