RACHEL PANTECHNICON

Poet, 43, with a veritable cornucopia of verses, stories and observations. Specialises in motivational poems for cats and for people.

Rachel is many things:
the best-dressed woman on the poetry circuit; the woman who won the 2004 Glastonbury Festival Poetry Slam, although she only entered it for the experience
(and was perhaps the only person on site wearing court-shoes); and the author of the well-known story-books about Cheesegrater Leg-Iron Lion.

In short, a most peculiar talent.
 
"Technicolour suburban entertainment" - John Hegley
 
"I was weeing myself" - Sue Perkins
 
“I love Rachel Pantechnicon” - Josie Long
 

http://www.rachelpantechnicon.com

Rachel's MySpace

Four Magnolia Walls

 Four magnolia walls was all I wanted,
four magnolia walls was all I wanted.
Once you were a geography teacher,
now you are a decorator.
All I wanted was my four magnolia walls
and what I didn’t want was what I got:
you painted me a mural of a diagram
of an aerial view of a bird’s-foot delta –
alluvial deposits yellow, bright blue for the water,
the course of the river corresponding
to an existing hairline crack.
Geography teacher decorator, geography teacher decorator,
geography teacher decorator, don’t come back.
 
All I wanted in my bathroom
was the normal style of tiling – white tiles, horizontal,
every seventeenth tile with a picture of a seashell.
What I didn’t want was every seashell annotated
in Humbrol paint, approximately dated
to its nearest geological era,
telling me if it’s a brachiopod, a bivalve or a lamellibranch.
Geography teacher decorator, geography teacher decorator,
geography teacher decorator, don’t come back.
 
Underneath the ceiling, ornamental frieze:
stencilled lettering spelling out the principal industries
of the principal towns in Northamptonshire –
Wellingborough: boots & shoes
Kettering: boots & shoes too
Corby: steel
Brackley: wool
Daventry: unknown.
Geography teacher decorator, geography teacher decorator,
geography teacher decorator, actually that’s quite useful –
could you do me something similar with Rutland
in the vestibule?