Margaret Rope may have been surprised to learn that, decades after her death, writers are writing poetry to honour her. For example, a wonderful series of poems by Kate Innes was inspired by the artworks of hers that Kate saw in the 2016 Rope-Retrospective exhibition.
And now a second Shropshire poet has also put pen to paper.

Inroads

In Nigel Sustins’ collection ‘Inroads To Shrewsbury’, which is Mr Sustins’ celebration of all things Shrewsbury, one of the thirty-plus poems is dedicated to Marga. Margaret was born & raised in Shrewsbury.

His poem attempts to catch Margaret’s thoughts in her dying days, looking back on a life spent first as a callow and free-minded young woman, then as a mature artist, and then as someone who had become a Catholic nun halfway through her life.

Caricature

There is an apparent sadness in the poem despite the affirmation at the end.
The sadness in the poem remembers the demeaning self-portraits that Marga had done over the years. In them Marga depicts herself as irredeemably unattractive. (See our article about the various theories put forwards as to why Marga should have done this, and what subsequently happened to one of her ‘ugly’ self-portraits). Mr Sustins, in a very descriptive phrase in the poem, says she depicted herself as ‘frog-faced’.

However, the poet thinks that, as Marga is dying, she comes to believe that she has “bled out her hardness of heart”. This image of bleeding out resonates in two ways because: making stained-glass is unpleasant labour, especially cutting thick ‘slab glass’ as Marga did (bleeding fingers would have been par for the course); and Jesus too ‘bled out’ while on the cross. But, in both instances, the bleeding out can be seen as a creative and redemptive act.

God’s spy

In another memorable phrase, Mr Sustins calls her “God’s spy”. Almost all Marga’s work in stained glass was to do with her religion and her Church, and thus was dedicated to God in that sense; and here the word ‘spy’ does not mean a snoop, but surely means one who ‘spies’, ie looks around her. In other words, she is helping God by espying the universe and then interpreting it in glass for Him.

(There is also a second pun though: she rode motorbikes as a young woman and, one time, during World War One, Marga was out riding and she was briefly arrested, under suspicion of being a German spy!)

Resolution

At the end of Mr Sustins’ poem, Margaret comes to resolution, and is able finally to cast off the difficult image she had had of herself. She is dying, says Mr Sustins, at peace with herself, her God and her art.

+
The ‘Inroads To Shrewsbury’ poetry collection by Nigel Sustins is published by Marchland Books and is on sale through Waterstones.

~
# If you’d like to comment on this article, please use the Comments Box below
# If you’d like an email alert to tell you when a new article is published on this website (about once a month), please click the ‘Follow’ button in the top right-hand column on this page.