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That poem sums me up. I don’t
live in a messy muddle, but I won’t lose any sleep over dusty shelves that can
wait until tomorrow, or the next day. There is more to life. There’s a saying
about ‘boring women have tidy houses’, something like that. It might be on a
fridge magnet. I declare, I am not boring.
It is a bit disconcerting to read
that household dust is composed of 20 – 50% dead skin cells. The rest is hair,
fur, pollen, fibres from fabric and various other materials in the environment.
I won’t dash for the anti-bacterial spray and a good cloth just yet. I’ll
finish writing first, unless I see a dust mite or start to feel itchy. If it’s
true, the layer of house dust doesn’t look any worse after five years. I’m not
going to purposely run that experiment. I admit to being a teeny weeny bit
embarrassed recently when we needed help to move a large sideboard and hatch style
unit. The top surface of the hatch could have been a five year science exercise,
but I know it wasn’t as long as that, I promise.
Soon, some remedial building work
will create more than the average layer of dust. I’ll wait until it is all
complete before I clean up.
Outside, the dry weather has made
everywhere dusty. We spent the weekend enjoying some caravan time at one of our
favourite places in Garstang. Passing vehicles, as slow as they were on the
site, churned up powdery clouds with the dryness of the road tracks. Cars looked
like they’d been through a sand storm.
Now, I’d like some help, please. Who
wrote the poem ‘Dust if you Must’ credited above to Rose Milligan, but I also
have the same poem in a book by Pam Ayres, showing her as having the copyright?
Thanks for reading, Pam x
I so agree about having better things to do, Quentin Crisp said after 4 yrs doesn’t get worse but don’t lose your nerve ha ha!
ReplyDeleteGlad I'm not alone 🙂 Thank you, Cynthia.
DeleteThought provoking.
ReplyDeleteI'm with you regarding dust. It's a natural feature in my house! As for the poem's provenance, I hope this helps:
ReplyDeleteDust If You Must was first published in the Lady magazine in 1998 and has since become loved for its perennial message about making the most of the time we have, urging us to focus on the things we love rather than the mundane things we think we need to do. Milligan originally wrote the poem privately and shared it with one friend, who then distributed it to the members of her choir group. One of the choir members then put it online. Milligan then sent it to the Lady. Despite the poem’s popularity on Instagram and now TikTok, Milligan never sought to be published. Cindy Chan of Souvenir Press approached her in 2023 to discuss the idea of turning the poem into a gift book.
The poem has been read on BBC’s “Poetry Please”, at funerals, studied in schools, set to music by an Irish folk musician, shared on Instagram and presented on posters, tea towels and decorative housewares on Etsy.
“This beautiful poem is a true success story of the internet, shared and loved for many years, attributed only to an enigmatic poet by the name of Rose Milligan, who lived in Lancaster in 1998,” Chan said. “After all this time I am delighted to publish Rose’s poem as a standalone book, with illustrations that carry home the heart-warming message of her words.”
On recalling her discovery of the poem’s popularity, Milligan said: “I was amazed, it was my poem but how had another person come across it? There it was on my husband’s computer, attributed to ‘Anonymous’ and taken up even in the USA. Nothing I could do about it, but at least my eldest son did get my name attached to it, not that that stopped it appearing all over the place – in my granddaughter’s school in Stevenage, at funerals, in various publications. All I can say is that this poem has haunted me since 1998 so let’s hope you [Souvenir Press] represent the grande finale.”
I'm with you Pam.
ReplyDeleteAnd Steve found out that Rose lived in Lancaster. Amazing.
As you say as it's dry weather at the moment it's pointless dusting.