Resident poet welcomed to Market Lavington care homeListening to everyone’s life stories is something Colleagues at Market Lavington residential, nursing and nursing dementia care home, in Devizes, love to do. So on 1st July, the team got to know a new Resident who wanted to share some of her beautiful poems and they were fascinating to read. 

Nancy Moore, who is 95 and one the newest Residents at Market Lavington care home, has been sharing her wonderful talent for writing poetry with the wellbeing team this July. 

Riaz Ali, Wellbeing Coordinator, sat down with Nancy, who enjoys to write poetry, as she discussed her career and passion. 

“I started writing poetry in school. I was only about ten so this must have been around 1938. Of course, in those days we had to make our own entertainment. There weren’t toys like you have today. We had to write or sing or make things out of wood”

“But I had this book published in 2014, I thought it would be nice to finally collect the poems I had written over the years into a nicely bound volume. I only had five printed for family members, but since then I have compiled a further four books of my poems”

Some of the poems are very personal to Nancy and it has been a great opportunity for everyone to, not only admire the wonderful writing, but to find out more about Nancy and her life. 

Riaz commented, “How wonderful it is for someone to be able to express their thoughts and feelings through poetry. It is so kind of Nancy to share her work with us and I hope to support a poetry group/creative writing group next week here in Market Lavington to share Nancy’s work with other Residents.”

Please see below an extract from one of Nancy’s poems, ‘The Facts of Life’:

My mother said to me one day
“Come here and sit you down.
You will listen very carefully,
So don’t stand there and frown.”

I was wondering what she was going to say
I was feeling slightly nervous
I knew I had done nothing wrong
But she was very serious

“It’s time you knew the facts of life”
I sat there wondering
What was she going to say to me?
What trouble was I in?