I’m delighted to have a poem published in a new Faber anthology, Family Lines, edited by Simon Armitage and Rachel Bower. It’s Muscle Memory, a poem inspired by a Christmas Eve service in Norwich Cathedral which I took my Dad to not long after he had moved into a care home.
My Dad has always loved Christmas, and Norwich Cathedral has been a particularly special place for him ever since he first moved to Norwich in 1970, so I felt that the afternoon service on Christmas Eve might be something that he would still enjoy, despite the progression of his Alzheimer’s disease. That very much proved to be the case, and it was incredible to see the power of both music and muscle memory, as the organ played the introduction to each carol and he was able to push himself up to stand and sing, with an ease that had otherwise seemed lost to him.
One of my favourite features of Norwich Cathedral is its copper font, which was previously used to melt toffee at the Rowntree’s chocolate factory, and which stands in the west end of the nave. At the end of the Christmas Eve service the choir processes to this end, where we were sitting that year, and the huge west doors are opened. I wanted to end my poem there because this is such an awe-inspiring moment in the service, and also because it’s a reference to a poem my Dad wrote many years ago, inspired by the Christmas Eve service at King’s College Chapel, Cambridge. You can hear me explaining this ‘secret reference’ in an episode of The Verb on Radio 4, broadcast on 15th June 2025.
Muscle Memory is one of the poems in my debut collection, The Opposite of Swedish Death Cleaning, published by Seren Books.
Family Lines is available in bookshops and on the Faber website. It’s a wonderful, varied collection and would make an excellent gift. I think that my Dad would be delighted that the final poem in it is Heredity by Thomas Hardy, one of his favourite poems.
Alison Binney 