MARY CRESSWELL

When they lost the plot we had only the notes to go on

^[1]  The neopantoum structure, with its use of the hard rhymes drape, nape, rape, escape, echoes the beating wings of the seagull.

^[2]  Well-known for prefiguring Apollinaire’s calligrammes, she wrote little (if anything) after the Russian Revolution.

^[3]  Word unclear in the original.

^[4]  A copy hangs in the Louvre.

^[5]  1865?-1918

^[6]  Reputed mistress of the Prince of Wales (later Edward VIII), Lady Beaufort was never in Antibes.

^[7]  Can be translated either as the colour or as the degenerative disease.

^[8]  Text corrupted. This rendition assumes that she survived childbirth and did in fact visit the Lesser Antilles.