Ethel Carney wrote many of her poems while working at the St Lawrence Mill in Blackburn.  She is a rare example of a successful working class female writer from the early twentieth century and she represents everybody who has ever tried to live a creative life while working long and difficult hours. This poem is a tribute to her poem ‘Household Gods’ in which she considers the things we cherish in our homes.

The picture you paint of your gods is at once sweet

and frightening – the warmth of the hearth, firelight

against black stone.  Spaces which have held friends

now call to you with memories. Things which ought to be

lifeless are not.  They call out in your voice.

You are careful to warn that I will not see them

if I stop by your small house.  That’s fine – they are

yours and I would not try to take them. You tell me

I may have my own shrine, in my own small house.

But things have changed now. You’d be surprised by

our world.  Things are differently full.  Information

follows us around.  We no longer find the time to listen

to the cheerfully whistling kettle – today’s gods

have other qualities.  We carry our phones like icons

– reach for their reassuring weight in our pockets

– notice their absence like an empty chair.  A strange god,

this one – needing no prayers or devotion – just our

constant attention, like a bored child tugging on a sleeve. 

Look at me.  Look at me. You’d be bemused.  You’d

wonder why we give our time to something

that doesn’t love us back.  Why we ignore one another

at bus stops, avoid eye contact in the street.