If you don't know the story, in 1995, I was banned for life from playing snooker by my local governing body - NOT the World Ladies Billiards and Snooker Association - for allegedly 'bringing the game into disrepute'. I was offered the chance to apologise for various comments I had made in the press about corrupt officials, in return for the ban being lifted.
I refused, and stopped playing competitively soon after that. At the time, I was ranked 24th in the world for women's snooker.
To accompany the poem, there's a photograph below of me practising for the 1992 Women's World Snooker Championships.
The Brief History of a Disreputable Woman
It starts here
as a table
in a small back room;
a busy pub, a sideways look,
the girls all cheering
when I drop the black,
a moment in between the kids,
a breath of silence slow
but true
across a table
in a small back room –
saying yes for once, not no.
Like Lazarus, I walk
from sleep, still stripping off
the winding sheet,
and take a cue from the rack
at the back of the club,
into the darkness
like a somnambulant.
Here hatred
breeds in corners at my step
and whispers fall
like evening
through these hanging lamps,
these gold-fringed shades.
The cloth is a lawn
to lay my head on, listening
to the beat of earth. They stare
from bar-stools, stalk me.
The men close ranks;
their shields reflect
like mirrors
as I clear the slate.
I am unwelcome here.
The door is there, they say,
and take the time to show me out.
But I am back again tomorrow,
sliding the new cue
like a blade from its sheath.
They cannot shut me out.
I have a right, a claim to stake
across this battlefield,
this bed of slate.
Their smiles are baited,
locked in place
until their silence is a war
that I seek out,
no choice of arms.
I play the men.
I lose.
And then I lose again.
I learn to stroke the ball away –
to catch the centre
when I can,
to find that timing
when the going’s sweet,
the baize is running like a race-horse
and the bets are down.
To take the risks
and never cheat.
I watch the best,
mesmerised as body
moves to wrist,
wrist falls to hand,
this silent discipline
of heart and mind.
I hammer home
each lesson
like a goldsmith,
working a delicate grip
into the hit,
the pendulum arm true
as a perfect right-angle
when the cue
goes through.
I start to win;
short sharp burst
of pure adrenalin.
I learn to dodge
those empty shafts of sunlight
in the club
when a woman
who walks alone
through rows
and rows of tables
dares to call them home.
Then others come.
They walk in,
taking the dust-covers
from the baize
with an awkward hand,
learning the touch of the cloth,
the deep furrow
left by a still hand,
fingers spread like a starfish.
First we are two,
then three, then four.
I pull them in from businesses,
supermarket queues,
from raising kids, from streets,
from empty doorways,
darkened rooms.
Together
we are stronger.
We take a name for ourselves
and make it ring.
We play
each competition
in the spirit of the game –
a name engraved
in silver on a cup.
Retribution comes
not from games on baize
but changing truths
to fit the end, till nothing’s
what it seems. And in their lies
I recognise revenge.
I’ll not give them what they want ¬–
a public apology.
This ban is straight and true.
What started as a sideways look
will run for life,
for disrepute.
First published in SNOOKER SCENE and subsequently THE BRIEF HISTORY OF A DISREPUTABLE WOMAN (Bloodaxe 1997). For more on my first poetry collection, click here.
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